Fleetwood... — I think Nisargadatta is referring to the traditional way the master-disciple relationship plays out. Seeker finds a teacher, becomes realised, and then at some point students gather around the now realised former seeker, and the process begins anew. The problem of minds being imprisoned begins if something more than a very light organisation arises around the new teacher that attempts to perpetuate that particular teacher's mode of expression and thought. This tends to ossify the teaching into a system of belief rather than the teaching remaining a coordinated group of strategies and temporary understandings that pass one-on-one from a realised teacher to student. I assume most who get enlightened do not necessarily become teachers themselves. Thus huge organisations like Christianity and Buddhism and Islam are the exception rather than the rule. And these unusually large groups themselves tend to fragment because typically only a few followers develop depth of understanding and experience. As soon as the primary teacher dies, and perhaps even before, whatever wisdom the teacher may have had begins to deteriorate in the hands of most of the followers. If the followers have an organisation, the sum of their ignorance tends to rule the group, and so, instead of an organisation composed of realised individuals each of whom could independently, in their own way, guide a student, you end up with a structure filled with ecclesiastical bureaucrats who follow rote rules rather than the inherent wisdom of a realised being.
The dandelion seems to represent the traditional model of teacher and student: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Now that Fairfield Life seems to have rather abruptly become all fluffy and toothless as regards subject matter, I thought I would interject a few comments by our favourite meat-eating, cigarette smoking, tobacco-store owning, householder guru, Nisargadatta: 'Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it to himself with some earnestness and effort, obtains results according to his temperament and expectations, casts them into the mound of words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition and begins to admit others into his "school of Yoga". It is all built on memory and imagination. No such school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point, when all desire for progress must be abandoned to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases; in solitude and darkness the vast step is made which ends ignorance and fear forever.' Who admits who, into his "school of Yoga"?? Each seeker? He must be speaking in context, about something else, perhaps his own satsang - doesn't make sense, otherwise. It seems that a seeker, upon attaining enlightenment (or, if you like, uncovering that which is already present), unless he, or she, had a strong teacher dharma, would rapidly lose interest in turning their particular journey into a "school of Yoga". He appears to be saying that every seeker then becomes a teacher of his own tradition - doesn't make sense, unless the whole thing is an analogy for being around enlightened people. 'The true teacher, however, will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and actions; on the contrary, he will show him patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behaviour, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy or suffer, but to understand and learn.' 'Under the right teacher the disciple learns to learn, not to remember and obey. Satsang, the company of the noble, does not mould, it liberates. Beware of all that makes you dependent. Most of the so-called "surrenders to the Guru" end in disappointment, if not in tragedy. Fortunately, an earnest seeker will disentangle himself in time, the wiser for the experience.'
