Monday, February 03, 2014

Zen way, teacher and beyond

Click to get cool Animations for your MySpace profile
MySpace Codes!
For some reason there is a lot of fuss if a yoga teacher talks and walks or behaves normally. In fact, a cultivated La-di-dah way of being is required if you want to call yourself a yoga teacher, apparently. And let me tell you, the more I see that as a projection the more convinced I am not to be that way, feeling very fake.  Nevertheless every other day I will have some one try to needle to me about some La di dah thing ... these days I try not to get provoked or be drawn into a debate about such crap.. it works for these people then let it. The karma I am trying to break I realise is that of a teacher (trying to change the world:)
In the Zen world or real yoga world, the teacher is a tough person. I brought the Zen Art Box (blogged on it here, a little while ago) in which there is a painting by Torei Enji of a stark Rod and it has these words, in two lines, almost a koan:
Thirty smacks for speaking
Thirty smacks for not speaking..


Ha ha!! Can u make head or tail out of that? But that makes sense to me, because I feel Swamiji does the same to me.. smack, smack! Good teacher, bad teacher? Giving teacher, caring teacher.. smack, smack! Something there is beyond all this, that only a good smack will get through, to me! And in that slap, hard sometimes, one more crust of karma, drops off:) But I am not going to do that to anybody any more.. I want to go on, because there is this another milestone, by Enji

if you stop along the way to indulge in the results and do not progress further, this is called stopping along the way

(Translation by Thomas Cleary)

So, I have a more humunguous goal -- that cannot be stopped by this thing I am, a yoga teacher!

Here maybe, a glimmer of that, again by Enji(From this site http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading1401.asp):

In lofty-minded people who genuinely work on the path, when the effort of inner seeking builds up and the power of concentration is full, then ordinary ideation and conscious feelings are all inactivated; reason and speech come to an end, and even the searching mind disappears at the same time. Even the breath nearly stops. This is the time when the Great Way appears.
Students should be alert: At this time, don't conceive a single thought of extraordinary understanding, and don't conceive a single thought of retreating. Let go of body and mind and don't seek anything at all.
Bring the story you've been contemplating powerfully to mind, and let whatever states may appear be: if the perceptions of the two vehicles appear, let them be; if the perceptions of outsiders appear, let them be—knowing they aren't real, you won't fear them. Plunging in with your whole body, get your fill of the source, carefully avoiding exciting your mind to grasp and reject.
You need to let go of your body and relinquish your life therein only once. When the time comes, it happens suddenly, and you will know this experience. This is called letting go of your grip over a sheer cliff, then after perishing, coming back to life.


 

No comments: