Anne Dooley
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Dear Jana,
Thank you for your evocation of the aliveness and vitality we can feel in the midst of and in the recollection of great suffering. Strikes me as both quite mysterious and true.This is so beautiful, Gwen. I love Karma moves like contractions across lifetimes – the pull and push, like childbirth.
Thank you!
Dear Michelle,
Your essay gave me much to think about, thank you. I really appreciate your connecting devotion to our infinite chances to begin again and to love.Dear Kelly,
I found much to admire and relate to in your essay but I want to highlight the challenge you named re: consciously focussing on your family (as opposed to your teaching) and how that well-considered decision still can cut into your self-confidence and respect for your own work. This is such a relatable situation–one I found myself in when my daughters were young. It’s just hard. But I’m glad for you that you bring so much awareness and intelligence to this situation, and I trust that it won’t cause you to deny the world your gifts as a teacher.Dear Helene,
I really appreciate the way that you write about your perfectionism. As a fellow recovering perfectionist, I find that those self-judging impulses are still very deep within me. As with you, I find meditation opens my perspective in this ongoing dynamic and I love your phrase: I let myself re-discover the exquisite vulnerability of being human.
Thank you.Discuss your particular gifts and challenges as a teacher.
I had to start and restart this essay several times to jostle myself past the reflexive “ick” factor of writing about myself as a teacher in terms of gifts and challenges. But I understand that’s just a habit of mind. So, whatever. Onward.
My experience as a teacher is in adult English for Speakers of Other Languages classrooms. In that context I find I rely on my genuine curiosity about other people, about the contents of their hearts and minds. I believe that we are all connected in profound ways. I am patient with others and with negotiating meaning. I love questions, both asking and answering. I will try multiple times to understand or be understood. And, when I don’t understand or don’t know, I say so. When I make a mistake, I say so. My willingness to be goofy keeps both me and my students engaged. As a prospective teacher of meditation my dedication to my meditation practice and to study of the Dharma counts as a strength. My experience as a meditator has given me glimpses of the everyday magic that Susan refers to. I believe that meditation can make us more: open, vulnerable, real, compassionate and creative; but I can’t say how or why. And that’s just fine.
As for challenges: lack of confidence can also lead me to lose my way as a teacher. My impulse to please people, to work to meet everyone’s needs, can tip me into inauthenticity. If rattled, I talk too much. In an attempt to be engaging, I can over plan and move through material too quickly. At times, I need to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if a student doesn’t like me or a particular lesson and that being real and engaged is far more important than delivering a mythical “perfect class”.
I will follow the lead of my classmates in ending this entry with heartfelt thanks to all of you for bringing so much openness, creativity, and compassion to our time together in class. I am honored to have been among you. Thank you, Susan, for providing us with an inspiring example of teaching with integrity, intelligence, heart and humor.
Thank you for your reply, Kimberly. I’m glad that you had helpful colleagues and were able to care for yourself in what was a very intense job.
Dear Dominic,
Thank you for sharing this example of being with and yet being alone. I am struck that you intentionally meditated to prepare for the session with your client, and happy that it helped to center and ground yourself in such a way as to be of much benefit to your client and to also help yourself feel better. I’m also happy to hear that you and your girlfriend were able to talk through your argument and are still going strong! For what it’s worth I believe it’s possible to be happy and sad at the same time. 🙂It was the last day of the session for my adult Beginning 2 ESOL students. Most of the students had been in the program and knew the last day drill: review activities and games, one on one meetings with the teacher to learn test scores and next level recommendations. B, an outgoing and particularly strong student from Haiti, arrived late. I looked up to say hello and then went back to helping another student with our activity.
Suddenly voices rose in the center of the classroom. B had gone to sit in the only free seat available next to R, a student from Peru. Apparently, B had moved R’s backpack from the seat without asking and R had objected.
R, who I believed to be on the autism spectrum (but didn’t know definitively because of privacy rules), was staring in stunned silence, clutching his backpack. B had begun to weep and talk about racism.
A few other students from countries in West Africa jumped up to comfort B. Two of them were crying also.
I knew: that R was neurodiverse in some fashion and tentative with other students, that B was exhausted and in pain due to a broken tooth. I knew: that racism is real and an issue for my students, that R hadn’t acted out of racism and was becoming terrified.
Part of me wanted to plop down onto the floor and weep. What had happened to our happy class? I had never experienced something like this as a teacher. There were so many ways to go wrong here. It grew quiet in the room; I knew they were waiting for me to give an answer. But this wasn’t a grammar point or vocabulary definition. I had no more to go on than they did.
As I began to speak to the students, I felt myself grow calm. My vision cleared and I could see all the students faces clearly. Throughout the class we had talked a lot about miscommunication and ways to repair communication breakdowns.
What if R simply didn’t want anyone to touch his backpack? Was that racism?
After a bit I took R to speak to a member of the immigrant resource center where my class was located. My Spanish and R’s English skills weren’t enough to get him through this situation. Luckily, my colleague and R discussed his autism and local resources for him.
Back in the classroom we talked about racism a bit more and several students shared experiences. R came back. We played Bingo and then I began to meet with the students 1:1. B’s test scores were very good; he was moving up to Intermediate 1. R talked to me about his autism, and about the group he had learned about who went to Dave and Busters sometimes.
We made it through the day. The students hugged me and each other at the end of class. I went home and cried.
Dear Kimberly,
Wow. Every Tuesday? I am impressed with your resourcefulness, creativity, and stamina! And I can well imagine how emotionally difficult the open space part of the gathering must have been for you. You give us a wonderful description of holding space and maintaining the container for your co-workers. I understand the necessity of holding your own emotions in check during the open space sharing (as hard as that must have been), and I wonder if you did anything specific afterwards to help yourself process those emotions.
Dear Erin,
Yes, it is about boundaries, without which our compassion can become unwise! Thank you so much for stating that explicitly. Wow.
Like you and Christine, I have also found parenting to be a rich ground for stumbling (rushing) into idiot compassion, probably mostly because I lost sight of my and my daughters’ appropriate boundaries. Thank you for sharing your insight.Dear Jamie,
I was moved by Atlas’s story. It’s such a painful but familiar situation, the outsider trying to work his way inside, to the popular kids. But your framing Atlas’s reaction as an example of idiot compassion provided me with a real ah ha! moment. True compassion for himself is certainly harder for him to take now, as you so rightly pointed out I feel that your response to this situation is also an example of true compassion, maintaining an expectation of self-respect from a student much more inclined to be passive. I, too, hope he’ll learn the lesson in time. Your students are very fortunate.Dear Dominic,
I appreciated your metaphor of idiot compassion as like an actor in a play, which really gets at the empty, performative nature of idiot compassion, When you commented: “With true compassion, one seems to have, in a mysterious way, without thinking, the Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Effort to the situation,” you gave substance to the prismatic depth and breadth of true compassion. I enjoyed reading your essay.
Dear Erin,
Thank you for sharing your valuable experience as a yoga teacher guiding what sounds to be a very safe and supportive container for your classes. I appreciate your language around invitation and ‘autonomy to do their own thing’. I was also struck by your observation that identifying trauma responses in others helped you to see those same responses in yourself. In a very real sense we are all in this together and trauma sensitivity is an awareness we need both in and out of teaching spaces. Thank you.
Idiot compassion jumps in and immediately attempts to solve any and all perceived suffering. Idiot compassion can be motivated by true empathy for another’s suffering, but it is also frequently motivated by an inability to withstand the truth of suffering and by an urge to ‘virtue signal’: demonstrating our superlative kindness and willingness to do (heroically!) for others. Suffering in service of alleviating another’s suffering is a specialty of idiot compassion.
True compassion is generally more considered and well, quieter. True compassion is motivated by empathy for another’s suffering but is under no illusions about the need to or possibility of vanquishing suffering. True compassion calls bullshit, if appropriate. ‘Giving ‘til it hurts’ is not an aspect of true compassion.
I think. I have struggled with idiot compassion since childhood. I was raised and socialized to be a caretaker. As I understood my family, everyone else’s emotional state was my responsibility. My track record at easing my family’s suffering was abysmal.
Life, parenthood and my practice have helped me gain a clearer understanding of suffering. I’ve experienced true compassion from loved ones, teachers and sangha members. I am grateful to be able to contemplate compassion through this teaching.
