How the student-teacher relationship is balanced

What does balance mean in the context of the student-teacher relationship?

Balance (from GDP03 00:15:45.06 - 00:21:18.08)

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Student: I've heard it said by other Tibetan teachers that situations in life can be like a guru in the sense where you have a relationship with something that's got personal [unclear]. You project feeling on that situation...

Ken: Mmm-hmm. What's the question?

Student: So the question is, is that the case that situations can be gurus or am I being too literal? [Unclear]

Ken: In those situations they're really speaking metaphorically. For instance, Serlingpa, at the end of Great Path of Awakening, Kongtrul quotes a number of verses. [He] says, adverse conditions are spiritual friends. And he explains this by saying that they do the same things as a spiritual friend does. You know, challenge you to be patient, bring out your compassion, put you in touch with your internal material, etc., etc., etc. So one can use, and it's very good to use the situations in life to learn from. But that isn't the same thing as having a relationship with a person who is a teacher. Okay?

Now relationship depends on balance. That is, one is putting into the relationship commensurate to what one is receiving from the relationship. And if that isn't happening, then the relationship inevitably moves out of balance, and a relationship cannot survive moving into a permanent state of imbalance. It always leads to problems and eventually dissolution of the relationship.

How is the guru-student relationship balanced? Well, I think it's instructive to look at the parent-child relationship. One of the imbalancing processes which is very prevalent in our culture is that a large number of parents expect their children to return what the parents are putting into the relationship. In other words, they create a demand for attention from the child. This totally screws the child up every time. Right? We're all the walking wounded here. [Laughter]

The way that relationship is balanced is that the child, when he or she has children, provides the same kind of attention that they received from their parents. So balancing a relationship doesn't necessarily mean a direct balancing.

So, as with the parent-child relationship there's a kind of generational understanding in the student-teacher relationship. Attention flows from the teacher to the student. The teacher does not place an emotional demand, a demand for emotional attention on the student. That's not the demand that the teacher places on the student. The teacher places all sorts of other demands--but not that one. And a student receives instruction, guidance, presence--all this kind of stuff--and passes that on. That's how the relationship is balanced.

Confident faith

An insightful clarification from Guru, Deity, Protector, session 3:

Confident faith (from GDP03 00:00:00.00 - 00:03:11.00)

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Ken: If there aren't any questions, then I'll tell stories. Yes.

Student: Could you go over the faith of confidence again.

Ken: Okay. Essentially, confident faith is described as the feeling of solidity that comes from a rational appreciation. That is, you study the stuff, you think about it, it makes sense. So you say, "Okay, I'll give it a try." And this is one of the reasons why I like Buddhist practice and Buddhist perspective, it's because it actually does make sense.

Christianity, for instance, doesn't. And the consequence of that is, faith as a practice in Christianity has to be stronger because it doesn't make sense. And it's not just Christianity, actually, it applies to most of the Abrahamic traditions, because somehow or other they ended up with a problem. And the problem was, if there is an all-loving, all-mighty God, why do we suffer? The problem of pain which C.S. Lewis wrote about.

Buddhism, on the other hand, says there is suffering. That's where we start. So its existence isn't regarded as a problem; it's regarded as a fact. No explanation required, there it is. And so a rational appreciation is for many people an important starting point. And I know this from my work with people who are not particularly into spiritual stuff. You know, if you want to get them to do something, it's got to make sense to them 'cause they're not going to do it out of clear appreciation or longing or anything like that. Okay?

A contradiction in terms

Thanks to Christy for unearthing this gem from Guru, Deity, Protector, session 3.

Contradiction (from GDP03 00:04:19.03 - 00:08:40.00)

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John: Do you have to appreciate yourself or love yourself before having the confidence to do that, the faith of longing?

Ken: No, I don't think so. No.

John: Thinking back upon the concept of self-love. Pema Chodron talks about it...

Ken: Well, in Tibetan, and I really don't know Pali well enough--but I really doubt in Pali, and certainly not in Tibetan and Sanskrit to my knowledge, the idea of self-love or self-compassion is a contradiction in terms. And we have these concepts flying around really because of the influence of Western psychology.

In Tibetan Buddhism for instance, the wish that others be free of suffering is called compassion. You want others to be free of suffering, that's compassion. The wish thatyou be free of suffering is not called self-compassion. It's called renunciation. Or if you want another translation it's called determination. I want to be free of suffering, I gotta do something about it--I gotta get out of this mess. And so that is the wish thatI want to be free of suffering is disenchantment with the current state of affairs, etc., etc., which leads to that renunciation.

And the capacity to be present with your own pain, that's not self-compassion--that's mindfulness. That's what mindfulness is--just that. I tend to feel--and this may be a bit harsh on my side--you know, it wouldn't be the first time--that these concepts such as self-love, self-compassion, self-forgiveness are often covert or not so covert ways of protecting a very explicit sense of self that does not want to meet the actual state of affairs.