The Teaching Trap

Spiritual teaching, ignorance, and colonialism

Rigor / mortis

Someone once opined to me that spiritual traditions from Asia could benefit from more “rigor”.

I hoped he was speaking of more watered-down versions of these traditions propagated by some, mainly Western teachers.

But the solution he proposed was not to go back to those traditions in their more unadulterated forms and seek guidance, but to impose on them an entirely different epistemology and set of practices from Western science.

As I’ve written elsewhere, assuming the power of interpretation and the redefinition of what counts as knowledge is the colonialist, supremacist move.

In any case, if you have practiced consistently with accomplished teachers in traditions from Asia, you could not possibly conclude that they are lacking in rigor. The reasons are too obvious and too many.

So here’s my main point.

Ignorance, innocent and otherwise

Practitioners born in Western countries often have no clue what the full fruits are of the spiritual practices they are doing or what it takes to realize those fruits. This goes for many teachers, too.

Some of this ignorance is due to the appropriation of spiritual practices for limited ends such as productivity, muscular flexibility, and ordinary relaxation.

Some of this is due to the prevalence of new-ageified versions of these ancient wisdom traditions with their hyper-individualized, easy-fix promises.

Some of this is due to a lack of contact with anyone who understands what spiritual life requires or who has done these practices to the extent that they have some significant realization of the intended fruit of the practices.

Some of this is due to lineages and spiritual businesses perpetuating themselves by appointing and hiring teachers who themselves have limited understanding of what they are teaching. Students become unwitting inheritors of these watered-down or flat-out erroneous methods.

But most of our lack of understanding about the rigorous path and true power of spiritual practice is due to the deeply supremacist, titan cultures we live in. These cultures groom us to be both too fragile and too convinced of the superiority of our own take on everyone else’s cultures to put in the effort and the requisite time to learn and be “just” students.

An unnatural number of us are desperately seeking great spiritual experiences so that we can feel. . . great. Or we have to be “masters” and “teachers”. Our shame and our fantasies of superiority demand more than the unbranded, unremarked spiritual life “suffered” by millions of ordinary practitioners around the world.

Can I teach this?

Once again last week, a student asked me if they could teach the practices they were just, in that moment, learning for the first time.

This has happened before, of course. I’ve even had a yoga studio owner ask me if I would offer a teacher training in mantra for people who largely have never practiced mantra.

Occasionally a student has left a teaching because they were not getting a certificate or other authorization to teach.

As Patrul Rinpoche said: Though you’ve neglected to practice, You elucidate the teachings for others. Your learning is your own worst enemy.

I started doing sadhana in my mid-twenties. I started teaching in my early forties. This is the norm, not the exception, in my traditions.

Sometimes people will begin teaching in their 20s or 30s, but only after practicing and studying diligently since childhood.

My own Dzogchen teacher was 37 years old when he began to teach after a lifetime of practicing first in Tibet and later in Italy.

Patrul Rinpoche’s principle disciple studied with him and attended him until the student was fifty years old, and Patrul finally told him to leave and teach on his own.

Why? Because most of us—if we even have the capacity to teach—just need to do that much consistent, daily practice and study before we are ready.

Rocket science

Unless we are sociopathic, we would not think of teaching surgery to others after studying it in a class and practicing it a few times.

If we were training to be an artist, we would not ask our teacher who was showing us a technique for the first time, “Do you mind if I teach this to others?”

I’m hard-pressed to think of any other field of learning where people’s first encounter with aspects of the field are in a “teacher” training.

We generally understand that surgery and art are rigorous fields requiring years of study and practice.

So why then do some of us treat the Asian spiritual traditions and practices we’ve encountered as exempt from this respect?

My friends, it’s racism, not rocket science. 🤣

I want to say this really bluntly.

Maybe you are just starting a spiritual practice, but you are already fantasizing about becoming a spiritual teacher. Certainly a surprising number of my students over the years have confessed to me, or demonstrated, that “Guru” is their idealized career path.

Maybe you are teaching what you have not practiced or have practiced insufficiently.

Maybe you have modified the methods and aims of spiritual traditions of which you have only a superficial understanding. And you think that is totally fine and even that you have improved on them.

The student who asked me if she could teach what she had not yet practiced was innocent and also a victim of other teachers who did not understand the value and necessity of practice.

But whether you suffer from innocent ignorance, or are a monetizing megalomaniac, you have inherited and are propagating racist, supremacist, colonialist orientations to the non-Abrahamic spiritual traditions.

Kindred 108 hosts an unusually diverse blend of offerings. Many of you reading this are both progressive politically and engaged in spiritual life. So take this as yet another vector for analyzing and ejecting the internalized assumptions and behaviors of supremacist cultures.

And don’t forget to enjoy the demolition!

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

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