Joe Emery
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Hi Liana, I really appreciate your comment about having doubts and feeling squirrely about the unknown. I feel that every time I’m about to do something outside my comfort zone and sometimes the feeling is strong enough to keep me from going through with things. The nice thing for me about this practice is the confidence I have in my teachers and my lineage and the trust that if they think I’m ready, then they’re probably right.
Hi Melanie, I really appreciate the response to a question that is “beyond our ability to answer.” It’s a great reminder that we don’t have to know everything and we don’t have to be perfect.
The short answer to this question is yes. The long answer is that I don’t have any plans to give 1 on 1 instruction or serve as an MI at the moment. I have led meditation in a number of group contexts and I plan on continuing that work. Being an MI for just one other person actually sounds pretty intense, but I trust my training and trust the practice, so I think I would adjust and adapt to that setting once I started. One of my favorite things is noticing how speedy and/or scattered we can be before practicing meditation and then observing how settled we are afterwards. I am totally drawn to this phenomena – it keeps me coming back to this practice and to my sanghas.
I don’t feel like there should be a hard and fast rule about the relationship between money and teachings meditation. I’ve known Buddhist monks who had cell phones and cars – those things didn’t diminish their monastic training or wisdom. It was funny to see people’s reaction to someone in monk’s robes getting out of a car at a restaurant. This sort of thing can certainly be taken too far in cases like Osho, who owned 30 Rolls Royces or something like that.
For any setting where I am leading my own meditation group, I want it to be free or donation-based (at least for the time being). This is more an instinctual feeling I have about my own relationship to the dharma and to money. I genuinely feel that there is no monetary value that could possibly be placed on meditation or the dharma, so I am reluctant to assign a dollar amount to them.
I volunteer and lead groups with prison inmates – they have no resources to give. I have been paid for this type of work before (I was a hospital chaplain) and I was content to be paid by the institution, but I was never in a situation where it would have been appropriate to charge money to patients or staff for my work. I have some ideas for paying myself going forward, including establishing a non-profit but I’ll have to see how it shakes out.
I have not seen any uniform norms in American Buddhism for how teachers support themselves; it seems to vary quite a bit.
Hi Erin – I appreciate your comment about ‘taking care of your own well being outside of the student-teacher relationship.’ I have worked as a chaplain and devoted myself completely to the job, but in doing so neglected my own well-being. Hoping that I’ve really learned from that experience!
Hi Mike, I really agree with an element of your comment. It seems like by instinct or good fortune I have tended to gravitate toward teachers who are really healthily boundaried – they are not distant, but also not inappropriately close.
I had a meditation instructor in 2015 when I first started to really dive into my practice that I ultimately had to cut off because he kept wanting to spend time with me outside of the bounds of our MI relationship. He was knowledgeable when it came to the practice and gave quality instruction. Over time, he started doing me favors that I didn’t ask for and making vaguely inappropriate comments which eventually led to him asking me to go to dinner a few times. It wasn’t anything traumatizing, but it was uncomfortable and certainly left me second guessing the legitimacy of that particular branch of the lineage. In that sense, this MI’s interest in closeness did damage my perception of the teachings for a time.
Erin!
I really appreciate your comment about the relationship between unchecked generosity and discipline. I have had to learn (painfully) that it takes discipline to hold my boundaries and that my natural propensity for service can really burn me out. Thanks for your description of that relationship!
The paramita I feel most connected to is diligence. Despite my spiritual clumsiness, my inconsistency and the obstacles I encounter, I never quit. Once I decided to begin this path, I have done everything I could to devote myself to it. Gradually, seemingly disparate parts of my life have started to merge with the path. I have had stretches where I don’t practice with any regularity, but I always come back to the practice and the middle way.
I often feel disconnected to the paramita of discipline. I have an aversion to routine and regularity that has undoubtedly been an obstacle to my practice. I don’t sit at the same time every day. Without a class or a sangha, my meditation starts to slack. I genuinely don’t feel like I have the discipline to follow this path on my own. Because of this, I have really appreciated Susan emphasizing Sangha as the most important of the three jewels. I currently participate in three (3!) sanghas and I really believe that they are the steadying force on my path.
This is was the first time I’ve given meditation instruction over zoom and I noticed that it was a little harder to pick up on the other person’s energy when we’re not in the same room. I’ve led in-person meditation groups many times, but zoom has a different texture and feeling to it. I did my best to trust the instructions and practice because I didn’t feel like I had a great sense of my parter’s energy during the sit.
I enjoy giving instruction and meditating with other people, so in that sense I was happy about the whole experience. I have been trying to pay more attention to the details of posture as Susan outlines them, because I think I have been a little lax about my posture and how I instruct others in posture. Not sure if I really hit all the details about posture. Regardless, I didn’t feel nervous or uncertain about any aspects of instruction.
Hi Mike,
I can’t help but feel a similar appreciation for what you expressed toward the teachers and practitioners that came before you. I also have to echo the sense of awe and surprise: Why me? Why am I so fortunate to get to practice and study with these people? Sometimes I tell people my greatest superpower is pure, dumb luck. But I suppose the Buddhist answer to all of this is ‘Karma.’ I’m curious if you feel a sense of any Karmic history or pattern that led you here?
I feel like I have of a family lineage, a spiritual lineage and communal lineage. The family lineage is where my ancestors – Danes and Italians – immigrated to the U.S. and came together in my parents. I often embody the warmth and welcoming of my Italian family (a very “Ratna” energy in Buddhist terms). I also feel the drive, intensity, the desire to explore and push myself that I associate with my Danish ancestry.
In terms of a spiritual lineage, I have an undeniable connection to Tibetan Buddhism. This started when I was twelve, when I had this long-running, inexplicable fascination with Tibet and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It pushed me to find my current teachers, Anam Thubten, Susan, and Janet Gilmore. I draw a great deal of confidence from their lineage, because I can trace the predecessors to my teachers – Machig Lapdron, Longchepa, Jigme Lingpa, Paltrul Rinpoche, Yeshe Tsogyal and Padmasambhava. I have read their teachings and studied the myths surrounding them. I feel certain that by doing my best to follow their teachings, my path, my practice and my relationships will be genuine.
My communal lineage is the Austin music scene. I trace it back to Willy Nelson, but it includes people like Blaze Foley and Lucinda Williams. I was raised by musicians, I spent my whole life seeing my father and many adopted ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ play gigs. They are and always were my community. They are quirky, awesome humans who have encouraged me and loved me all of my life. In many ways, they are the foundation that allowed me to practice and study Buddhism without ever questioning whether I should be chasing a more conventional career. I would not be here without them.
For me, eternalism comes out when I start speculating or daydreaming about the future. Despite my time spent studying and observing impermanence, there is some part of me that is still trying to create an eternal, permanent goldilocks zone for myself. I must still be holding out hope that if I meditate enough, I will reach some eternal state of bliss and compassion called enlightenment and then I’ll be DONE. In this sense, I think eternalism was part of what drove me to Buddhism and to practice.
My experience of nihilism shows up when my eternalist hopes are regularly dashed. During such times, my internal (and occasionally external) dialogue starts to sound something like a Rust Cohle monologue from the show True Detective: “We are all just sacks of meat, furiously trying to consume as much nutrition as possible and fulfill a biological imperative to reproduce, while making up meaning where there is none.” Here’s a confession: this statement still seems true to me any time I’m feeling the least bit grumpy.
I suppose I’m in love with the Middle Way because at the very least, it is something ELSE besides these two extremes.
Hi Sandie, the thing that really shines through to me from your essay is that despite this practice being ancient and despite the technique always being the same, if we practice with diligence our experience is “new and fresh every time.” I suppose holding the container does actually open things up and create the magic.