The contemplating teacher: taking the long view (1) // D/A Magazine

the contemplating teacher:

taking the long view (1)

Lee Worley

When we observe the communication between parent and child or between a teacher and a student we readily see that relationship is fundamental to learning. Beyond these primary relationships, there are numbers of interlocking relationships that either help or hinder learning: between the student and other students, teacher and other teachers, the class and its teacher and both class and teacher with the space, time and environment. Widening the circle even further, we see the effect of other relationships such as that between teacher and parents, student and his or her parents, teachers and administrators and, of course, that of teacher and student to the lesson itself. Relationship, or the lack of it, really matters.

Perhaps it is the very obviousness of this truism that obscures its importance. Without taking time here to investigate why relationship has been so marginalized, ignored or left to chance in our teaching and learning arenas, I propose to discuss one approach to healing these rifts and returning the heart connection to the learning process. It is called “contemplative education” and it begins with the most intimate of relationships ― relationship with oneself.

“Contemplative education” is becoming an increasingly popular term in higher education in the United States. This doesn’t surprise me. Thirty years ago Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan meditation master who had been transplanted to this country, identified what wasn’t working in our educational system and as a consequence founded Naropa Institute. He perceived that education must speak to and train the whole person, body, mind and spirit and also train the body, mind and spirit’s relationship to its environment on as broad a scale as possible. This was true then and now and will continue to be true as we move further into the 21^st century. It remains true despite innovations in computer technology or other devices that may pop up. Surprisingly it has taken American education some time to acknowledge this need for an education that transcends factual information within discreet areas of expertise and instead focuses on radically transforming the whole being and his or her world. Foundations such as the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and Fetzer Institute have recently begun to proclaim that, “a fully democratic society requires a system of higher education which trains students in reflective insight as well as critical thinking.” [1]

This is learning that includes reflection as well as analysis, focus on personal growth as well as skill mastery, developing tolerance for ambiguity, openness to reframing, imagination as a way of understanding as important as rational argument. [2]

While the mainstream may take time to catch up, at Naropa University and elsewhere this approach is gaining attention. The question is, how can we deliver such an education?

What comes up urgently and often in discussions at Naropa is a need to find a language to explain what we mean by contemplative education. How can we teach it or market it if we can’t talk about it, describe it, label it? How do we even know what it is if we can’t explain it in our catalogue and web pages? Some of us who were around Naropa in its early days have doubts about this categorizing and labeling process. Thirty years ago when we brought our raw recruit minds to the task of creating this educational model, we didn’t call it “contemplative education,” and we didn’t call Naropa a university. For the most part we were a bunch of disaffected teachers, philosophers and artists who had begun to meditate, or were at least thinking about doing so, and who were intrigued to explore what meditative mind might bring to the ways we approach our art forms or academic disciplines. Most importantly, we were interested to know if there was a way to alter both our minds and education for the better.

In retrospect, I think it fortunate that in the mid-seventies we had so little in the way of resources. There was no way to get important quickly. No money, no space, no skillful marketing department, and very few students. We had time to explore the meditative mind, to work with things simply: body as body, thoughts as thoughts, space as whatever space it was we had, making things up as we went along as only beginners can. Without the pressure to create learning experiences designed to help students pass tests, we gave our experience to our students and they, in turn, tuned in to meditation and dropped out of the competitive learning game, generously giving their experience back to us. No recipe can replace this trial and error approach to learning. Naropa University’s 30-year history of struggle and perseverance by faculty who sacrificed comfort and recognition in favor of their meditation practice cannot be overlooked in the development of its contemplative message.

I suggest, as others have, that delivering a contemplative education begins with having a contemplative teacher, a contemplative educator. As Naropa University assumes a place within the academy, it has a responsibility to share its discoveries and heritage. Starting with the development of the teacher is good news since it means not having to rely on a supportive administration or special academic content, the perfect space, or parental permission to convey a contemplative message. Modeling this message in body and speech ― how you listen and what you notice ― may be more trustworthy than any philosophical frame. Of course there are techniques that offer support to the contemplative teacher. Listening to the sound of a bell or gong, keeping a clean room, creating a shrine alcove, pausing between activities, bowing before and after class, rearranging the desks, and alternating physical with mental activity help facilitate a contemplative message, but contemplative education is not a costume or a theory. These same techniques could benefit any teaching situation, or they could simply be recipe ideas. Without testing them in the fire of the contemplative mind they remain rather awkward, maybe even weird and will soon be abandoned by the teacher who isn’t doing the necessary “inner work.”

The contemplating teacher

If we begin to think of the meaning of “contemplative” as an active verb, the contemplative teacher is one who contemplates things. Experiment with an adjective and you get: the contemplating teacher, the contemplating education. Contemplative implies deep listening, deep hearing, deep questioning, considering, consideration, bringing the whole body and mind to bear on the moment. Stripped of the somewhat cloister-like or “spiritual” connotations of the word contemplative, the contemplating teacher is none other than one who is able to fully attend to the student, the subject, and the moment at hand, warmly and without fear. There’s nothing unique here.

“My religion is kindness,” the Dalai Lama replies, when asked about his religion. A contemplating teacher is, above all, a kind teacher. Buddhism teaches that kindness, or maitri or metta, begins with being kind to oneself. Not theoretically, but actually, when we are good to ourselves, we manifest goodness and are naturally good to other beings. How can we learn this? Or rather, how do we know when we are not being good to ourselves? Is good-to-self the chocolate we allow after a hard day? The early morning jog around the block? Is it getting sick so we can take a day off? Do we really know when we are being kind to our body, mind and spirit? Basic goodness, or bodhicitta, the fundamental goodness that supports life is not easy for Westerners to accept as the nature of things. We can cite lots of historical reasons why this is so, of course. In Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa says,

Having never developed sympathy or gentleness towards themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused. Instead of appreciating our lives, we often take our existence for granted or we find it depressing and burdensome. [3]

Photo: © Zsolt Zsoló Kóté

Meditation

The first task of the contemplating teacher is to uncover in both his or her body and mind an unshakeable conviction that goodness is basic, intrinsic, firm. This will not come just through rewiring our conceptual frames. Nor will it come through a course of psychiatric probing although this may accompany the uncovering work that we do with ourselves. We need to actually sit down, stop doing stuff and begin to take a look at what goes on in what we call “our mind.” In Buddhism, this is called meditation.

We need to meditate. What Buddhists call meditation or formless practice is called contemplation in some Catholic traditions, while the word meditation refers to meditating on something. My Tibetan teacher, the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche calls Buddhism a “science of mind.”

Meditation means to become familiarized with something, a pattern or an experience. Meditation is basically a method to develop realization and to familiarize oneself with one’s own basic nature of mind. Thus, the meditation practice — whatever practice we do — should be something that helps us develop our mental strength, the strength of mindfulness, the strength of inner peace, and the strength to deal with the negative disturbing emotions of our mind. [4]

Meditation (or contemplation) is a tool of inquiry into this most personal of experiences: who am I? To develop kindness to myself, I need to take a good long look at what I call “myself” so I can begin to appreciate the blessing of having a body and a mind, the working basis for loving and uplifting our world.

Sometimes meditation also is connected with achieving a higher state of mind by entering into a trance or absorption state of some kind. But here we are talking about a completely different concept of meditation: unconditional meditation, without any object or idea in mind. In the Shambhala tradition meditation is simply training our state of being so that our mind and body can be synchronized. Through the practice of meditation, we can learn to be without deception, to be fully genuine and alive. [5]

Are there ways other than meditating to accomplish this radical shift from outward doing to inward attending? Some say no. My feeling is that since meditation is simple, without much contrivance or need for expensive equipment and since it can be done by anyone, anywhere, why seek further? But, it takes time. As teachers we already know that for students to learn something takes time. We understand that without repetition and integration the lesson will not stick. Why should we expect that our own learning curve is more accelerated than that of our students? What makes us think that we can apply a quick fix to becoming kind to ourselves? We might be kinder to our students by behaving in ways that support this message of patience. We need to spend time practicing. Life takes time!

Aspiration

The teacher need not wait until meditative mind has brought about a transformation to enter the classroom. With practice, “me first” transforms into “we” and eventually becomes, “all beings are my guests.” Remarkably, the earnest efforts that the meditator puts into the development of a meditation practice begin to flavor his or her manifestation in the world right away.

When Naropa Institute started in 1976, most faculty members were just beginning to experiment with a meditation practice. Meditation had not had time to work its magic in and on us. However, we were very committed to it and to Naropa’s flourishing in the United States. As a new contemplating teacher, it is fruitful if a few moments of aspirational contemplation precede daily meditation practice. Be honest about this. It is better to state as an aspiration the hope that meditating will enable you to tolerate Jamie’s completely off the wall interruptions today than to waste time theorizing about a better world down the line. Why do you want to be this contemplative teacher today? What do you hope to achieve for yourself and for those you teach today? The aspiration could be something quite different next time you sit down. Our MA Education students report that after only four weeks of daily meditation at their first summer intensive they are able to manifest differently (and get different results) in their classrooms. However, this is only a beginning to a contemplative life.

Aspiring and meditating are the base and the ground and never become passé, but these alone do not make a contemplative teacher. Once we leave the meditation cushion and enter daily activity the pressures of modern life will easily and quickly toss our contemplating mind overboard and we’re back to business as usual. I call it “knee-jerk reactivity.” This won’t always be the case, but it is true for a long time. Part of becoming kind to self is becoming more relaxed about your imperfections and backslidings in this area. When you lovingly accept even the worst parts of your psyche you can begin to identify yourself as a contemplative educator. And even this acceptance is fleeting and fickle and must be trained over and over again.

[1] The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, www.contemplativemind.org.

[2] Marilyn McEntyre, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA, as quoted in Survey of Transformative and Spiritual Dimensions of Higher Education, published by the Fetzer Institute, www.contemplativemind.org/resources/pubs/fetzer_report.pdf, p. 14, c. 2004.

[3] Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, p. 35.

[4] Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Shamatha, p. 9.

[5] Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala, p. 37.

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Lee Worley was a founding member, actress and director in Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theater. At the request of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, she moved to Boulder in 1976 to develop Naropa Institute. She was chair of its Theater Studies program for many years and also created Naropa University’s pilot BA in Interdisciplinary Studies. She collaborated in the development of Naropa University’s InterArts BA and is currently also core faculty in the Contemplative Education MA degree. She teaches Mudra Space Awareness, a performance training based in principles of Tibetan yoga as taught to her by Trungpa Rinpoche, in Europe and the United States.

Text: © 2010 by Lee Worley. All rights reserved. This article is being published by Dharma/Arte by arrangement with the author and may not be archived or distributed further without the author’s express permission.

The contemplating teacher: taking the long view (1) | 2010 | d/a magazine