Obedience

I thought that the post below was good even apart from the original context of the discussion thread.

Patrick Augé writes: Jul 24th, 2009 at 1:18 am

A teacher is a student who teaches in order to continue his study. (Mochizuki Minoru Sensei)

The question is: is our teacher here for us or is he here for himself?

How is his life style? Brand name articles, fancy cars, mindless hobbies and activities, whimsical spouses, secret personal life, etc.? Or did he prepare the proper environment and conditions to continue his study? How does he deal with daily life? Does he tell us what we want to hear or does he tell us what he thinks? Is it obvious that he has his students’ best interest at heart and has been maintaining that attitude in spite of all the model students who have left him for whatever reason?

Is the teacher a unified, integrated person in core ways – at least core in ways that are important to the individual student and the teacher himself? “Unified and integrated” don’t necessarily mean treating everyone the same. I might treat my children differently than I would an adult stranger. I might handle business relationships differently than I would a student-teacher relationship.

Having one’s students’ best interest at heart doesn’t mean giving them what they want, it means giving them what they need, which is often contradictory.

Did he leave his own teacher or was he expelled and avoids the subject or has he maintained the relationship with his teacher and often talks about him without hiding the fact that there were disagreements at times?

Is our teacher a public person, does he make himself available to his students, will he make the time to listen? How are his senior students, the product of his teachings? Is it an unreachable clique or a group of compassionate students who close the gap between our teacher and us? How do they behave when the teacher is away?

Is our teacher a human being? Is he struggling with his weaknesses and does he admit them and work on improving himself?

Those are not the only questions to ask, but they may help in seeing more clearly through one’s emotions.

In all relationships there are problems. Doubt is healthy when it leads to researching the truth in order to make a decision. Doubt is wrong when it becomes the excuse to avoid making a decision. Many students who left their teachers without fully understanding their actions and their consequences end up being treated the same way by their own students. It may go for another generation or so but will die for want of the spirit that ensures the continuation of the lineage.

When the relationship is based on the right reasons, all difficulties become opportunities to strengthen that relationship. Otherwise the slightest problem becomes the excuse for running away from the relationship.

If you decide to leave your teacher over deep disagreement with him, then do it cleanly. Return your ranks, certificates, all that which you received from him. That will be the best expression of your disagreement. Look for another teacher, explain the situation and do not expect any special treatment since you will be considered as a high risk student and will have to establish your credibility, which may take time. That may help you if you later find out that you made a mistake and want to go back to your teacher. But be ready to start again from the bottom.

If your priority is to learn, be unconditional, accept anything, do not victimize yourself.

“Unconditional”. This relates to my thoughts on faith, as I’ve written elsewhere. Many times I’ve seen people whose expectations of teachers were not met or disappointed, maybe even ravaged and shattered. For some of these people, they could not follow that teacher anymore, at least not in any way that requires them to open up their heart to their teacher.

To open up your heart to your teacher and have faith in them does not mean, necessarily, that the teacher will see this and get something out of it. The primary goal and consequence is that you, the student, see more of what the teacher has to offer, and accordingly receive more of the good stuff from the teacher. (Perhaps as a further consequence of this (ie that you are getting it), the teacher may see what is happening and your mutual relationship deepens.)

To have faith in your teacher means to try to see that which they may be clumsily trying to get across to you, that which they may imperfectly be striving to achieve. Maybe the teacher is socially inept, verbally crude, interpersonally sloppy, etc. To have faith means to accept that the teacher might be imperfect and clumsy in some respects, but to recognize whether those imperfections do not fundamentally interfere or obstruct your learning from the teacher. This recognition includes grasping that how and how much you are bothered by those imperfections is your issue – that you yourself are holding yourself back in some ways from learning from the teacher.

To have faith means to be accepting, patient, generous, and open-minded. In the case of relating to a teacher, it helps greatly to have a heart of gratitude and humility, selflessness and devotion. These not only clear away the clutter of your own issues that may interfere with your learning, but in the context of relating to the teacher as another person, they may go a long way to communicating to the other person where you stand and how you wish to relate to him. If you want to be treated as an equal, a customer, a peer, a rival, an advisor, etc. – of course the way you present yourself to your teacher will influence how he sees you and will see fit to relate to you.

Many people in the above forum had strong reactions against excessive obedience, or against obedience in general. There was a similar mentality seen in this thread about burkinis. What is this fear or aversion toward giving yourself over to someone or something?

“Do not victimize yourself”. Does the teacher seem to require you to completely debase yourself in order to relate to you as a student? Does the teacher encourage you to prostrate yourself possibly excessively? Does the teacher encourage you to beware of how you realize humility and selflessness? Does the teacher encourage or guide you to have awareness of your own development? Does the teacher give the impression that you should always trust his opinion over your own? The fear/aversion I mention above, it seems to be indicative a lack of reconciliation of selflessness and devotion with self-awareness and self-actualization. That is, faith, obedience, etc. – the things that would appear to go with selflessness and devotion – they seem to contradict self-awareness and a person knowing how and where he is going, and some level of responsibility for the same.