Glenn Thode
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
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.
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.Dear Octavio,
The aspect of learning and discovering is familiar to me and I recognize the place you seem to give the learning; not an external value or recognition by others, but for what this helps you to discover within yourself. Thanks for you share!Dear MaryBeth,
The discription you use for your ancestral connection also fits with my sense of connection or lineage. The gratitude, I hope to be permitted to join you in this gratitude. Thanks!This essay to me represents a complex challenge. A lineage evokes the concept of a line in my mind. The challenge is I cannot seem to see a definitive ‘line’ to align my lineage with. But I do see a collection of lines or strings, which together make a thicker line, which looks more like a rope. Interestingly to me, at both ends of this rope I do see singular lines, one connecting to a ‘source’ and one to ‘me’. I will do my best to describe where I sense this investigation of lineage takes me.
I was born on an island in the Caribbean, Bonaire, and as such I resonate or identify with Islandness. Deep within me, even as a child, I felt connected to nature around me, which on my birth Island was always very close and intimate. Much later in life, I was approached by a small group of inhabitants of my birthplace who imprinted on me that I was part of their community, which they call ‘walkers of the wilderness’, who are intimate with nature, the elements and the spiritual world. They and me, have a holistic and animistic outlook to everything around us.
My parents and me moved to Aruba when I was still very young. I was raised there in a Christian society which was very open to other traditions. From my father’s side, with protestant and sephardic jewish lineages in my mother’s family. My father relates to Amerindian, African and German ethnicity. In some way, this has influenced and attuned my sensitivities to the lineage holders from these societies.
Later in life, I noticed that somehow I was very influenced in my pre-teen and post-teen years by Japanese cultural and spiritual factors, without me being very aware of this origin. But I had a natural tendency to connect. I did different types of martial arts, always sticking with the Japanese ones Judo, Kyokushin and Kendo. At the time, I did not see the ‘line’ of these being Japanese, but I was aligning my aesthetics to Japanese Zen.
Much later in life, I was mid 30’s, I noticed one of my friends becoming more peaceful and radiant. I asked him what he was doing and he pointed me towards Shambhala. He lent me the book The Sacred Path of the Warrior. When I started reading this and followed the meditation guidance contained in that book, I came home. I finally got to an environment where everything which was being described resonated with my own mindscape. I was offered a very helpful way to give words to what I was experiencing and ‘seeing’ in my mind. It was as if I was known. This triggered an enormous change in my attitude, helping me to rest and come to peace in my mind.
A few year later, when I was working in Bonaire, I was invited to go to India, to a retreat with the name Call of the Time. Here I met a Zen master, who shared books and the concept of Koans with me. I reconnected to Zen buddhism tradition through the Zen master and the koans. Later when I was traveling between Aruba and Bonaire, a gentleman approached me. He was a Tao master. I connected to this Tao lineage from Taiwan and was initiated as a Tao-chin.
Returning to Aruba to work, I continued to apply to my best abilities the Tao and the Shambhala teachings in my work and daily life. I did not have any formal training or initiation in buddhism and am now contemplating to do so. I did however notice a very beneficial effect from the meditation in the Shambhala tradition. This has brought me to this class.To bring this essay back to the essay instruction: I can sense a single thread, a source from which the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Amerindian shamans, Rabi’s and many wise sages have gained inspiration and wisdom, turning each into a line which come together to form a rope. This rope eventually finds its way to a collective single thread again, connecting to my lineage, from which I sense inspiration, direction. In this lineage, I notice that for me the most present influences or colors, are the lines of Buddha, Lao Tzu and Amerindians.
Many thanks for offering this amazing metaphor of a frantic ball in a pinball machine and how this may serve for reflections.
Thanks Mary, your story of both you and your late husband is very familiar to both my personal story and the stories of so many around me. I very much liked your reflection on finding it ironic how hopeful and optimistic your late husband was. It made me chuckle. Thanks also for reflecting on grounding.
This story is a momentary construct of fragments and bits of memory combined with reflections of how I’m experiencing my life at the moment. My memories from early life start at me being very young and marveling at our existence and particularly the magical intertwined-ness of everything. Living was part of a very powerful manifestation of something that was immaterial and full of drive and energy. It was larger than anything imaginable. Then came my first experiences with eternalism. Questions I had with this magical experience where answered in Christian religious terms. Somehow these questions did not sit well with me. This happened somewhere around my 7th year. My parents sent me to catechesis and I was expected to echo the catholic teachings without further investigation and explanation. I was very inquisitive and read the bible texts myself and based on that, asked many questions. The answer to my questions was to pray. When this did not seem to answer my questions, I started to question the praying, the teachings and the whole religious movement. Around this time I was also experiencing family members passing away. And my questioning started to include the sense of living. I had a tendency to reject what I was being told about heaven, hell and earth. This may have been when I started embracing the notion that we can’t make sense of our being and existence. What difference does it make how we try to explain things? This combined with me reading and learning more about theories like evolution made me reject the eternalism offered to me and lean to the almost complete opposite view. I do have a tendency to be digital in my thought processes.
Experiencing the passing of family members caused by incurable diseases made me commit and focus on studying medicine. I eventually entered medical school at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In Nijmegen I was exposed to ideas about both eternalism, our current experiences are all part of a big and unchanging plan, and nihilism… our existence is all the result of a cosmic coincidence. To me, during this phase of my life, this strengthened my belief in the theorie of coincidence. But I also started to read buddhist and taoist texts and talk to those who embrace this in their lives. At that moment, I rejected this based on rationalizations of not being ‘proven’ by the scientific methods and concluded all this to be of no value to my understanding of existence and life.
Shortly after my 20’s, I met a girl who had very strong fundamental beliefs about creation as the result of a universal, maybe Godly love. The effect this had on her being at peace and having an unbreakable moral compass had an effect on how I viewed the more nihilistic point of view. I reconnected with the sense of our magical existence I experienced in my youth. Without knowing what I was doing, I started to ‘re-configure’ my belief foundations and structures and arrived at what may be seen as a more ‘middle way’. To me, it seems to be a shift from a phase I was in from my 7th year, in which I mostly tried to wrap my mind around my experiences with ‘logic’, my thinking and thought patterns, towards including my heart and senses and feelings beyond brainy thinking. In this proces of reconfiguration, I also started to experience some sort of ‘flashy’ moments of complete connectedness and awareness which are very hard to describe rationally. These experience brought me to embrace everything around me in a more inclusive manner as I could sense the ‘sameness’ better than the ‘separateness’. To me, this made me arrive to a place of awareness beyond logical thoughts and explanations, to direct connectedness with being… Today I embrace the buddhist approach and the taoist views to living and interacting. The sense is I am dwelling in a universal limitless ‘space’ where I feel at home.
