Spiritual Transmission. Amir Freimann
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Название: Spiritual Transmission

Автор: Amir Freimann

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Религия: прочее

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isbn: 9781939681966

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СКАЧАТЬ This is solving quite a few problems that other models of teacher-student relationship have, but also, don’t you think—and you’ve met a lot of people along the path—that for some people, the position of surrender, of trusting somebody else very deeply, more than they trust themselves, is an important catalyst in their journey?

      STEPHEN: It can indeed be helpful, but only if it’s light. If it’s too intense and total, it can undo their spiritual journey, because they’re replacing themselves with someone else. But of all the questions you have asked so far, this is the most problematic and nuanced. Because, on the one hand, you can say, “What’s wrong with praying to the Buddha as a larger-than-life figure, identifying with and respecting his qualities, and so letting the prayer to the Buddha remind you of your own Buddha qualities?” But it only works if it is quite light. If there is a strong sense of supplication, worship, glorification and deification of a teacher or an icon, it can disempower our practice and disconnect us from our spiritual sources. Where I feel it’s too much, I would tend to question it and bring it back down to size. I would tend to say to the person, “You’re going too far making the teacher unrealistically dominant, using projection onto the teacher to avoid meeting your own existential pain and joy, and I suggest you go back to yourself a little bit.” I think it’s the scale—when trust and dependence on a teacher goes over the top it almost begins to be pathological.

      In our Theravada tradition, we would tend to constantly shift the focus from the teacher to the teaching, the Dharma itself. I would tend to say: “Take refuge in the Dharma, not in Stephen.” This is different from the guru tradition, where the guru would be happy to hold that place of dependence for longer, to allow more intensity of transference. But it’s a good question, and not black and white.

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      Of all that we spoke about, it was Stephen’s story about his relationship with the man he met on his self-retreat in India, whom he described as being “half my peer and to some extent a teacher,” that stirred me most and stayed with me longest after the interview was over. His description of a fluid, informal, free and dynamic teacher-student relationship had the flavor of a fairytale—a fairytale I knew at the beginning of my relationship with Andrew and I still long for. Can a relationship such as the one he described, be maintained, or is it only the stuff that summer flings are made of?

      I became most interested in the possibility of flexibility and variability in the teacher-student relationship, and I explored the guru/spiritual friend dynamic with many of the interviewees: Does the teacher hold different hierarchical positions in their relationship with different students? Are they comfortable playing either the “guru” and the “friend” roles, or do they have a strong preference to one or the other? Do they readily adjust and change position in their relationship with any specific student?

      For some of the interviewees, there seemed to be little dynamic to speak of. This was clearly the case with Andrew Cohen (Chapter 7). During the time I was his student, the relationship between him and his students at that time could be characterized as “absolute hierarchy.” On the opposite end of the spectrum, the egalitarian model of the “spiritual friend” was expounded upon by Vipassanā teacher Christopher Titmuss in my interview with him.

      CHRISTOPHER: Many teachers stick to their role—they teach a retreat or give a public talk and keep to their private life. I prefer to develop good friendships in the Sangha. I appreciate the Buddha’s encouragement to develop kalyana mitta, which essentially means “good friend.” Just before you arrived to interview me, I went out with two good Dharma friends to eat together. I regard such informal contact as vitally important in terms of the social aspect of the Sangha. I enjoy informal friendship. I think it’s very helpful for the students—although I don’t use the word “students” very often. I prefer to use the words “yogis” or “practitioners” or the “Sangha.” It is equally important for them and for me to experience informal contact. I get the chance to know them as a friend, but equally, they get to know me. I don’t think we need to elevate ourselves as an archetype, namely the spiritual teacher sitting in a role. Such a formal, functional approach is fine and it has its place, but it is also valuable to know a teacher in an informal way through a whole variety of situations. This develops a real connection. This is what I do and who I am.

      Finally, an exchange related to the interplay between the functions of a spiritual friend and a guru took place during my interview with James Finley. As a young monk at the monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemane, James received spiritual guidance from the renowned monk and author Thomas Merton, and nowadays James leads spiritual retreats and works as a private clinical psychologist. In my interview with him, which took place over Skype, we both experienced a tangible sense of intimacy and friendship with each other, and out of that came the following exchange:

      JAMES: Let’s take, for example, us talking right now. We’re sitting here together, two human beings participating in mutual exploration, attempting to shed light on the unexplainable nature of the unitive mystery. So that’s happening right now with us. Now let’s assume that toward the end of our time together you say: “Jim, before we go I have a personal question that I’d like to consult you about.” Let’s say you’d ask and I would listen out of the way we’ve been just talking and respond, but I’d say, “Well if you don’t mind I also have a question for you: this is something that I am going through in my life, my wife and I are talking about death and the fear of losing each other,” and you’d listen to me. And then we’d both say to each other: thank you! So you see, this space between us holds endless variations, like the wind goes as it pleases.

      AMIR: That’s beautiful! Now let’s compare it with a different scenario, in which I set up a meeting with you because I want to consult you as my teacher. I think our stance toward each other would be slightly different, and that would make something possible between us, that is different from us having a friendly conversation.

      JAMES: Let’s say, you call because you want to speak to me in my role as a teacher, then I have to meet you by serving that role. If you’re in the role of the student, I have to be willing to be in the role of the teacher. Then the whole exploration would be in that context, of a teacher-student exchange. What is it in the exchange that you’re counting for me as the teacher to teach? I have to be faithful to the lineage and heritage of the tradition. I have to be sitting there and letting it use me for its own purposes. I have to be there for you with the integrity of that.

      CHAPTER 3

      PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL

      Well, there’s also an element in some teachers, almost an effort to disappear, to truly embody the teachings. And these were the teachers with whom it was most confusing, because you knew there was a person in there somewhere.

      –SHARON SALZBERG, FROM “OF TEACHERS AND TEACHING: WHO IS A TEACHER? WHAT IS A TEACHER?” INSIGHT NEWSLETTER

      The guru function is, in essence, impersonal. It is not about the personality of the student or the teacher. This is a particularly difficult reality for the student to wrap his or her mind around when the felt experience of the relationship between student and teacher is the most deeply personal bond of love and reverence he or she has ever known. Yet the impersonal nature of this bond is precisely why it produces a quality of feeling and a possibility of exchange rarely found elsewhere in the human experience. It is nothing other than God loving God, Truth loving Truth. In the words of Daniel Moran, “Absolute intimacy is absolutely impersonal.”

      –MARIANA CAPLAN, THE GURU QUESTION

      When you discover the real relationship with your teacher you discover that there is no other. It’s paradoxical, but you actually need the other to realize that there СКАЧАТЬ