When advice is real advice

I have always found that giving spiritual advice can be risky even when people ask for it.  So what is going on here with spiritual advice?

The advice most practitioners want is not really advice.  They are, many times, just looking for someone who agrees with them but, specifically, someone who can articulate what they can’t express, so that it sounds like advice to them.  However, nothing in them really changes after the advice. 

Real advice is always about real change.  It insists upon a kind of regimen to correct the previous mistakes.  Young people, for example, who join the Marine Corps are looking for real change in their lives.  They really want to change.  Whatever advice they received, previously, probably didn’t help them overcome their main problems and obstacles.

Students who ask Zen masters or advanced Zen students for advice are generally people who want to learn how to meditate; who will come away learning the practice of seated meditation.  But as far as real change goes they are not all that interested.  They have major problems but don’t want to change all that much.  However, no Zen teacher worth their salt, especially with people like this, is going to give them much advice because such people are not committed to profound change.

How much people personally open up to spiritual advice will indicate to me how much they are willing to change their former lifestyle and hopefully look within more than they have ever looked before. 

When I talk to someone about going into retreat, living alone for a period of time, I hope they will take the advice since they are going to learn a lot more about themselves than they know, presently.  Even if they spend a few days and nights in the woods, walking and meditating in beautiful places alone, they are going to learn much more than meditating at home or in a Zen center.  This pushes the individual closer to remembering their finitude and that life is short. We are not going to be young forever. 

The most difficult spiritual advice to accept so that we can really get to the heart of Zen requires, eventually, an existential crisis which, over time, comes naturally if we spend time away from others, depending upon our self.  We also have to understand that our awakening or satori will defy all of our presuppositions and expectations.  When we have nothing more to hang on to, in one moment, we will overcome the 12-links (nidānas) being as it were baptized from head to foot in the luminous Mind.

Comments

[Adasatala]

If the teaching doesn't transform you, there can be no foundation for practice. If someone thinks that this is false, then they are still a pruthagjana at heart. And if you don't believe me, then go and ask Dharmakara.