Q: Could you share some of your thoughts on teachers.
A: Yes, of course.
Q: If a person is a beginner do they need a teacher or can they teach themselves?
A: It really depends on the individual. Not everyone is the same. Some people have good karma sufficient to allow them to understand what the Buddha’s discourses are pointing to—others don’t. Some people, let’s say, need a teacher for five minutes; for others, a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough. Again, it’s really an individual thing. Now if you want to learn various rituals—yeah, join a Tibetan group. If you want to do sitting, join a Soto Zen group. A beginner can try different Buddhist groups. No harm in that. But a beginner shouldn’t close off their mind either believing that doing zazen is the way, or chanting the title of a Sutra.
Q: Didn’t you have a teacher?
A: Yes I did. For a 20 year old he was okay at the time. But looking back now, he didn’t know very much. He was basically trained by his teacher to do funerals for the Japanese community. How much Buddhism do you really have to know to do that? About zip. I can teach anyone what I learned in under five minutes. Don’t stare. Be very mindful of everything that you do and daydream about—be mindful all the time. But this won’t even get you to first base. I was thankful I found the Lankavatara Sutra in the temple’s library. For some strange reason I was drawn to it. I was like a blind person and this Sutra was like the cure, although I had a difficult time understanding any of it at first. In those days I was a real dunce. Spiritually, I was asleep snoring away. My teacher wasn’t any brighter when it came to really grasping what the message of the Buddha was. He was just farther down the road than I was at the time. I think most beginners are just looking for another mom and dad. They are not at the stage of asking, “When I look into my own crazy, disheveled mind what does this pure Mind look like?” It’s not yet a matter of life and death like you’re in a prison and need to escape or get hung by the neck. To one degree or another we are all spiritually lazy. It doesn’t help having a teacher letting you spiritually snore away, either. A good Buddhist group has to be more like a military boot camp it terms of trying to get you to spiritually wake up. But that requires a teacher who at least has awakened to pure Mind, if only for a split second. These kind of teachers are rare.
Q: Some Buddhists I have met say that a person really needs to have a teacher and be in a Buddhist community. What’s your take on that?
A: Again, it is an individual thing. If someone said that to you—well, they’re just telling you more about their own personality. They need a family. Maybe they just need a place to hang out because they are lonely. I don’t want to judge these people—maybe that’s what they need and all they can do. Fine, join the club. But is this real Buddhism? I don’t think so. If a person spends five or ten years with a teacher and a group, are they able to grasp what the Lankavatara Sutra is saying—do they have Bodhicitta or the Light of Mahyana? Have they entered the current, sotapatti? The answer is pretty obvious. They are not even close.
Q: Do you think that maybe beginners rely too much on teachers?
A: Yes—and they don’t know it. But here is the weird thing, they don’t really want to learn about Buddhism. If the teacher acted like a university professor and asked the students to write up a summary on chapters of a Sutra, they might all quit.
Q: So when is a person not a beginner?
A: When they have awakened to the pure Mind, even for a finger snap. If you are thinking that this means a person could be a beginner for fifty years you’re right. As I stress on this blog, Buddhism is all about seeing pure Mind. If I can get one or two blog readers to awaken, I am a happy old dude.
Q: Do you have your own group?
A: Yes, all the people who visit this blog and all the kids who hang out at the coffee shop I go to everyday.
Q: So how do you teach somebody at a coffee shop?
A: You’d be surprised. The light of Mahayana works in mysterious ways. The kids in the coffee shop are struggling to graduate, to get a job, find someone to be in love with and so on. My job is just to remind them of compassion and spirit; that essentially we are all spiritual beings who have always been free of suffering—we just got sidetracked by desire for what is really not us—and it's hard to give up. When they are ready for more, I give them more.
Sounds great, I wish I could join you once at that coffee shop.
Posted by: Jure | October 29, 2012 at 06:33 PM
Quite a mature take on this--well done! Am pleased to be part of the fold! :-)
Posted by: MStrinado | October 29, 2012 at 05:36 AM
One day, as my Master came down from vultures peak to grace me with his blessings, I asked him;
"Master, what is the origin of Ignorance?"
"Why that is easy! Who is the man six feet above you? Ask him. Impervious to birth and death, bathing in the light of deathlessness, he sees and knows all things as they are."
Posted by: minx | October 29, 2012 at 02:10 AM