instruction. For spiritual teachers to guide seekers fully, however, they need also to embody the teachings integrated into their personalities. Only then, as spiritual mentors, can they truly inspire and teach disciples by their living examples. Because of the obvious personal development of mentors, spiritual seekers feel confident in entrusting themselves as disciples to them, to help reach similar levels of self-transformation. Spiritual mentors, then, help disciples to develop their personalities.”
ROOT GURU-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP
According to Berzin, “Root gurus are the spiritual mentors who turn disciples’ hearts and minds most ardently to the Buddhist path. They are the strongest sources of inspiration to sustain disciples throughout their spiritual journeys. The relationships with such teachers act as roots for all attainments.”
CHAPTER 1
THE NON-TEACHER TEACHER
I don’t see myself as a teacher, although it certainly seems that I am. But for this interview, I am happy to pretend that I am teacher and speak as if I were.
–JAMES SWARTZ (FROM AN INTERVIEW)
I was once with a great Tibetan teacher, and a student asked him, “If all enlightenment is within you, why do you need a guru?” And he said, “You need a guru to tell you that you don’t need a guru!”
–MIRABAI BUSH, FROM “OF TEACHERS AND TEACHING: WHO IS A TEACHER? WHAT IS A TEACHER?” INSIGHT NEWSLETTER, BARRE CENTER FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES, FALL 1993
PETER (HAKIM) YOUNG
My interview with Peter (Hakim) Young was the first one that I conducted. I had previously heard of Peter, the mild and gentle British successor of the colorful Turkish mystic Bulent Rauf, from several people who had stayed at the Beshara Centre. People spoke of there being a rarified atmosphere at the Chisholme Institute (the charity organization based at Beshara), but when I tried to get information about what was happening there, I couldn’t get a clear picture—except that the food there was exceptionally good, and that it was Bulent, who passed away thirty years ago, who was responsible for that. So when I heard, through some friends, that Hakim was visiting Israel with his Israeli-born wife, I asked to meet with him, and he agreed.
AMIR: Would you tell me about your relationship with Bulent Rauf, your teacher?
HAKIM: I’ll start by saying that Bulent never regarded himself as a teacher. He used to say, “There is only one teacher [pointing upwards], and I’m a fellow student, just like you.”
AMIR: How do you understand that?
HAKIM: I think there are two levels of his “not being a teacher.” The first one is that reality itself, or what we might call “God,” is the only teacher. All guidance ultimately comes from that single source. To give a simple example, I might be a plumber and I’m in a situation where I don’t know how to fix something; then I discover how to do it. I would consider the guidance even for that discovery as coming from that one source.
AMIR: Would you also say that knowing itself, before knowing anything specific, comes from that source?
HAKIM: Absolutely. All knowledge is single-sourced, therefore all guidance is single-sourced and it’s diffused into everything according to the capacity of that thing. For example, you and I have different individual capacities. The guidance that comes to me will be according to my relative capacity to receive and in line with my unique destiny. My relative capacity can also be expanded, when I tune in to what’s there for me. That’s the place of the teacher in this world, to help me to reach my uniqueness.
AMIR: What is the other level of “not being a teacher”?
HAKIM: I think that Bulent is more than a teacher. Some people who we know as “teachers” help others to come to the single source, yet they are not themselves embodying that source. Bulent was actually embodying the source, which is why he said that it was not him that was the teacher. So on the one hand, there is the metaphysical Truth that there is only one teacher, and, on the other hand, there are those who embody the reality of that metaphysical Truth. I think he is one of those.
AMIR: Could it also be that him saying, “There is only one teacher and I’m a fellow student,” was his way of turning the student’s attention from him personally to the source?
HAKIM: I think so, yes. But it wasn’t a trick. His taste was not to be a teacher, but rather to be genuinely, truly nothing. He wanted to be under the constantly changing revelation of the reality. If you are already a knower, you can’t be that; but if you’re a student of reality, then you’re learning moment by moment. So his saying that he was a student was not diminishing himself, but elevating the meaning of being a student, to being a receiver and open to the divine guidance.
AMIR: So the teacher, in the case of Bulent, was actually teaching by being an example of “studentship” of the source, of that higher knowledge.
HAKIM: That’s right. He wasn’t teaching. He was simply being.
AMIR: Could you tell me what led to your meeting with Bulent? Were you looking for a teacher?
HAKIM: This was in the early ’70s. I was twenty-four years old, living in the material world, working more than full time, basically living somebody else’s life. Then I had this car accident and a kind of near-death experience during it. I was recovering when a friend arrived at my doorstep and said to me, “I really think you should go to this place.” This was the first time that I had heard of the Beshara Centre, which was at a place called Swyre Farm in Gloucestershire. I went there for a weekend, and that visit awakened something in me. I went back home, thought about that for a while and then got together with some people who’d also been in that place, and we met for study and meditation, etc. In one of my subsequent visits to Swyre Farm, I first met Bulent.
AMIR: Was it a love at first sight?
HAKIM: No, my involvement and relationship with him developed gradually, over years. Eventually, I moved to Chisholme House, in Scotland, which was being renovated and turned into the Beshara School. Bulent was there for a lot of the time. He didn’t teach but he was a consultant, guiding the people who were running the courses. I joined the first course there and for me it was an absolutely life-changing experience. I remember saying to myself, “I want to be involved in this; this is the path for me.” Then Bulent asked me to be involved with the next course as a facilitator, and after that I participated in a follow-up six-month course. For that course, Bulent was fully present nearly all of the time. He warned us at the outset: “For this course, you’ll be under the whims of a grumpy old man.” I must say I found it really difficult. It was so intense. We were meeting for conversation with Bulent every day without exception for maybe six hours a day. Extraordinary things came out during those six months. We were introduced to a place that we can’t own, but if we’re fortunate we can gain access to it—a place of journeying.
I’ll make a long leap here to 1984, when I was invited to come and be the director of studies for the six-month course, and afterwards I was appointed principal of the school. That summer Bulent was un-well when he came back from Turkey, and when he was diagnosed with cancer he told me, “I want you to look after me.”
AMIR: Was it only then that the relationship between you became closer?
HAKIM: Yes. I think that an invitation from him to come closer had been there much earlier, but I had been too afraid and held myself back. But at that point, in 1984, there was no choice. Or rather, there had been a choice but I’d already made it, so that then there was no choice. He said, “Come
