Colin Dodgson
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Hi Kat, seconding Rosie’s comment. Your “maybe” thoughts are a wonderful statement of intention and ring very true to me. Right there with you!
Hi Stina, thanks for these pearls from your experience. Very valuable to frame the experience with the perspective of one who lives and breathes it!
To the core of this question, offering the instruction to another person: yes. I feel I have absorbed the technique myself and can guide someone else to the same understanding. For me the key piece was finding the language in myself to be able to set the container for someone else, and guide them through the steps; to create the conditions for the technique to work its magic. The practice breakouts, deepening context around my own practice, and processing of our group’s experiences and insights has added up. I feel I can call on that internal language to meet another person and respond to them in the moment, to give them what they need in order to learn.
Missing? The confidence is growing but not complete. I feel there could be questions I might not handle as well as I’d want, that there are things I don’t yet know. I can’t anticipate all that might arise in this connection between myself and a student. But balancing that, I have come to trust that feeling solid in the instruction itself, sensitive to the possibility of what might arise between teacher and student, and approaching the teaching role with clear intentions will help me navigate it all to create an experience that works for someone else. I’m sure working more times with more people will let me relax into it, develop that confidence more.
Am I prepared to put myself out there to offer 1:1 instruction? This feels much less certain. Trying to unpack the feeling a little – I think there’s more I need to gather before I can step into that. Like it’s a threshold to cross, where you declare yourself to the world. Not just the commitment piece, which doesn’t seem out of reach, but can I be that person really? Can I give enough and maybe more than that, do I have enough behind me to give others confidence in me, to trust me? That if I say I can teach meditation there’s a real basis for people taking a look and saying, yes I trust this person to do that for me. History, track record, credentials, time in lineage? Maybe those feel like they’re missing.
I heard the comment in class that you never feel ready and it resonates.
I sense that there may never be a moment when I feel okay, I know everything I need, I’ve got my diploma, I’m ready, but I feel close to ready to embrace that and begin anyway.My first instinct was that it would feel okay to me to charge if I were to teach, though it might depend on who, why and where. Maybe sometimes it would feel right to offer instruction for free or some other arrangement.
I think the critical piece for me is that I don’t see money and dharma as needing to be separated for dharma to be held in reverence or kept pure. If I tried to exclude money from parts of my life connected to dharma, it would feel like saying the dharma is somehow separate from the rest of my life where everyday things happen. I don’t think that’s true.
I see money as essential for staying in the human realm, and supporting family, community and beyond. Without independent means, I must generate income to do that, and I feel any means of doing so that also allows me to put my understanding of dharma into practice is appropriate and reasonable, including teaching meditation.
The donation model feels like dodging the issue for me; a way to have someone else decide, so I don’t have to. I feel like I need to take responsibility for setting a value, rather than putting someone else in the position of wondering should I or shouldn’t I? How much is too little or too much?
On the other hand, I could see something like donation working for me as a way to apply the sliding scale idea. Less “Donations welcome,” more “Pay if you are able, $0 – $X,” so it becomes a compromise that sets expectations but removes an obstacle for those who need it.
With this question, I feel intention is everything – and clarity is kindness (thank you Susan and Dawa). I trust that money exchange around teaching meditation is just another aspect of life. It doesn’t exclude compassion, kindness, and being more awake, and actually can be something to work with to grow toward those qualities.
Hi Cheryl, great examples of embracing whatever unfolds, and being in tune with it. I think letting intention be the north star is the heart of it, and something I too settled on as I reflected on this question. Very inspirational, thank you!
Hi Rosie, I find kindness and generosity in your approach, and appreciate you point about the space for different teachers and students to create and choose the approaches that work for them. Thanks!
Hi Dawa, clarity rings through your essay! I appreciate your journey toward achieving it and applying it in your life, especially around money. I think those early attitudes and confusion can be formed for anyone when money is too scarce, as well as structurally for women who aren’t expected to be responsible for it. I love what you’ve done to counteract that for yourself, and for others by example.
Ideal learning environment?
Well, I think this one’s not bad. Clear container and expectations, framework for exploration and self-discovery, opportunity to be seen and learn from others. Caring teacher and a cohort of beautiful, supportive people. Not bad at all!
I can’t really remember an environment that felt more ideal to me, except Cheryl’s recounting of learning by her mother’s side widened my view beyond class experiences, and led me to consider all I learned from my own father, and the way he taught me.
As I commented to Cheryl: So much of my life has been built on what I learned from my dad – working with metal and wood, plants in the forest and in the garden, cooking, baking, sewing, learning to learn. I think of the patient and methodical way he taught me to drive, use tools safely, read a map.
He taught me more than just know-how, of course. Setting me the task of removing the quack-grass from our allotment garden, he showed me how the rhizomes grew and which tools to use, how to use them. That was a very unwelcome challenge at the time. Exhausting and never-ending. But I may be one of the most persistent, tenacious people on planet earth now when I have a task to get through, and I believe my dad planted that seed right there in the quack-grass.
I would sum it up as his creating an environment where curiosity was directed toward discovery rather than simply giving answers, where every process was an opportunity to examine how to approach problems, what materials and options are available, how to break big problems into a series of smaller ones. How to acquire skills, and find information. Always with consideration of my comfort in the experience, balanced with a confidence in my capacity to grow.
Less-than-ideal environment: my 6th form pure math class comes to mind (6th = college prep level in the UK back in the day). I joined late, due to a rather confused process of deciding on career goals, which dictated what classes would be open for me. My advisor “strongly suggested” a path that would be solid professionally – architecture – when I wanted to pursue art and design (precarious and unemployable!). I caved and took classes that did not interest me and stretched my aptitudes. That math class was impossible for me. The teacher had no interest in accommodating my late start in any way. I could not make up for what I had missed and simply did not understand any of what I was faced with, which came in a torrent of cryptic equations to solve. I felt completely unsupported; that it made no difference to the teacher whether I sank or swam. I did sink, quickly, but was able to substitute another subject and survived it well enough to get back on a track toward design.
Hi Cheryl, thank you for your lovely description of learning from your parents, and how their love of life made their teaching such a gift for you. I had been thinking back to my classroom memories to pull out relevant anecdotes, but your essay pointed me toward my own family learning environment. So much of my life has been built on what I learned from my dad – working with metal and wood, plants in the forest and in the garden, cooking and particularly baking, sewing, learning to learn … I feel this comment turning into my essay. Thank you for sharing a little of what you carry forward from your mom and dad.
Hi Rosie, your bookstore venue sounds like a lovely place to learn with like-minded people. On the other hand, your retreat scenario made me think of the instinctive drives Susan outlined today, and in that situation it seems none of them would be met for anyone. I don’t think I could tolerate that environment either!
Hi Ana, I really like your dance analogy. Very accurate, and I appreciate your points about developing self-knowledge and intuition to support the teacher’s role within the dance. Knowing it’s a line that shifts within relationship, and may not be a hard and fast one, it’s so important to be able to set appropriate boundaries at the outset, then sense how to navigate them going forward. Thanks!
I can only think of one teacher whose remoteness felt uncomfortable for me, but the impression has lasted. Psychology professor. Interaction had to be limited to the transactions around class material and assignments, and anything else seemed like an affront. I felt he didn’t see me as a complete person, I suppose.
Some of my teachers at university and in later school years come to mind in the friendly category. I had a great relationship with one of my art teachers, and once I was out of college and visited my old school we even discussed the possibility of a business project together. Another teacher had an annual field trip for the class to his home, where we would have a meal and consider our subject – sociology – from a different perspective. A few others invited groups of students or the class to their home for a cookout or similar. None of them strike me now as “too-friendly.”
On the other hand, I can think of one or two who did cross lines. One guy would join some among us for pub visits and the like. In the culture of my youth, many had, let’s say, a strong interest in pub life. I think in his case there was a sad history that led him to alcohol, and that became a social bridge to students. Another teacher at university seemed over-friendly in similar ways.
My wife completed a Masters in Social Work degree a few years ago, and had one course with a teacher who was not too-friendly, but boundaryless. She was grieving the loss of her brother who struggled with substance abuse, and was teaching a class on… substance abuse. At one point she presented each student with lego pieces that had belonged to her brother, and created a brief exercise around them. The impression this left was definitely uncomfortable.
In all these cases, I think the dividing line I see is quite clear, and exactly what was discussed in our class: when a teacher limits their own role in the student’s experience, but shows they care about that experience, it feels right. When they try to include themselves in the student’s experience, or make it too much about themselves, it can really disrupt things.
Hi Mary, I particularly appreciate your last sentence – what a beautiful impulse. It seems to me that deepening your practice to offer a more peaceful self is the very heart of generosity. Lovely!
Hi Rosie, I particularly appreciate your gesture of giving to the food shelf even when you were struggling to afford groceries yourself. You truly have generosity in your heart. I see how it could work in more than one way: not just giving from abundance, but giving to remind yourself of your true nature. Thank you!
Most connected: Generosity, no doubt.
I heard Susan’s podcast on generosity a few months ago. It wasn’t the first teaching on the subject I had come across, but on that drive it clicked. Like the last piece in a puzzle I have been working on for a long time, or the one that drops in and you suddenly see what the picture might be.
It fell into place for me that my entire viewpoint toward my own life has been shaped by a sense of something missing. This in two senses: first, material well-being – interpreting my very frugal and modest childhood environment as poverty, especially in comparison to the living situations of relations and my friends’ families.
Second, being without my mother from toddlerhood to adulthood, created a longing for a maternal figure, and a search for that kind of connection everywhere. The two influences combined, and led me look to the world with a deep wanting. Of course I did not recognize this in myself, and it affected how I approached decisions large and small.
Hearing the podcast, in a moment of recognition I saw that I had viewed everything as an opportunity for me to gain something. For example, driving past a property, seeing some old piece of equipment and thinking, they no longer use that, I could take it and use it. A momentary thought that I would never act on and would dismiss immediately, but after contemplating the teaching I understood its source.
When things were very difficult financially after the 2008 meltdown, I had a more or less constant impulse to look to others for deliverance from that particular hell. Not a limitation on my own efforts to extricate my family from the situation, but an ever-present feeling: a wanting for someone to take care of me.
Susan mentioned that generosity begins with recognizing your own wealth – measured by your own possession of innate buddha nature, the riches of your own capabilities and inherent value, the beauty and connection you can find in your life and relationships. And from that place of richness, turning it around to approach every situation with the question: “What can I offer here?”
I feel this unlocked key pieces for me, from quickly abandoning a mindset of poverty and need, however subtle it had become, to forgiving myself for a lifetime of mistakes, to recognizing that I have everything I need, right here, right now.
From that place, I can give. I now see that generosity is the foundation of all actions that can overcome even just the smallest part of the enormous suffering we see around us. Absorbing the meaning of generosity helped me realize that the teaching path could be open for me.
I don’t have a clear sense of disconnection from any particular paramita. I feel absorption and especially prajna are the hardest for me to wrap my understanding around. I think I know what they mean, at least to me, but there’s always a sense that my beginner’s understanding could easily be missing… everything. There is always more to discover, more to see.
