Glenn Thode
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Having spent most of my working life in teaching and learning roles, this is an intriguing question.
In those roles, I’ve experienced many times how becoming too close and being too separate as a teacher or a student can cloud the learning experience.
Becoming too close or friendly can cloud the judgment of both student and teacher to fantasize about a personal relationship with the other. I’ve had this happen in situations in which I teach windsurfing and teaching law. In these cases teaching usually takes place through a learning program, and during the duration of the program, a relationship is built. It is important to not be too remote, as trust and rapport can evoke commitment to the learning path and to the work needed to learn. This trust and rapport are built by interacting through approach. But approaching too close can lead to misreading signals, which can lead to blurring the lines between appropriate closeness and inappropriate intimacy.
I’ve had a PhD student who I was guiding quite intensively in both his writing as in his teaching roles think my closeness would mean I could not be in a position to criticize his work or attitude as an academic. When I did, he was genuinely surprised saying he thought we were friends. He eventually grew to become quite hostile in our relationship.
Another student thought that we were close enough she could suggest I could change her grades for non-academic favors.
As a student, particularly when I was younger, I also had my fantasies about being close to teachers. When I was a PhD student myself, I moved from Aruba to The Netherlands for the research I had to do. I became close to the professors who were guiding me. We eventually became friends and we still have personal friendships. At the same time I was also friendly with my direct teaching and PhD-student colleagues. Some colleagues found this risky and warned me to beware for complaints about my behavior. Which lead me understand that different cultures have very different landscapes of closeness and distance.
Staying too remote or distant can prevent building rapport and delays or prevents trust in the teachers intentions and commitment from arising with the student. This may feed resistance towards learning following instructions
Thinking about this essay question, I believe I usually may err towards being too friendly or close instead of remaining too separate. Recently I was approached by students who expressed relief to be able to attend classes I offer instead of my fellow teachers. When asked why they expressed that I am ‘nice’ because I really listen to their questions, am open to discuss alternative answers to their questions and seem to be genuinely interested in their learning, as opposed to some of my colleagues who are experienced as ‘too distant’ and ‘uninterested’ in their learning.
This leads me to believe that within the bandwidth between too separate and too friendly there is an optimal range which is just right for learning. In this range there is a genuine meeting of the minds of student and teacher and the magic of learning takes place with the least effort.
Hi Andrew,
Your share has me really pondering if it would be possible for me to be a teacher and a friend. I think this is possible, but only if both teacher and student can dive completely and truly into the ‘contained space’ of teacher and student while the teaching / learning situation is taking place. If this is not something both can do, it may be difficult to prevent friendship elements from penetrating and disturbing the teacher / student space. When that happens, it may be distracting from the teaching and maybe even contaminating to the learning experience.
Keeping the space between student and teacher ‘sacred’ and ‘pure’ towards the learning, is something requiring a particular effort, mindfulness and awareness that have to be practiced for the combination with friendship to work, probably.
That said… maybe it was wise of the friend who wants to remain a friend.Thanks for sharing about fear Andrew. In my experience I’ve come to notice that myself and everybody I’ve met up to now know fear to be a very convincing advisor. Fear may be so pervasive and convincing it may show up and instill reservations to practice any of the Paramitas with true commitment and all out, like suggested in the reading about the first Paramita. Maybe because of this, the strength gained by practicing all the Paramitas, but particularly generosity as a seat of power could be helpful? But I fully acknowledge the difficulty of working to ignore the advices offered by the strong sensation of fear.
Thanks for sharing this experience Elizabeth. I very much recognize your anger and the capability which comes with your speed to hurt others. I share some of those traits and notice there is something quite ‘natural’ for this mind to launch like a predator towards others and their arguments, thoughts and behavior. Thankfully patience is a great antidote and slows down, calms and cools the predatory temperament into become more of an ally putting speed and aggression to good use as swiftness, nimbleness and energetic enthusiasm.
This is a very challenging question for me to anwer, as I feel a strong connection to all Paramitas. Still, if I have to mention one with a special connection, the Paramita I probably feel most connected to is the one I sense I’ve spontaneously experienced most in my life up to now. This is the Prajna. From a young age I’ve had many spontaneous events in which I experience immediate insight, knowing and maybe wisdom, combined with a total connectedness to and familiarity with everything. The strongest event was in a life threatening situation when I was a young teen in which I acted in a way which saved the others with me, and myself. In this event I knew exactly what to do, how to do and when to do without previous knowledge or experience. I felt that I had a total sensory connection to everything around me and could foresee the consequence of every action. This helped me to navigate the situations I was involved in. After this event I was overwhelmed with energy, as if I was hit by lightening. Since then I’ve kept on experiencing this, with the energy surges momentarily overwhelming me physically. Up to now in my personal and professional life these events have helped me to seem well prepared to navigate very complex situations. I have no idea where this comes from, but it is very magical in the sense that afterwards I seem to know what is needed so I can be helpful in the situations I’m involved in. It has helped me to foresee smaller scale personal events and larger scale phenomena and play a helpful role in developments like nature and environment protection and social equality. Sometimes I just follow the clues I’m offered without knowing where it will lead. The ‘knowing’ or ‘wisdom’ of the choices, decisions and actions only becomes apparent to me quite some time after I get one of these events, usually because others question me about that. I now believe this may be the working of Prajna Paramita. If so, I’m somehow attracted to this.
The sequence in which the Paramitas are describe is still ‘confusing’ to me. I seem to experience these Paramitas in an opposite order. To me, after the ‘awareness, sensory and spiritual expanding’ events described, I become more open to go into and be in a meditative state. Since I had these events before I ever had meditation instructions, I lacked every understanding and had no ‘framework’ to attach these experiences to. This was sometimes disturbing to me, but I still sensed strongly I could trust what was happening. I could see the results of following the clues offered were beneficial in a broad sense. This made me challenge much of my upbringing and schooling, but reflecting now, I see it was with a high level of generosity, patience and discipline. It is only after I read Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chögyam Trungpa and having practiced the instructions as described on those pages that all of a sudden something clicked. I was being exposed to language and guidance which offered insight to what I was experiencing. This was a previously unknown but also uncannily very familiar space. Those pages described the awareness landscapes I was navigating as a consequence of the ‘spontaneous’ events.
Starting to meditate I was becoming aware of what is described in the reading for the Paramitas, walking about with the gomden sewn to the pants. This has really opened up my sense of joy and being amazingly blessed to experience this life with my fellow souls… I felt I was arriving home, as if I arrived at the other side of the shore, with my understanding following at some distance behing my knowing. Looking at all of the Paramitas simultaneously, I notice I do experience the ‘attack of negativity’ leading to a strong sense of frustration connected to generosity, which is mentioned in the reading on the first Paramita. This leads me to believe that on the path of the Bodhisattva this is the Paramita challenging me the most. Still a long way to travel and much to practice with. I’m very grateful to encounter this guidance offering wisdom shared with great generosity by those who walked the path before.
Dear Jersey,
I want to join Dawa’s comments and applaud the approach of the pre-school teacher and bringing the analogy to ALL breathing and sitting and working with attention… Nice!
Thanks for this essay question!
This first direct interaction with a single fellow student was in a way something I looked forward to and also dreaded. Mixed feelings like this always give me ‘stage fright’, which I felt going into the break out room. While I teach law at the university in Groningen, and understand the great benefits of peer teaching, giving instruction to a fellow student, who is also knowledgeable about what the instruction is about, still somehow creates a sense of insecurity. My partner and me had a lovely first talk about getting to the breakout room together and having to do the exercise. My partner was really open in how she felt and this was a great relief to me, as I was feeling somewhat similar. This created space to embrace the discomfort together.
As we agreed my partner would go first, I was happy to experience how meditating shortly before giving instruction actually helps to sharpen my awareness to both the physical technique of posture and breathing and the non-physical technique of working with the mind, awareness and attention. By arriving at the moment of offering instruction with this preparation, I noticed that my mind was not busy anymore with concerns about posture and attention and this allowed me to also incorporate the element of attitude, having a gentleness to bringing the attention back to the breath and an uplifting demeanor. My partner and I also discussed something she said she may have left out of the instruction and felt it not appropriate to introduce this while we were already meditating. While we were already quite some minutes into the session I was guiding, I introduced some instructions to allow us both to experience how helpful or disruptive this may be for us. I felt very relieved to have the space to have a fellow student to be able to experiment together safely.
My experience offering instruction in this course and sharing our experiences, first in the breakout room and afterwards collectively with Susan and all fellow students were very humbling and enable me to have a little bit more understanding of what a meditation teacher does and does not. The dread is mostly gone now. I really look forward to our following steps!
Dear Erin,
Thanks for this clear summary of your experience instructing me 🙂 Going back to my experience, I can share that I really enjoyed getting the instructions in the calm, serene and warm way in which you communicated it with me. I was also feeling quite nervous because of the first time interacting in this direct way with a fellow student. But, your way of guiding me through this first experience really calmed me and allowed for a lovely meditation session. And… also allowed me to take my role in returning the guidance feeling more centered. I’m happy to read how your experience was and particularly the way how you became aware you might have been doing this to a degree already without realizing it.Dear Andrew,
Thanks for articulating your experience in a way which comes across to me as quite accurate. How you describe worrying about leaving something out which is important but is not obvious is an example of this accuracy to me. And then the release in trusting the dancer after the basic moves are in. Lovely.Dear Kat,
Your experience partially coincides with mine. Thanks for expressing it in such clear language and sequence, making it somehow also a testament to my experience and maybe our shared experience as sangha members. The unease is very recognizable and also the support entering meditation together offers. I like the ‘easy peasy’ expression and words like ‘tethering the mind to the breath’! Thanks for sharing.Ankur, many thanks for sharing these beautiful words that have taken me to my roots also, connected to the wilderness which is in some way our cradle.
Thank you Virginia,
Reading your essay made me reflect if it is possible for mother/grandmother to have also colored my lineage. I’ve grown up being raised mostly by my mother and grandmothers, who were all very stable and trustworthy beacons of morality and integrity in my life. You mentioned being blessed with motherhood and grandmotherhood, and this blessing I recognize from the perspective of a son and grandson. Many thanks.
