If a Buddhist teacher claimed he or she could make you feel comfortably warm in the winter with snow piled up all around it wouldn’t be a problem to see if their claim were, in fact, true.
But what if you went to such a teacher to verify their claim and they stuck a thermometer in your mouth and after a few minutes said, “According to the thermometer you’re warm.” You would no doubt feel disappointed to say the least. Your expectations were quite different. You didn’t expect that you would be standing in a Buddhist temple with a thermometer in your mouth.
So what is the real underlying lesson being taught here? Isn’t it that a spiritual teacher should be able to move us somewhat beyond the enclosure of normal conditions?
I used the example of temperature because it fits closest with the idea of spiritual force. If we were to stand in the presence of a spiritual master we would sense an extraordinary change in our body’s homeostasis including its normal psychodynamic forces. This change would lead to either a condition of fright or to a feeling of bliss, so much so that it would be hard to act as we normally might.
What we would not expect is to be moved in ways we might normally expect to be moved in various circumstances. For example, if we happen to meet our favorite movie star we would be moved—but it is not a spiritual force that moves us. If someone where gratuitously to hand us a large sum of money we would also be moved—and this is hardly spiritual. On the same track, if we were to meet a famous Zen master and he smiled at us, again, we would be moved but not extraordinarily. On the other hand, if we were to meet a spiritual teacher and our body, all of a sudden, began to heat up and energy began to extend itself throughout our body, we might become frightened. This would be an unexpected occurrence. If we were to follow this teacher, we would also begin to experience, under this teacher’s guidance, higher forms of meditation and thus begin to unlock the mystery of the Buddha’s real teaching. We would not experience this with most other teachers.
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