From leaving a teacher, to finding teachings everywhere
"A network of caring forces, seen and unseen"
I’m listening to Sam Lee’s album The Fade in Time and thinking about teachers. On Sunday night Satya and I were at a Sam Lee gig, and I was thinking about teachers.
The gig was excellent. Sam Lee has a beautiful voice.
In between the singing he spoke to us about collecting the songs. Visiting travelling communities in Ireland and coaxing songs from the elders of those communities that had been passed down through the generations (“I drank lots of tea” Sam said), and the year he spent apprenticing with his teacher Stanley Robertson, a Scottish Traveller and holder of many songs.
Sam sang us Johnny O’the Brine, a 600 year old violent story of poaching and murder in the Scottish green wood , and then he described how Stanley Robertson had taken him into the woods and shown him where the song had taken place. This glade. This Tree. There is so much more than the melody and the words embedded in the songs. There is the history and the life of a people. Some of this was passed down to Sam Lee from his teacher, along with the songs.
I was thinking about teachers because Sam Lee was talking about teachers, and because it has been over two and half years since I left my Buddhist teacher, and this weekend some of us that left together are holding a ceremony to reconfirm our vows, and the ordination that we received from (or through) that teacher.
The leaving was painful for me, and many others. There is much that I learnt from that teacher, and much that I have had to put down in order to keep learning and moving forward in my journey.
In Zen Buddhism there is such a strong emphasis on the teacher-disciple relationship. We are asked to believe that Awakening itself is transmitted from person to person in an unbroken line that goes all the way back to the Buddha. The actual dates of people’s lives in the linage gives the lie to this - some people were simply not alive at the same time to pass things on to each other - and yet the importance of transmission holds.
In Pure Land Buddhism - in Jodo Shin Shu especially - it is Amida Buddha that wakes us up. Amida is not an historical figure but a personification of enlightenment itself, an archetypal figure standing in for interconnection, for oneness, for the love and wisdom that moves through the universe and is already present in each of our hearts. Amida Buddha represents reality, what Buddhists often refer to as ‘suchness’.
I am a Pure Land Buddhist. My old teacher (also a Pure Land Buddhist) was first ordained in a Zen tradition and the teacher-disciple relationship is important to him.
I’ve been grappling with what it means to have been a disciple, to no longer be a disciple and with how to honour these two modes of waking up.
It’s been helpful to reflect on what I’ve learnt from many different places.
I learnt meditation from books by Zen masters, from occasionally sitting with different Buddhist groups and from closely observing myself in meditation. I opened my mind to devotional practice at an NKT centre near my parents home. I learnt to make ritual offerings there as well, and how to create a home shrine.
I listened to teachings on emptiness, and interconnection from living teachers, and recordings of teachers that have passed away. I had embodied experiences of those truths in my own mediation practice.
I connected with the Buddhist blogging sphere back in the early 2000s and learnt a huge amount from both from writing about my own experiences and reading others words (special mention to Rev. Sujatin, and Rev. Mugo).
It’s difficult to list what I learnt from my old teacher, for three reasons. The first is simply that there would be a lot to list. We spent many years together. The second is that I am still in the slow process of running it through a sieve, and picking out what’s useful. (And maybe everything is useful ultimately, but I learn from different things in different ways.) The third is that I am still grieving that relationship, as much as I am still clear about the importance of ending it.
One of the most important things I received was a confirmation of my own spiritual experiences. I wasn’t kidding myself, there really was something here worth paying attention to.
I have learnt equally significant things from non-Buddhist sources. From my training in Embodied Relational Therapy, and then in Wild Therapy, to my training in Internal Family Systems. (And jumping back in time, from my drama degree and from my time in community theatre, back before this whole Buddhist journey started.)
From Internal Family Systems I learnt to pay attention to the compassionate heart inside each living being, that was neglected in my old school of Buddhism in favour of paying attention to the Buddha’s compassionate heart (an outside force).
From training with Bright Dawn, I learnt to deeply trust my own intuition, and to support others to trust their own.
The list is endless of course. This is part of what Pure Land Buddhism encourages us to pay attention to. As Kenneth Tanaka says in Ocean, “Each of us is part of a cosmic, interdependent network of caring forces, seen and unseen, that protect and support us physically, socially, and spiritually.”
It’s easy - particularly if we have been wounded (and we all have) - to pay attention to the negative forces in our lives. It can take some effort to pay attention to the positive forces, but for me, it is profoundly healing.
When I do pay attention in this way it answers the questions of discipleship that I have been grappling with. I see what I received from one important and complicated relationship in the context of what I have received from all of these places. From the whole world. From Amida Buddha, a Pure Land Buddhist might say.
This offers a freedom from entanglement with my old teacher, which will - I trust - in time, make it easier to honour what I received through that relationship, whilst continuing to see the difficulties clearly, and to honour the uncountable other teachers I have had.
Koyo Kubose said, “All Buddhism is reformist Buddhism.”
In all sorts of ways Sam Lee has made the songs he sings his own. From selecting which few of the many verses of each song to sing to us, to altering the odd word here or there, to the arrangement of melody and backing he chooses. More subtlety, he allows his whole being to infuse each song. Each moment in his life is the end of a unique chain of support and previous experience and he brings all of that into each performance. That kind of making his own is almost indescribable, the only way to approach understanding is to listen with an open heart.
My job as a Buddhist Minister - and for all of us going into the ceremony this weekend - is to trust in this process of making things our own. To trust that we can take the good we have received from all sorts of places, and to reflect it back into the world in our own unique and meaningful ways.
Oh, so interesting! I struggle with 'gurus' and always say it's because I've had way too many middle-aged men telling me what to do all my life - but I have been failing to recognise, acknowledge, be grateful for everything and everyone I have learned from.
Deep bow🙏
Thank you for this wise and reflective piece, Kaspa. I read it several days ago but didn't have time or space to comment. Circling back now to do so. First of all, I appreciate learning about Pure Land practice from you and Satya. As a Theravada Buddhist, I never learned much about Amida Buddha -- what a deeply beautiful concept. I am glad I now know a bit more about Pure Land, thanks to you. Also, many blessings to you and your community as you renew your vows and your commitment to your path, sans a teacher. May the light lead you on.