My fellow teachers: Are you transmitting wisdom or are you explaining it?

{teaching mudra}

The other day I was involved in a conversation with three other women who speak publicly. One of them brought up the notion of “transmission.” Rather than giving just another how-to talk, she said, she wanted to transmit something of value. Words are useful, she continued, but authentic presence is more instructive.

I agree. But there is a conundrum. What do you transmit? Where does it come from? How can you find it, feel it, and then offer it? And how can you bring it to a public forum where people have shown up hoping to gain something of value? What do you put in your event marketing materials? “Show up and see Susan transmit something that she promises will help you” is not going to work.

These questions are at the very heart of what it means to be a spiritual teacher. As one who has been trained very carefully to teach meditation (and only after more than a decade of practice and months and months of meditation retreats), it was pointed out that meditation instruction is more than a simple explanation. It is a transmission. The “transmission quality” ensures, perhaps, that the instruction is received by both your wisdom mind and your conventional mind. Your wisdom mind (or higher self, soul, spirit, whatever you would like to call it) uses the instruction to deepen whatever dialogue(s) you’re having in unseen realms—with relatives, heroes, sages, Self, or who knows what. (But we all have such inner dialogues.) Your conventional mind uses the instruction to lower your blood pressure, treat insomnia, or just be less stressed out. Both are important.

In a transmission, something generates a signal. Something else conducts it. When most of us think about transmitting, we forget about that all-important first step: something generates a signal. In other words, the signal does not start with me yet it cannot be conducted without me. Lots (and lots) of trouble ensues when the conductor confuses herself with the signal. But I digress.

Though this may sound impossibly woo-woo, I’m going to step out here and advocate the traditional view. The signal comes from your lineage. If you are Buddhist, as I am, the signal comes from the Buddha or Manjushri or Padmasambhava. If you’re Christian, the signal comes from God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost. If you’re Jewish, perhaps it comes from YHWH, Maimonides, Moses or the Lubavitcha Rebbe. And so on.

However, most of us don’t hold with established religions—are transmissions out of our reach? Certainly not. Whether you think of it in this way or not, you definitely hold a lineage. Think of the beings you most admire. Think of the values you hold the highest. Think of the people with whom you feel most at ease. These are your lineages. Maybe your lineage is songwriters and you revere Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, and Nick Lowe. Or perhaps you’re of the lineage of scientists and you esteem Einstein, Newton, and Nikola Tesla. Maybe you’re of the lineage of people who have no lineage, of loners and cowboys and outlaws. Your lineage could be that of mothers, Italians, activists, gardeners, executives, or simply your immediate family. These all work. (BTW, if you are so moved, in the comments, tell me what your lineage is and who your lineage holders are…)

Before you teach, it is enormously helpful, critical, even, to invoke the power of your lineage. If you’re a traditionalist like me, there are prescribed ways of doing so via spiritual practices. But it is just as good to simply think of those you admire the most and hope to emulate. Bring them to mind. That’s all you have to do. But if you want to take it a step further, say to them in whatever way feels comfortable something like, “I hold your lineage and I’ll try to do you proud by extending what you started.”

Before I teach meditation for example, I think of my meditation teacher (with unending gratitude, I might add). He was taught by his meditation teacher (in this case, Chogyam Trungpa). Chogyam Trunpga was taught by his teacher who was taught by his teacher who was taught by her teacher…and on and on. There is an unbroken line of transmission all the way back to the Buddha. When I am about to teach, reflecting on this gives me tremendous ease.

This is how the transmission quality arises. I mean, it’s one way. I’m sure there are others.

Some years ago, I was producing a book with a CD called “Quiet Mind.” It was intended to introduce people to various kinds of meditation through essays written by some of the greatest teachers in the world. The CD featured each of them teaching the practice they had written about. Before I began work on it, I went to visit my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. I didn’t know if the transmission quality could be preserved on a recording! I asked him if it was possible. After thinking it over very briefly, he said “yes” and then offered me a formula for transmission that I have abided by ever since.

“When you are trying to teach something spiritual,” he said, “the first step is to establish confidence in the mind of the student.” Which makes total sense, because then the student can actually relax and open her mind to what you are saying and spiritual teachings are confusing enough without hearing them through a partially clenched mind.

“How do you establish confidence?” he continued. Step two! “Offer something real.” Yes! “And how do you know what is ‘real’?” he said, whereupon he laid step three on me. “Only that which you yourself know to be true via your personal experience.” In other words, not what someone else told you, not what you hope is true, not what other really cool people think is true. What YOU know.

I have tried to abide by this 3-step system for more than a decade since I first heard it. I have found it to be extremely reliable. So, as you go out there hoping to teach anyone anything whether through public discourse or private instruction, via the written or the spoken word, remember your lineage. Then establish confidence by offering something real based solely on your experiential wisdom. This way, I have learned, the signal remains strong and the conduit becomes ever stronger. You are able then to transmit in the best possible way: again, in the words of Sakyong Mipham who said to a gathering of dharma teachers, “don’t teach anyone anything. Help them to discover something.”

categorized in: dharma