Merle,
Why a Duck?
The miracles of Nature include miracles of People.
Some people who have realized their nature are remarkably, miraculously, good
at assisting others to do as they have done, even if not in exactly the same
way. They may have worked on koans, but they can still teach you shikantaza,
for example. Or bowing.
Did you ever help students in painting? Maybe you did not have them do EXACTLY
what you did to get to your peak capability.
It's not that there are "instructions", as you put it. But experience carries
a lot of value in guiding neophytes, and the neophytes recognize the real thing
when they see it. So do old-timers.
A zen teacher is not quite the same as an art teacher: the art teacher teaches
you how to DO (if you are lucky); the Zen teacher teaches how to DO, but then
takes away your pride in doing, and has you do again. Before you know it, you
realize that the teacher has enabled your candle to melt all the way down to
your feet and touch the ground, and suddenly, I mean SUDDENLY, you wake up, and
there's no pride, but everything is yours, everything is you. You may give the
teacher a good slap, for treating you as a child, and not TELLING! you about
this, and then you take your licking, too, because fair's fair. All you both
can do then is laugh, ...and greet each other for the first time.
Had she told you about this, it would not have happened. You then have nothing
but gratitude, and you devote your life to being honest about this, always.
You are not stingy about helping others practice or continue, but you don't
spill the beans. This is not an Intellectual endowment that we are born with.
But we come from the womb fully formed, fully endowed. A teacher helps the
many-years'-worth of accumulated trail-dust and road-tar to drop away, when we
are ready, if we meet such a teacher. We still need lots of luck, and that
luck improves by our investing a lot of sweat. The teacher does so, too.
Funny, that the most natural thing and original thing should take the most
sincere, pitched effort to realize or awaken to; but it would appear that
that's only natural, too. And so it is.
Such are Human beings.
And they make good teachers.
your own Cousin,
--Joe
> Merle Lester <merlewiitpom@...> wrote:
>
> bill!..you are obsessed with instructions from some one else: why? because
> that is the way you did this..so we all flow with you?
>
> why a teacher?.... are we not all teachers unto to ourselves?...
------------------------------------
Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are
reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
