This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: arriving & opening; Dharmette: Question about Etiquette for Approaching Teachers. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Matthew Brensilver at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Okay folks, so welcome. Nice to see your names, places. Let’s practice together.
I remembered a yoga teacher saying something like, “How you get into the posture is as important as where you get to,” or something. That can refer to literally the posture of your body, but also how you take a kind of inner Dharma posture, a posture of the heart. Just get into that posture carefully. You sense all the different parameters of your being, maybe subtly shifting as we come into stillness.
Not in a rush to put your heart into some particular posture, or your attention into some particular shape. Just finding your place.
Sensing if there’s anything that needs the blessing of awareness and patience in order for you to be here, to be available for your breathing.
Just checking what image you have of your own body, the way that image gets refreshed often. To the extent that there’s self-consciousness associated with any part of your body, just relax.
To the extent that there are any body sensations that hurt, soften.
It feels irresponsible to stop clinging, even for a few moments. But whatever alarm bells go off that make that feel unsafe, just breathe into that. And breathe knowing the beginning and ending of your inhale, the beginning and ending of your exhale.
Our mind is always foraging in some sort, seeking some small scrap of peace. But the Buddha said peace is only found through relinquishment. This is what we really want, something that actually satiates us, food for the heart.
If there’s some kind of pain or heartache, the mind can very quickly just bless that with compassion, equanimity. If there’s restlessness and agitation, just find what’s stable, breathe into it. If you’re just touched with some measure of tranquility, if there’s aversion or ill will, just a quick surgical strike of metta1. Just quietly helping phenomena melt into non-existence.
A person wrote, “Can you give some guidance on etiquette for approaching meditation teachers? Like, is there anything that really annoys you about people who sit with you and engage with your reflections, the way people approach you or not, etc.? Conversely, is there anything that makes you really happy about the way people approach and engage with you?”
I like this anonymous question portal. People just say things, and that’s good.
The first thing that I thought of when I saw that was Michael Scott from The Office. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a very loving depiction of delusion and self-absorption, but loving for sure. There’s some clip, I don’t know what it’s in the context of, but it’s Michael Scott at his desk and he says, “Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it’s not like this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised.” You got to find the clip. That’s very good. That’s just the first thing I thought of. That’s not what I model my life around.
But I suppose the question is, what do teachers want from students? I’m not totally sure, but what actually came to mind was almost nothing, but not nothing. Teaching is merely an aspect of practice one takes care with. Anyone who thinks they’re a teacher is not a teacher. Teaching is partially just a kind of practice of service, you know, and the currency is compassion, sympathetic joy.
Once, Ajahn Sujato2 was talking about the Buddha’s decision to teach for 45 years. He didn’t need to do that, didn’t need to pad the ego or make money, but was just moved by care. I remember Ajahn getting quite emotional just reflecting on that. Shinzen Young3 said this about teaching: “When you’ve had an exceptional meal, you leave a nice tip.” Teaching is a devotional practice. It’s kind of an expression of love for the lineage, for the Dharma4. Giving a Dharma talk is like writing a love letter to many people at the same time, and you just kind of hope someone reads it.
Mostly, I feel like it’s a teacher’s job to be highly flexible, to meet however the student manifests, meet however the student expresses themselves. In other words, no code of etiquette, really. Come as you are. The flexibility is about giving the student a kind of unpressured space to see their mind. So much gets stirred in relationships with teachers. The teacher plays many roles and represents many things.
Psychotherapeutic models of transference5 are not always on point, but often somewhat relevant. A relationship forms even if one has very little or no contact with a teacher. Something happens. And if one does have more contact, then that’s evocative terrain. I know from my own history with teachers, almost none of whom I had much direct contact with. When I say my teachers, I was not nurtured all along the way with a lot of individual attention or something like that. It was not like that. It was just practicing with people.
There’s our own historical material, the ways that teachers function as a screen onto which our deep conditioning and early relationships are dramatized, the shadow cast by those dynamics. In the classical Freudian sense, Freud said something like, “There is no love that does not reproduce infantile stereotypes.” Teachers can disappear behind the veil of projection. They become just an object in the world of the student. Sometimes a compliment is more about the person offering it than the person to whom it’s directed. The emptier a teacher gets, the easier it is to see the movement of one’s own mind. There have been times when I’m sitting retreat and the teacher is just… I don’t know, all I perceive are the movements of my mind, whatever is evoked in the field.
But it’s not merely about the student; it’s a relationship. This is a more modern kind of understanding of therapeutic relationships, in this context, in the course of therapy, but may be relevant for Dharma relationships too. This is Drew Westen and Glen Gabbard6. They write:
Transference is not simply a defense or displacement of libidinal energy onto the therapist, as Freud proposed. It is not simply the activation of an old representation lying in wait. Indeed, transference is not really about transfer at all. It is about the continual construction and reconstruction of thoughts, feelings, wishes, fears, patterns of relating, and ways of regulating affect in the context of a new relationship, experiences that can only be understood in the context of old ones.
Now, those dynamics can be a kind of vehicle for healing. We can perceive our minds, our needs, our longing with more and more clarity in the context of a relationship. In that process, sometimes idealization is a phase, but it’s not the last word. Spiritual maturity is the accurate perception of self and other, the toleration of ambivalence, the integration of the coexistence of strength and flaw in self and other, student and teacher.
It is the teacher’s job, I feel, to offer something without strings attached, in the sense that Dharma teaching is an offering that does not establish debt. I don’t wish to burden you with implicit demands of how to be viewed or treated. That’s just kind of static for your mind to contend with, and I want to do whatever I can to create a kind of open space for your mind.
So what I believe teachers want from students, probably the simplest way to put it is sincerity. That’s a word I first think I heard when I was sitting retreats with Rodney Smith7. Rodney said that sincerity is the manifestation of the heart when it is freed from the authority of self. Teachers do not want to relate ego to ego. Sincerity is a certain kind of fluidity and a willingness to examine what Agnes Callard8 calls “load-bearing questions”—the answers to which support one’s life. To be willing to examine load-bearing questions, that’s sincerity. A certain kind of willingness not to know that I associate with sincerity. It’s really stepping out of the bureaucracy of ego.
When I’m amidst sincerity in a sangha, the sense of self fades very dramatically, and I can be as silent teaching as in my own practice. But when that isn’t there—and that’s why I’m careful what context in which I teach—when there isn’t sincerity, some modicum of sincerity, my self congeals in a ferocious way, and I feel kind of ashamed of what I care about. You only talk about love with certain people.
There’s a distinction that’s become important to me that I sometimes say: the need to be loved is distinct from the wish to be understood. The need to be loved is a wasp nest. No praise is sufficient for the ego. It tolerates no goodness outside itself. It’s insatiable. Live by the ego, die by the ego, and that’s no way to live. That has faded dramatically. But the wish to be understood is the sense of hearts meeting in the Dharma. My sensitivity to that over the 15-plus years of teaching has only grown.
I’m most touched when people are tracking my heart closely, listening very carefully, and relate to me not in my role as teacher, but we meet in the open space of the Dharma. I’m touched when my goodness is not elevated as some special possession but reminds you of your own goodness. A teacher doesn’t want to be loved, but to dwell in what we both love.
I offer this for your consideration. I’ll be back next week, actually doing Gil’s… I’m the sub for Gil next week, so if you want to join the 7:00 a.m. Pacific, I’ll be there. And yeah, I wish you all a good week.
Metta: A Pali word meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, or goodwill. It is a form of meditation in which one cultivates feelings of warmth and care towards oneself and others. ↩
Ajahn Sujato: An Australian Buddhist monk and scholar of the Pali Canon. ↩
Shinzen Young: An American meditation teacher who integrates Buddhist traditions with scientific and mathematical principles. ↩
Dharma: A key concept in Buddhism with multiple meanings, including the teachings of the Buddha, the cosmic law and order, and the nature of reality. ↩
Transference: A concept from psychoanalysis where feelings and attitudes from past relationships are unconsciously redirected towards a person in the present, such as a therapist or, in this context, a meditation teacher. ↩
Drew Westen and Glen Gabbard: Prominent psychologists and researchers in the fields of personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy. ↩
Rodney Smith: An American author and Buddhist teacher who was a former monk in the Theravada tradition. ↩
Agnes Callard: An American philosopher and associate professor at the University of Chicago, known for her work on aspiration and public philosophy. ↩