--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What *is* this tendency to pedestalize the teacher and > make them "special?" Someone please explain it to me. > > It seems to me that it's a little counterproductive to > the process of realization. If the teacher you admire > achieved his realization only because he was "special," > an avatar, then what hope do you have, not *being* an > avatar yourself? But if the teacher was just an ordinary > Joe like yourself and realized his enlightenment, then > you can, too.
Riffing on something I wrote over coffee again over dregs of that same cuppa coffee, here's a little rap about my current fave TV show. Those of you who are not following it can safely hit Next now, but if you keep reading I will try my best not to provide any terrible plot spoilers. Why I love JFC ( which some have speculated stands for Jesus Fucking Christ :-) so much is that IMO it's not really *about* John. It's about the ordinary people who encounter him, and the extraordinary things that they start notic- ing in their lives when he shows up. I don't know where the creators of this series are taking it, of course, but as of episode 6 (the latest one I've seen), I'm starting to get an intuition of where they're going, and I find it exciting. What if JFC is not the story of Jesus Fucking Christ, but of Christ's disciples? They were just ordinary dysfunctional people as well, into whose lives some- one wandered. And around this guy they started notic- ing weird spiritual stuff. It's not a given that the guy *creates* this weird spiritual stuff like levi- tation and bringing people back from the dead, but it sure does seem to be happening. The story of JFC that I'm starting to pick up is that it's really about the different ways that people who encounter extraordinary phenomena *deal* with those extraordinary phenomena. Where I intuit what Milch has in mind for JFC is that John will appear in these people's lives for a short while and then go away. Every episode is titled something like, "His Visit: Day One," etc. It's a visit, not an assurance that he'll stick around. I wouldn't be surprised to find, if the series makes it to a second season, that John will be written out of it, leaving his "disciples" on their own. This, to me, is a pretty ballsy approach to the age- old story of spiritual teachers and the relationship that their followers have with them. It's happened to *every single seeker who followed a charismatic spiritual teacher in history* who didn't die before the teacher did. They encountered someone around whom extraordinary things began to happen, and had to find some way to *deal* with these extraordinary phenomena. And then the teacher goes away, and they *still* have to deal with the phenomena. Did they really happen? There is no concrete evidence that they did. So far in the series, there is video evidence that John existed, but no evidence that any of the phenomena that happened around him existed. So what are these dysfunctional disciples gonna *do* with that? Will some of them become teachers of The Way Of John, and evangelize his teachings -- whatever the heck they were -- to as many people as possible? Will they recruit other disciples, people who never met the guy but have been convinced of his specialness, who then go on to convert even more disciples? (Sound familiar? Think Saint Paul.) Will they write bhaktied-out tales about John and his miracles and how special he was, like the stuff on the Advaita Vedanta Library site where the excerpt of the bio of Shankara recently posted here was taken from? Will they write their own New Testament? I don't know. But I really hope not, because as spirit- ual writing goes, there's more than a little Been There, Done That in that approach. I really hope that David Milch and his team of writers take it in another direction, and focus on the day-to- day *ongoing* struggles of these dysfunctional disciples to try to figure it all out, without ever accomplishing it. Dennis Potter, who wrote "The Singing Detective," defined his idea of a good detective story thusly: "All clues, no solutions." I hope that's where the writers of JFC are taking this series. I hope he NEVER "explains things." I really *identify* with these dysfunctional disciples. Duh! I've Been There, Done That. I spent fourteen years with a guy around whom extraordinary things happened. And I spent pretty much every minute I *was* around him trying to come up with a rational explanation for the irrational, trying to figure out something that possibly *can't* be figured out. I have spent a great deal of time ever since *still* trying to figure it out, and failing miserably. I even wrote a book about my experiences *of* trying to figure it out, and hopefully avoided the tend- ency to pedestalize the teacher I studied with and make him appear more than human. He *was* human, and I find more inspiration in that than I do in the idea that he was "more than human." Other students I know who also studied with the same guy have written books that *definitely* pedestalize him, and portray him as an avatar. They had similar experiences to mine, but interpreted them completely differently than I did. So which of us is "right" and which of us is "wrong?" Is there such a *thing* as "right" and "wrong" when dealing with the possibility (*not* in my case the certainty) of enlightenment, or at least occasional enlightened states of mind? Beats the shit outa me. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out, even though I know I never will, and don't actually *aspire* to figure it all out. The "Go figuring" is just fun for me, something to do to pass the time. I'm hoping that a few of the odd cast of characters who have become in a sense the disciples of John From Cincinnati will react the same way, and have fun in coming years (or seasons) trying to figure out the unfigurable for themselves. That would make it a *much* more interesting story for me than one with a pat ending and a simple explanation.
