Dealing with Your Spiritual Teacher's Limitations

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Photo credit: Shambhavi Sarasvati

Despite the fact that I’ve had some extraordinary teachers, I no longer believe that anyone should be called “totally enlightened.” In traditions such as Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen, enlightenment or self-realization means that you have complete and direct knowledge of the real nature of things, and you fully embody that spontaneous, free state of wisdom or living presence.

As far as I can tell, only avatars are what we might call totally enlightened. An avatar is a special kind of emanation that shows up already awake in human or animal form. They have no need to do spiritual practices. 

Avatars exist solely for the sake of benefitting others. In the Hindu traditions, there are ten official avatars, including Lord Krishna. Many people consider Jesus and Anandamayi Ma to also be avatars. The avatars are direct emanations of Vishnu, the principle of maintenance. 

It’s all Ma’s fault

Ever since encountering Anandamayi Ma, I’ve given up on the ordinary human pursuit of final spiritual destinations. She proved, to my satisfaction at least, that us non-avatars can infinitely approach self-realization, but never fully embody it. 

Swami Lakshmanjoo, the 20th century teacher of Trika Shaivism, said something similar: we can only be more or less like Lord Shiva, the unconditioned. 

This is actually relaxing. We are not racing to any finish line. There is no urgency. We can keep walking steadily in our practice and just see what happens next.

Even if we will not reach some final destination, we can become more loving, compassionate, creative, and free. We can enjoy much more skill and understanding. We can have a lot more fun! 

We just don’t get to hide out in the fiction of “totally enlightened” teacher. On a relative level, we are going to have to deal with our teachers as they are, human limitations and all. This turns out to be a great blessing.

Let’s be modest, okay?

Most of us are crap students. I mean, we’re doing the best we can, but we’re not all that. We’re inconsistent in our sadhana. We gift ourselves all kinds of off ramps when we want to indulge in the pleasures of acting out. We ask our teachers for advice, and then we don’t follow it. 

We position ourselves as experts when we have not yet realized much of anything. We brag and exaggerate. And we complain when we experience the slightest bit of discomfort. We alternately berate and inflate ourselves. 

Claiming that our teachers are totally enlightened can be part ignorance, part fear, and part an unhealthy dose of self-aggrandizement via association.

But the mercy of this world is that we have the possibility to discover the nature of reality with the help of other humans who have only some realization. And we can learn to appreciate and embrace life as it is precisely because we come to discern the play of wisdom even in the appearings of limitations in our teachers and ourselves.

The Play of Awakening

The relationship of student and teacher is a great game. If we have an inkling of how to play that game, we figure out how to use everything that happens between ourselves and our teacher as a mirror that is made of wisdom.

Our teacher’s human limitations become occasions for knowing ourselves more clearly and feeling compassion for ourselves and others. We accomplish this by bringing our teacher’s limitations and our reactions to them onto our spiritual path.

How do we react to the ordinary human limitations of our teacher? Recognizing the “flavor” of our habitual reactions is a key to unlocking the energy that is bound up in those habit patterns.

Do we exaggerate minor limitations or downplay harmful ones? How do our own habit patterns cause us to not see our teacher clearly? This can be a huge learning curve for some students and a major vector for the getting of greater clarity. 

What limitations do we project onto our teacher? This is a direct mirror of our own feelings about ourselves and conditioning from our birth traditions, our families, and our cultures.

Can we begin to feel the playfulness and lightness that is possible, especially with respect to our own limitations? Any accomplished teacher in a nondual or direct realization tradition should be able to reflect this to us. 

Teachers love us with all of our limitations, not in spite of them. When we learn to love our teachers similarly, we are on the way to experiencing deep relaxation about how we are showing up and about others.

Note: All of the above does not mean that we should put up with any behavior no matter how heinous. We should definitely use our clarity and reject teachers who deliberately manipulate and harm students.

Yeah, no

If you aren’t quite ready to work closely with a teacher in a direct realization tradition, here are some of the things you might experience. 

• You don't want the teacher to have limitations. You want a savior because you feel afraid of life, and you feel badly about your own so-called imperfections. This kind of orientation might land you in a cult.

• You position the teacher’s limitations (according to you) as the reason why you are holding back or nursing resentment. You don’t understand that the dynamic is full of wisdom and exists just as it is to help you recognize your own condition.

• You feel more comfortable emphasizing that you and the teacher share limitations. This maneuver helps you to manage your jealousy or feelings of intimidation. In doing so, you miss out on the extraordinariness of the situation.

• You want the teacher to support your ordinary karmic ways of behaving. When they don’t do that, critiquing the teacher’s limitations (according to you) becomes a vehicle for avoiding self-responsibility.

Even if something along these lines is your current condition, there is every possibility that things will shift over time, especially if you are doing regular sadhana. I have seen this happen quite often.

Any light is a beacon

Photo credit: Bruno Van Der Kraan

The teacher's job is to introduce students to the natural state and to give students tools and guidance to work with that introduction. Any degree of realization that a teacher embodies can be a gateway to students also having that realization. A single ray of sun is still fully sunlight.

While all teachers in direct realization traditions must be established in the natural state to some degree and be able to transmit that, students are not bound by the teacher’s level of realization. Students realize according to their own unique dimensions, their own unique configurations and capacities. 

Even better news

So far, I’ve only been talking about the limitations of teachers and students from a relative perspective, in other words, from the perspective of our ordinary experience. But the direct realization traditions also take into account the absolute nature of reality. From this perspective, there are no limitations. 🎉

Every circumstance here is equally made of living wisdom, God. Everything is equally communicative of wisdom, including our so-called limitations. We like to say: I am God showing up as this. In the Dzogchen tradition, everything is described as perfect from the beginning.

As we go along in our practice and have more contact with the natural state, we become less pained about our limitations and the limitations of others. We see their real nature. Capacities and limitations alike are full of the glory of this alive, self-aware reality.

We are still playing our part in a relative sense, but we can suffer less and discover more tenderness toward ourselves and others and also appreciate the humor in our wacky, human situation.

With infinite love,

Shambhavi

Want more? Please join me and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:30pm Pacific. Come in person to Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join the Jaya Kula News Facebook group to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.