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.

Moving Forward in Discussions

This week of 2/15/09 on NPR (search online for “Holder’s ‘Cowards’ Comments Examined“(?)), there was a distinct part of the exchange in which the two people were discussing one of their speeches or essays. One person was critical, saying that he perceived that the writing’s focus on negative aspects of race-related discussions today was negating to all of the progress that has been made in the past few decades, that the focus ignored how different and positive it is for youth today compared to youth of thirty years ago. The author of the writing returned that he fully understood all of the progress that had been made as mentioned by the first person, but that that was not the topic of his writing – what was the topic were things that needed to be faced next. So the first person felt that, by its omission, it was being negated and overlooked. But here we have the author himself telling us he wasn’t doing that. Furthermore, we are given a description of his perspective and background which lend credibility – credibility that we are hearing the truth.

(Admittedly taking his side, here,) how is he supposed to compose a speech/essay that is concise and to the point, without digressing on a related but different tangent only to placate people with certain preconceptions and preoccupations? If we say that his essay has as a primary objective to reach everyone, including those who need placating, perhaps he in fact does need to spend some time on the digression. After all, his composition doesn’t come into this world into a vacuum, but into various contexts, which includes various audiences and respective interpretations. Perhaps, at the very least, a digression expressing what the goal of the composition is and what it consciously avoids would be valuable. On the other hand, we could say it’s the onus of the audience to deal with their own preoccupations and preconceptions. If they take in a composition (or read a book, see a movie, hear something from someone, etc.) and receive something that the creator never intended, shouldn’t they question how much was due to their own “junk”? In fact, isn’t the individual who is making the mis/re-interpretation the best person to have insight of what is happening to lead him to such an interpretation at all? And finally, since this is about communication, the format is relevant. If it is a conversation between two people, the speaker has the opportunity to get a sense of how the listener is receiving the words, and accordingly tweak what is being said. If it is an essay that has been completed, then the author does not have such an opportunity. The author’s skill in “pre-reading” the potential audiences’ reception may become apparent. Also, the audience may need to give the author the benefit of the doubt about what the author is striving to convey, precisely because they do not have the opportunity to hear the author’s clarifications.

In discussions about practitioners of aikido of different aspirations, the “moving forward” often becomes derailed by similar divergences of views and interpretations [1][2]. The people who have the knee jerk reactions of the defensive sort when they hear someone calling them or implying that they are “hobbyists”, evidently associate the idea of doing something as a hobby with doing something with little worth, little meaning, little benefit, little beauty, etc. Even if we consider something most people can probably grasp as a hobby, such as building birdhouses, tending a garden, or restoring old cars – for all of these things we can probably see the person doing it not as a professional yet investing much time, effort, energy, and money, attaining pleasure, peace, meaning, etc. and even bringing joy and benefit to others. How is it that “it’s a hobby” becomes “just a hobby”? Can the person hearing “just” acknowledge that that is what their mind is inclined to attach? Also, can such a person come up with an alternative word that is somehow more placating or satisfying? Would it help to assign a different word to those who are obviously more serious/invested? “Amateur”? “Apprentice”?

Without acknowledging and accounting for the objective of statements, conversations, terminology, and for the perspectives and formats of communication, then the discussions can’t move forward. And moving forward is inevitably going to include encountering some unsavory topics. In the case of race, it could include the topic of how to practically address differently different people’s socioeconomic positions as it related to their history. In the case of aikido, it could be about topics such as how teachers should be expected to treat different students differently, and what kind of discriminating treatment students should expect and tolerate. Recognizing that our discussion isn’t moving forward, assessing why it is so, and settling on some basic common ground are essential pieces of a complicated discussion. Without these pieces, it could be like talking about traveling together to the other side of the planet but not agreeing whether to start eastward or westward; like agreeing to travel some place relaxing or exciting but not agreeing where that is and even presuming the other person is thinking the same thing as oneself; like planning a trip somewhere with someone, with one person intending to stay for a few days and another for months, and packing the car accordingly.

Gordon Ramsay

I was watching clips on Youtube of Gordon Ramsay for the first time recently, mostly of a reality show, “Hell’s Kitchen,” in which he’s leading two teams of chefs to compete against each other. As he is famous for, his way of interacting is extremely confrontational and aggressive. As I was watching, I took note of the fact that I was identifying more with him than the contestant chefs, and had some thoughts related to teaching and hierarchical relationships.

1.  One book that has left me with an impression is Erich Fromm’s ‘Escape from Freedom’, in which he writes about power, sadism, and masochism, relative to socio-historical trends. Another salient train of thought in my head is about defensiveness, security/confidence, and relationship. How does all this relate to identifying with Gordon.

The simplest aspect is that it’s easier to identify with someone in a position of power than not. “It’s good to be the king.” Also, I’ve been playing with the realization that it is a defense – a subtle one – to look down upon others. And since the human psyche has a knack for making any way of seeing the world and others make sense by selectively seeing certain details and assigning significance and associations to them in certain ways,  so it can go for this way of defense. Furthermore, not only can one selectively see certain aspects of the world, one may also gravitate toward certain situations and environments as well as participate in creating one’s own situation.

For example, one may see the failures and hiccups in others, and not their successes and innovations. One may unconsciously find oneself more frequently than not in situations where one is more experienced or skilled than others. One may create a situation/environment (e.g., a school) where one can be the experienced person. One can contribute to the “excuse” of getting to, or having to, look down upon others, such as by bettering one’s own skill.

Having been on the student side of a difficult student-teacher relationship, I think that in a good relationship there is some appropriateness/fittingness which, for humans, could also be synonymous with communication. Receiving harsh feedback from a teacher, no matter how true, is not always constructive. Of course it’s not impossible for the student to dig deep and make it constructive within him/herself. However, part of a good student-teacher relationship is the teacher making the student dig just deep enough. If the pattern is becoming evident that the student is not able to dig deep enough, then the teacher would be wasting his/her time in continuing an unconstructive pattern. If the teacher continues to do something that isn’t benefitting anyone, then the focus on the teacher should be revisited. That is, what is the teacher really getting out of it, by acting in that way? If it’s supposedly to serve the student but isn’t actually doing so, then it’s possible that the teacher is working out his/her own junk and diverting focus away from him/herself, while putting the onus on the student.

2. One thing I noticed was that, of course, depending on how someone was spoken to, their reaction was relative to the thing that was said to them (e.g., your sauce is too spicy) or to the way it was said to them (e.g, “I wouldn’t give this to a pig by mistake! You donkey!”). When the person being spoken to, the recipient, felt affront more than anything, they would comment on how Gordon spoke, how he made them feel, or how they themselves were (e.g., “I’m qualified, I know what I’m doing, I know how to make this sauce”, etc.) Their being occupied primarily by the affront prevented them from noticing the valid observation or advice, such as that the sauce was, in fact, too spicy. This also happened quite clearly when some contestants tried to exert superiority and take charge over others.

In the context of this show, Gordon has virtually complete authority over the contestants. If they don’t like it, they can quit and leave. If he doesn’t like it, he can do much to ensure that they have to leave. If they disagree, they can’t say so. Apparently Gordon has also acted as consultant to restaurants that were going out of business. In such cases, if the restaurants didn’t like it or disagreed, Gordon could terminate the relationship.

How does this parallel a student-teacher relationship? How does it relate to being a student? We would expect the student to be there voluntarily. However, we might expect the teacher to have less weight, as far as being unpleasant or poor at teaching. Perhaps the teacher relies on the student being there, such as for income. Perhaps the teacher strives to be a teacher that students are attracted to. On the other hand, the difficult position a teacher is in is that of conveying to the student that which the student does not know. The student may not know because they simply haven’t heard it yet. They may not know because they are inclined not to know certain things. The teacher must decide what to do when a student appears to be inclined to stay not knowing. One decision may be to confront the student’s inclination, and bring to light the necessity of knowing certain things. Another decision may be to let the student’s inclination take its course, and possibly transform on its own. The decision-making, I reckon, is a reflection on the teacher’s wisdom and character.

From the perspective of the student, they may perceive the teacher’s course of action in any number of ways. A student who is confronted about his/her inclination may become defensive and focus attention on the way the information was given (e.g., “You don’t have to say it so harshly/subtly/directly/now/today/when I’m not ready, etc.”). A student who is subtly feeling that he/she is missing something, but the teacher is not helping them or filling them in, may feel abandonment or bitterness at the teacher’s inaction (“Why doesn’t he/she just come out and tell me?!”). In the end, practically speaking, the teacher is the teacher because he/she has more knowledge/skill/wisdom, etc. The teacher also has more social clout. The teacher may also have multiple students. For these reasons, in the end, the student should come to see things in the teacher’s way, rather than the other way around. In a sense, the student must come to be in the teacher’s shoes, and during the learning process, put him/herself in the teacher’s shoes. In another sense, the student learns to speak more of the teacher’s language. The teacher on the other hand must always be mindful of how he/she is going about his/her own practice and how he/she is putting him/herself out there as part of a relationship with the student, regardless of whether the teacher is trying to related in a certain way or not.

As a student, putting oneself in this inferior position is not something that most people would find immediately palatable. They want to be respected. They want to feel that the teacher understands them. They want the teacher to say things so that they can grasp it. This may work to some extent, and it depends on the subject matter of course, but then again it may not. If they already felt comfortable with it, then they would already know it or have an easy time acquiring it. Although it may sound counterintuitive to some that it might feel uncomfortable to learn something that is easier or healthier, learning something, coming to know oneself, etc. are endeavors that inevitably have to do with discomfort and letting go of attachments. How a teacher fits into such an endeavor is not necessarily to make things easier or more comfortable. In fact it may be just the opposite – what’s necessary to encounter that which one is not likely to if left to one’s pre-existing tendencies.

On leading a dojo 2

On leading a dojo 2

On leading a dojo

If I were leading a dojo or group of people: