Thursday, September 14, 2006

Teaching

With palms together,
Good Morning All,
 
The sound of morning is a deep one. Unseen things are happening in preparation for the emergence of the sun over the mountains in the east. Just as the First Teacher came from the east to the west, so too, our sun casting its light on the world.
Bodhidharma was a curmudgeon. He had a beard. It is said that he sewed his eyelids open and sat in a cave facing the wall with his naked eyes for nine years.
 
His student, our second patriarch, demonstrated his earnest desire to be taught by cutting off his arm and presenting it to his Master. Finally the curmudgeon cracked and taught.
 
Today, we take teaching for granted.  Here it is on the Internet, at your community college, at small workshops everywhere. No one jumps through hoops to be admitted. Precious few even see a hoop to pass through. Learning has been studied and teaching has become a profession, just as friendship has become professionalized, the principles of which are now taught in classrooms.
 
Yet in all of this teaching, something is missing. Something is being overlooked. It is the awesome pregnancy of the moment between teacher and student that comes only with a deep and abiding relationship.  We do not support such relationships, professional citizens that we are. We see skills rather than mystery; codified principles, lists of this and that, rather than art.
 
So even though the sun rises over the mountains, its light is often wasted on those that simply expect it to be there.
 
Live without expectation and each moment will give birth to itself.
 
Be well.  
 
 
Team Zen:  Yesterday four and a quarter miles of running and walking.


Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. 
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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