Ideally, a teacher is suppose to teach the student something that they don’t already know, rather than what the student expects or, personally, wishes to learn.
Maybe to avoid this problem, before the student looks for a teacher they should begin to make a list of what they believe Buddhism teaches. Then they need to do the research on their own to see if what they believe Buddhism is about is actually true (find the actual verses the Buddha spoke).
Students who want to be taught what they expect Buddhism is all about when it is not that way; who cannot tolerate a teacher who takes them beyond their comfort zone, I would call ‘beginners’ who never advance because they came to Buddhism with their minds already made up as to what Buddhism is all about. Their source? They’ve read a few “pop Buddhist or pop Zen books” or talked to a few people who are also beginners.
For a sincere beginner, he or she has to be prepared to abandon their assumptions about Buddhism, for example, that Buddhism is not religious, or the Buddha denied the self, or that Zen Buddhism is learning to live in the here and the now.
Unfortunately, there are too many students who are searching for teachers who agree with their ideas about Buddhism which I dare say can be very superficial. I find this to be true when it comes to the subject of “emptiness” or the “void” as just one example.
Unfortunately, today’s Buddhism, that is outside Asian circles, is becoming too interested in secular Buddhism which I find to be Buddhism in name only. It’s both nihilistic and anti-religious which puts it into the category of postmodernism.
Samsara is not too comfortable.
Posted by: n. yeti | January 27, 2020 at 02:48 PM