the teacher and taught, create the teaching?

[silent thunder]

It has struck me repeatedly over time and more so of late... there are so many 'teachers' around these days... almost an overriding compulsion among people to teach everyone around them, their personal way. I consistently wonder, 'who is there to receive the teaching when everyone is the teacher and more importantly, did anyone even ask for the lesson?'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KXidr0z1RY (link to video of the Advaita trap... confusion of absolutism and relativism)

Paradoxically, I consider everyone and everything to be a teacher, though most often not in the traditional sense, as the most important lessons are realized through awareness of self and relationship to surroundings coupled with an active desire to participate authentically and openly. I was wearing a Vajra at work one day and a coworker, a painter, saw it, recognized it and asked... "Oh you're wearing a vajra... do you have a teacher?"

"yes" I said and started pointing around the sound-stage we were working on... "you, him, her, that pile of wood, the dust floating in the air, the sun streaming through the open door..." And by that I meant, that when open and authentic, everything around me is a potential source of wisdom and insight. But the action of the energy involved has never been one way. Teaching to me is not the action of one source imparting some thing to another, nor imprinting 'truth' on anyone, it's sharing something of personal value openly and letting folks work with it as they are able.

In the end, I'm into sharing. When folks share something important to them, or relevant to them in an authentic manner, I can't help but accept the teaching and participate, even when I don't agree with the point.

Once, long ago, a teacher said something perfectly timed and very profound to me. He was a traditional teacher, at a University and he said... "This class isn't about me teaching you, it's about you learning. Teaching isn't really possible. I can't teach anyone anything, but anyone can learn. Learning is not something you do passively. You can't come into my classroom, sit here and open the top of your skull while I pour in knowledge... Learning is an active process. You will learn only what you reach out and interact with, what you actively participate in and seek out."

That said... I'm off to the beach... I hear there's an excellent teacher there

[gatito]

Yes.

[GrandmasterP]

The best teachers facilitate learning.

Not 'the stage on the stage' but 'the guide on the side'.

Edited January 20, 2015 by GrandmasterP

[soaring crane]

Agree with the OP, for sure. Teachers are sometimes like doctors and students are like patients. But it's the wrong approach. I feel it very much in my English classes where participants in my groups truly do believe it's my job to pour the English language into their German brains. It just doesn't work that way.

 

As far as learning more important things than a foreign language, as ST says, there's essentially nothing that can't function as your teacher. And I'd add that that includes yourself. Myself.

[9th]

"Oh you're wearing a vajra... do you have a teacher?"

 

"yes" I said and started pointing around the sound-stage we were working on... "you, him, her, that pile of wood, the dust floating in the air, the sun streaming through the open door..." And by that I meant, that when open and authentic, everything around me is a potential source of wisdom and insight.

 

Yes, but is "him, her, that pile of wood, the dust floating in the air, the sun streaming through the open door" etc. going to be able to teach you how to take apart an engine block? Or how write a program in C++?

 

You need to be able to discriminate between the type of knowledge derived purely from life experience, and the kind that can only be imparted by a trained expert.

 

Life experience has no teacher other than life itself - that should be obvious because it is. The profession of teacher is still 100% valid in regards to actual teachings - in other words, training, methods, procedures, formulas, etc.

Edited January 21, 2015 by 9th

[Spotless]

The experiencer discovers the teaching.

 

Fear will bind it.

 

Courage will free it.

 

This is true even in what we deem as pure forms such as the half truth that 1+1=2

[9th]

The self must struggle to exist. The other is.