The Teacher-Student Relationship: Genpo Roshi & Andrew Cohen

after 10 years around the time that big mine been around 10 years I realized that a number of my students had only been working with me in the last 10 years lacked a certain kind of respect for the vertical it was more like everything had to be horizontal friendship kinship you know and so forth and that the students have been with me for 20 or 25 years had a certain respect that some of the students did not have we had only been with me and when and if and for when a student doesn't have a fundamental level of respect for the teacher the teacher is supposed to be a manifestation and a representation of spirit or that was there or the Buddha yeah where that which is higher and of course different teachers represent that you know their authenticity be able to do that of course depends upon the individual and their own level and my religion all the rest of it but what happens when that is not honored or respected okay what happens is they're not empowered and now give you example and i think is a very simple example think of the the faucet in your kitchen sink okay you've got the spicket okay and if you go back that spigot is connected to a pipe and that pipe goes back to a bigger pipe and it all goes back to the source of where the water comes from now if the student is a cup okay and you put that cup under the spicket and this you turned it on then the water comes through let's say that water is Dharma that's coming through and the spicket is the teacher and the cup is a student there are several things that can go wrong one is the student which many of us try to do is get beside the spigot and not under it so we're trying to have the horizontal relationship oh and we want to be buddy buddies with the teacher Matt you know we want the teacher is my friend and so we end up like this okay and nothing can come through you can get as closer as far away you can actually touch you know get a pretty intimate and still nothing happens in that relationship until the student goes under now some of us and I was one of these I wanted to step on sit on top of the teacher you know come into the docs on room or whatever and say okay here I am he'll teach me well nothing can happen nothing can flow through because I'm sitting on their head the teacher said so we have to find a way to actually submit to actually come under the teacher right so the teacher represents that which is higher right and what we're speaking about before is the conflict between postmodern pluralism and the and the belief that all human beings are equal the conflict between that and the fact that what we call spirit by any name is that which is higher than the self and the individual self than the ego and so the the spiritual master the spiritual teacher is supposed to represent or be a living embodiment to living manifestation or expression and also a metaphor for that which is higher and therefore it's a challenge for the postmodern self that the treasures equality and pluralism more than anything else to learn how to relate to that which is higher without feeling disempowered by that because because the postmodern solve often feels disempowered if it has to embrace higher hierarchy at any level and in fact what you're saying and this is very much my experience and how I see things is that embracing hierarchy is actually a source of spiritual power and a source of strength rather than being disempowering but of course that's something that one has to recognize for oneself it's nothing less than actually empowering and of course if a spiritual teacher spiritual masters authentic they should be able to embody and and manifest the kind of humility that proves to or demonstrates for people that have eyes to see the dairy that they are unbanded me more than anyone else so to speak because they because of their recognition of what of what of spirits true face in relationship to what you were saying before I've had a similar issues whereas when people who were originally my students became my friends they found it difficult to sustain the relationship with me as a teacher and from in my own life ever since I became a teacher and also before that the Spirit has always been more you know what spirit is has always come first for me and I've always been very honest and transparent about that and many were shocked when they found out that the personal relationship to me was actually in the end you know irrelevant if the truth of our relationship or what it was really based on didn't come first because that comes first and we can be friends rich sure but if that doesn't come first then I then our friendship is actually inhibiting the truth of who I am and the truth of what their own potential is and the truth of inhibits the potential of our relationship to empower both of us and to enlighten the world but a lot of people had trouble had trouble and had trouble with this absolutely i mean i remember my own experience one time in interview room the dog sun room of my own teacher and him saying to me you know i don't care about you at all first exactly you know the only thing is i see you as a potential vessel for the Dharma beautiful play and this was in the 70s wonder him it hit me I mean it hit me hard yeah it was it was like a dagger into my heart I don't care about you into the heart of your ego yeah absolutely but it felt like a dagger into my heart yeah nobody's my ego wasn't my heart that wasn't the way that wasn't your real hard no but it was certainly where I guess I guess I guess I guess he had a good aim then he didn't truly gave me like that Trump they also hit me like that number of times in my contact with Trump ah but anyways when he said that the only thing you think I care about is that you become a great vessel or a great vehicle that's fab you know wonderful right and I know that I have the same feelings you know and it's very as it as those assessment as a master I have the same feelings and it's very painful for students to know that in true is the most important thing to me is them as a vehicle david console a vessel for the Dharma absolutely right that some of the words in other words your love for them is not for them as an individual but for them as a potential your vessel for that which is why it's very hard for the ureter yes but but but it's very hardly go to take but but is but from a certain point of view we could say it's not possible to love anybody more than that that's true it's not possible to love anymore anybody during the higher self your love you because you look because you love them so much that you actually don't care about their ego at all what you see because because the greatest gift at least from the point of view of the Dharma the greatest gift we can bring to the world is a vessel for spirit because the more vessels for spirit to are the you know the more spirit come into the world and wood and and we're doing and then we're doing the grain is good and so and so as if so what a teacher or a truly enlightened teacher sees all individuals who come to them as potential vehicles for spirit and doesn't really so much care about the individual in other words the predicament of the particular individual in the particularly personal exactly or all of all the personal psychological emotional but didn't come it is very difficult it is very difficult for students to really get well especially in our day and age absolutely and the reason because because in post modernity the the being an individual being highly individual individual to being a highly individual personality is how we've been how we've been conditioned by culture and suddenly to realize that the most important what we believe is the most important part of our self is our sense of being an individual our sense of being special assisted being unique we say well that's not really what's important here as it is our is it are you capable of humbling yourself enough so that spirit will be able to move through you as it moves through me right you