the teacher

from start where you are by pema chodron

"first we'll consider the teacher. in the lojong teachings the teacher is referred to as the spiritual friend, the kalyanamitra. the teacher is like a senior warrior, or a student warrior who's further along the path. it's somebody who inspires you to walk the path of warriorship yourself. looking at them reminds you of your own softness, your own clarity of mind, and your own ability to continually step out and open. something about them speaks to your heart; you want to have a friendship with this person as a teacher. trust is an essential ingredient: if you enter into a serious relationship with a teacher, you make a commitment to stick with them and they make a commitment to stick with you, so you're stuck together.

lest one romanticize the relationship, i'd like to repeat something that trungpa rinpoche once said: 'the role of the spiritual friend is to insult you.' this is true. it isn't that the spiritual friend phones you up and calls you names or sends you letters about what a jerk you are. it's more that the spiritual friend is the ultimate juan. all your blind spots are going to come out with the spiritual friend. the only difference between the spiritual friend and everybody else in your life is that you've made a commitment to stick with him or her through thick or thin, better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in death. we're not too good at keeping commitments these days; this isn't an age where commitment is honored very widely. if you enter into a relationship with a spiritual friend, you're really asking for it. rather than the cozy, nurturing situation you might have imagined in the beginning - that the teacher is always kind and will replace the mother or father who never loved you or is finally the friend who has unconditional love for you - you find that in this relationship you begin to see the pimples on your nose, and the mirror on the wall isn't telling you that you're the fairest of them all. to the degree that anything is hidden in this relationship, you begin to see it."

quotes from the wisdom of no escape by pema chodron

"when people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. . . but loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. we can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. the point is not to try to change ourselves. meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. it's about befriending who we are already."

"why do we resist our energy? why do we resist the life force that flows through us? the first noble truth says that if you are alive, if you have a heart, if you can love, if you can be compassionate, if you can realize the life energy that makes everything change and move and grow and die, then you won't have any resentment or resistance. the first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort. we don't even have to call it suffering anymore, we don't even have to call it discomfort. it's simply coming to know the fieriness of fire, the wildness of wind, the turbulence of water, the upheaval of earth, as well as the warmth of fire, the coolness and smoothness of water, the gentleness of the breezes, and the goodness, solidness, and dependability of the earth. nothing in its essence is one way or the other. the four elements take on different qualities; they're like magicians. sometimes they manifest in one form and sometimes in another. if we feel that that's a problem, we resist it. the first noble truth recognizes that we also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. we do that, and there's no reason to resist it. if we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.

the second noble truth says that this resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering. traditionally it's said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view. another way to say the same thing is that resisting our complete unity with all of life, resisting the fact that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, resisting that is what's called ego."