Finding a practice direction without a teacher

Announcer: From Carol in Toronto, Ontario: “How does one find direction in practice without a teacher?”

Ken: How does one find direction in practice without a teacher? Well there are a couple of possibilities here. One is you’re in a situation where there is no teacher and the other is you’re in a situation where there are teachers, but one chooses—for whatever reason—to find direction and practice without a teacher. For the first one, there are a lot of resources available to us. You can listen to podcasts and recordings from many, many teachers on the web, more or less regardless of where one’s located in the world. This was not the way things were a few years ago, but it is how things are now. One actually has access to an awful lot of information. And through that one can pursue connections, and more or less regardless of where one lives, it may be possible to do research and listen, and find someone with whom you feel you can at least reach out to and possibly make a connection and get some referrals, if not actually work with that person.

In the second case, where one lives in a place where there are teachers, but one has decided to—for whatever reason—to practice without a teacher, then that’s a much more internal process. How does one find direction? My response to that would be to listen very, very deeply. There’s a saying from Islam, “When you move one inch towards God, God comes a mile towards you.” In spiritual practice, where we’re really wrestling with very deep questions about ourselves and about our life, we can feel very lost and very alone, even when we’re studying with a teacher. This very, very deep listening becomes important because, and certainly this is one of the central tenets of Buddhism, when we rest deeply enough in our experience, we find a different way of experiencing things: a calmness, a clarity, free from the reactive processes that cloud and confuse us. In that calmness and clarity or that peace and clarity, then our direction becomes very clear, but this is something we find within through what I’m calling here, this very deep listening.

Why do people leave a teacher?

Announcer: This question is from Troy in South Korea: “My question is why do people leave a teacher? There surely are many reasons. I want to zero in on solid ones. I certainly understand if, say, there are scandals or if the student-teacher relationship somehow isn’t working out for one or both. But what I want to know is, why leave if there are no such problems? Do some students feel they’ve reached a plateau with a certain teacher? I haven’t settled on a teacher or a style of practice though I lean heavily toward Korean Zen. For one and a half years, I’ve been living at a temple in South Korea and I’m pondering whether or not to stay a year longer. I’ve only had one practice previous to this when I lived at two temples in Thailand for four years.”

Ken: As you say, there are many reasons why people leave a teacher. I think probably the best place to start is to understand the nature of the student-teacher relationship. It’s a shared aim relationship. That is, the student and the teacher share the aim of the student’s spiritual growth or awakening. In this, the teacher is responsible for showing the student that awakening is a possibility: providing training, instruction or the resources necessary to learn the skills and develop the capacities that one needs to awaken, and also to point out the internal material, the emotional blocks and so forth, which prevent a student from being awake. And the student’s responsibility is to listen and receive these teachings without editing them and put them into practice to the best of his or her ability.

You refer to “scandal.” If the teacher reveals through his or her behavior that they have other interests in students other than their awakening, that represents a breach of the student-teacher relationship. It may be, as you point out, that it doesn’t work out because the chemistry isn’t there. Even though the teacher may be very capable and the student may be very capable, they don’t actually meet in a way that the student really can appreciate, absorb and grow on the basis of what is being provided. It’s also quite possible that a student may reach the point where, even though they haven’t derived or learned everything that the teacher knows, they’ve learned everything they can from that particular teacher, and then it’s appropriate to leave.

There is no problem about leaving a teacher. There are many, many people who’ve in the course of history studied with sometimes many, many teachers and then become great teachers, masters in their own right.

From what you say though, it sounds like you’re in the stage of finding your practice. Perhaps the words of Jamgön Kongtrül the Great—he was one of the great 19th century teachers in Tibet—may be helpful. He said, “When you’re studying, study everything under the sun. When you’re reflecting or thinking about things, keep a very open mind. When you practice, practice one thing very deeply.” I found this to be very sound, to really come to the level of attention and the level of insight that we need for awakening, you have to go deep and you can really go deep by doing only one thing.

And that may take time for you to find a connection, the tradition, the teacher, or whatever, that really speaks to you. During that time, then the more you can learn, the more you reflect, the more understanding, the greater your breadth of knowledge is and that is very, very rarely harmful, and it usually greatly enriches one’s practice. In the scheme of things, I think it’s more about the teacher than about the tradition. If you find a teacher who really speaks to you, then you’ll practice what they teach.

Your teacher cuts through confusion and speaks to your heart

Ken: In terms of the teacher, the way I like to put it is, this is a person to whom you’ll listen no matter how crazy you are. It’s someone who can cut through everything, your own confusion, and speak to your heart. That’s very important in one’s teacher. Now, that quality in the relationship may not be there at the beginning. But one should at least feel it’s potential for developing.

There are other reasons why people leave one teacher and study with another. Sometimes, it’s simply a force of circumstances, as happened to huge numbers of people during the Tibetan diaspora. Kalu Rinpoche’s spiritual heir, Bokar Rinpoche, would never ever have met Rinpoche in Tibet, but the circumstances of the diaspora brought them together. So, I don’t think we can reduce it to one thing.

Listen to your own stammering voice

Ken: The only other thing I would say is, it’s a quotation from Stephen Batchelor who is a colleague of mine, and these are words that I value very, very much. He says in effect, “In it’s institutional forms, Buddhism provides very powerful answers to questions of the spirit. But sometimes the power of the answers overwhelms the stammering voice that asks the questions.” So I encourage you to listen to your own stammering voice. The stillness of a monastery can help you do that. Really become clear, as clear as possible, about what your own questions are, and then pose them to teachers that you meet until you find someone who really speaks to you.

Sexual scandals

Announcer: This question is from Shinso in France. “There has been a lot of controversy in recent years regarding sexual misconduct by some of the lamas toward female practitioners. Some of the transgressors have been high profile leaders of Buddhist thought and I think that the issue needs to be discussed, not swept under the rug, as it so often is. It has been difficult for me to reconcile my esteem for these evolved beings and the reported sexual misconduct. First, I think it would be helpful to discuss how the monks are educated about sex and women. I wonder how healthy an environment it is for young boys to be taken from important female influences such as mother, sister, grandmother, and so on, at very early ages.”

“Perhaps their views of sexuality become skewed due to an imbalance of male-female energy, or perhaps Occidental views of sexuality are not compatible with Eastern metaphysical views. Whatever the reason, I think there’s a gap in understanding about this that needs to be addressed. I find myself more than a little put off by these sexual scandals that have come to light in recent years. These esteemed lamas involved in the scandals have played significant roles in my psychological development. And the question begs to be answered as to their fundamental mores and principles regarding sexuality.”

Ken: This is not the first time this issue has come up. I agree with you completely, it’s good to discuss this, not sweep it under the rug. So I’m going to start by saying something very blunt and straightforward. When a teacher has sex with a student, the teacher-student relationship is over, and that’s just it. The teacher-student relationship is a relationship that is concerned with the students’ spiritual development and awakening. Whenever a teacher uses the student-teacher relationship to get something for themselves, they violate the teacher-student relationship, and it’s over. It doesn’t have to be sex. It can be money, it can be power, it can be influence. And it’s over.

A lot of people don’t want to accept that; some of the women involved and some of the teachers involved. So they go on acting as if there is still a relationship there, and that causes a great deal of problems, particularly for the woman and quite frequently for the lamas or the teachers involved. I’ve talked about this with any number of women, both people who’ve been actively involved in these situations and people who’ve heard about them and have been disturbed by them. We’re at a time where there is a lot of confusion, because there are significant cultural differences. There are misunderstandings and idealizations about what it means to be spiritually evolved. There are all kinds of problems in here.

First, many teachers who were raised and brought up in Eastern environments have a very immature relationship with their sexuality compared to what we develop in the natural course of growing up in Western modern society. So they have not been prepared for what they’re exposed to when they come over here. It doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, but it may make it understandable.

Equally, on the other side is, why are students getting involved with their teacher sexually? They’re living out some kind of projection. This isn’t part of the practice. One may say, and it’s certainly true, that some teachers tell the students that “This is our appropriate practice path.” They’re playing on what is still a problem in Western Buddhism, the student’s naivety. I recommend to women that they use their own intelligence. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right, and act accordingly. One can say, “Yes, they should be trained differently. They should be prepared.” I agree. There is much more attention going into that now than there was in the past.

But I think the larger picture is, this is a culture clash of very, very different cultures. And these two cultures are learning how to communicate with each other in ways that are not harmful or hurtful to people. So viewing that it can all be addressed on one side, I think is the only part of the picture. I think there are two sides here. I encourage Western students to use their own intelligence and their own understanding of what is appropriate or inappropriate.

One of my students, I remember many years ago, went to do an intensive retreat with another teacher. And she came back and said, “There’s something weird going on there, but he’s a very good teacher and I want to go back and study.” And so I said, “Okay, then when you go for your interview, you ask him about that incident and say, ‘What does that have to do with my practice here?'”

She went in with that very, very clearly in her mind, and nothing happened; nothing happened with her interaction with the teacher. So I think her being clear set the stage. I’m not putting all of the onus on the women because I don’t think that’s appropriate either. But I think we have experience with us. We’ve had to develop a much richer and more nuanced relationship with our sexuality, a much more mature and evolved relationship, if you want to put in those terms. Use one’s intelligence; don’t get into situations which don’t feel right. At the same time, I know that there are many, many places where people are educating teachers who have been guilty of inappropriate behavior with their students, educating them as to what is appropriate and inappropriate. So I think it’s good to have both of these going on.

There’s another dimension here too. That is, when one is studying with a teacher that you learn at some point has been inappropriately involved with students, what do you do? That’s a very, very difficult situation. And people decide different things. Sometimes they take it up with the teacher involved, which can lead to the end of the relationship or to an understanding and an education and evolution of the relationship. But you don’t know what’s going to happen. Other people say, “Well yes, he has his faults, but these teachings are helpful to me.” Basically it comes down to the same point. This is your experience. This is the situation you find yourself in. Can you continue to learn from this teacher, or is the situation such that you can no longer continue to learn from the teacher? That’s an individual question and each person is going to have to find their own answer to it.