he was willing to refer me to a couple of his students to interview, and his response seriously impressed me: “Since you heard from me only good things about myself,” he said, “I think you should get a more balanced picture, so I’ll introduce you to two former students of mine with whom the relationship did not end well. If they agree to be interviewed, I think you’ll get quite a different perspective from them.” Indeed, the picture I got from those former students was much more complex and dilemmatic than I got from him.
Israel is a mecca for spiritual teachers, and I went on to interview about a dozen visiting teachers, from Zen masters to Jewish rabbis, as well as a few of their students, including British Vipassanā teacher Christopher Titmuss, American teacher Gabriel Cousens and two Tibetan Rinpoches. During that initial process, I built a list of ten questions, which I used as the basis of each interview and from which I happily diverted into whatever interesting subject came up during the talk. I soon discovered that teachers were generally clearer and had more to say than students about what it meant to be a student, based on their previous experience with their own teachers, so I devoted a good part of many of the interviews to the teachers’ experiences as students.
After completing that first round of interviews in Israel, and with the generous help of Buddha at the Gas Pump interviewer Rick Archer, interfaith dialogue advocate Kurt Johnson and some of my friends in Europe and the United States, I began contacting teachers from other parts of the world and asking them for interviews about their relationships with their own teachers as well as with their students.
I was surprised by the high ratio of positive responses I received. Within a few months I had conducted about thirty more interviews, most of them via Skype and a few in face-to-face meetings during trips I made to the U.K. and the U.S. About half of the interviews were with teachers; the other half were follow-up conversations with their students. Reading through the interviews and considering the excerpts, I found that the most potent parts of each interview were those during which I sensed a paradox or an unresolved question or dilemma—all of which were suggested by an interviewee’s hesitation, inconsistency, vagueness or confusion. One night over dinner, I excitedly told my wife that I came upon what would be the heart of my book: the paradoxes and dilemmas in the spiritual teacher-student relationship.
I became most interested in the types of relationships in which paradoxes and dilemmas were most prominent, including spiritual mentorships and root guru-disciple relationships, which are described in the next chapter. These relationships are characterized by a high level of commitment, involvement on many levels and a certain intensity of intimacy or love between teacher and student.
After conducting nearly one-hundred interviews, of which about one-third were with teachers and two-thirds were with students, and forming a list of about a dozen types of paradoxes and dilemmas, I decided to dedicate each chapter in this book to a specific problem and demonstrate it through one or two interviews in which it is most clearly evident. This meant that most of the interviews I conducted were not included in this book, but excerpts from many of them—as well as additional paradoxes and dilemmas that were not included—are posted on my website The Freedom to Question (free2quest.com).
THE FUNCTIONS AND CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIP
There are four classifications of spiritual masters:
the ordinary spiritual master,
the bodhisattva spiritual master who has attained certain bhumis,
the Nirmanakaya spiritual master, and
the Sambhogakaya spiritual master.
These four types are related to an individual’s spiritual realizations. When one is ordinary or just beginning, one cannot attend Buddhas and bodhisattvas who have attained higher levels as spiritual masters, so one attends an ordinary spiritual master. When one’s karmic obscurations are more purified, one can attend a bodhisattva spiritual master who has attained higher levels. After one accomplishes the great accumulation path, one can attend a Nirmanakaya spiritual master. When one attains the bodhisattva’s level, one can attend a Sambhogakaya spiritual master.
–GAMPOPA, THE JEWEL ORNAMENT OF LIBERATION
The first step… is to acknowledge certain empirical facts about student-teacher relationships. (1) Almost all spiritual seekers progress through stages along the spiritual path. (2) Most practitioners study with several teachers during their lifetimes and build up different relationships with each. (3) Not every spiritual teacher has reached the same level of accomplishment. (4) The type of relationship appropriate between a specific seeker and a specific teacher depends upon the spiritual level of each. (5) People usually relate to their teachers in progressively deeper manners as they advance along the spiritual path. (6) Because the same teacher may play different roles in the spiritual life of each seeker, the most appropriate relationship each seeker has with that teacher may [change].
–ALEXANDER BERZIN, WISE TEACHER, WISE STUDENT
Before we dive into the various paradoxes and dilemmas which are the heart of this book, it is useful to become acquainted with Alexander Berzin’s classifications in Wise Teacher, Wise Student. The rationale for these classifications is provided by Gampopa Sonam Rinchen in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation as well as by Berzin. While Gampopa’s and Berzin’s classifications are specific to teacher-student relationships in the Buddhist path, they are readily applicable to other paths and traditions.
INFORMATION CONVEYANCE
This is the common type of relationship between teachers and students in schools and academic institutions, as well as in religious and spiritual contexts. Berzin describes this kind of relationship as follows: “Let us call someone who conveys information about Buddha’s teachings from a withdrawn perspective a ‘Buddhism professor.’ A person who not merely sits in the audience, but who actually studies with such a Buddhism professor would be a ‘student of Buddhism.’”
KNOWLEDGE APPLICATION
If the “information conveyance relationship” is comparable to the academic teacher-student relationship, this type is comparable to the master craftsman-apprentice relationship. Berzin refers to the “Dharma instructor,” who is someone “who imparts the teachings from the point of view of their practical application to life, based on personal experience,” and he describes the difference between the “Buddhism professor” and the “Dharma instructor” as follows:
“Buddhism professors teach information gained from texts or from Western scholarly research. In addition, they may have tried to figure out the meaning of the teachings intellectually and thus may also teach from intellectual insight and understanding. Dharma instructors also have some level of scriptural knowledge and teach accordingly. In addition, however, they explain from experiential insight and understanding, gained from putting the teachings into practice and from trying to apply them to life. Buddhism professors may also have experiential insight, but they do not usually convey these insights to others.”
SPIRITUAL MENTORSHIP
Berzin further describes a spiritual mentor as “someone who leads others along the graded path to enlightenment,” and he distinguishes this relationship from the former two as follows:
“The Buddhist teachings differentiate between insights and realizations. An insight does not make a significant change in one’s life, but may lead in that direction. A realization, on the other hand, whether it be partial or complete, actually produces a noticeable improvement that lasts. The distinction we are drawing here between Dharma instructors and spiritual mentors derives from this difference. Dharma instructors may have either insight or realization, whereas spiritual mentors need to have some level of realization…
