by Tang Huyen

A teacher who really and truly wants freedom and promotes freedom will attract students who are like-minded, and they will mutually enjoy their freedom. And conversely a teacher who really and truly wants slaves will attract slaves, and they will mutually enjoy their master-slave relationship.

We can only start from where we are, and then
move somewhere else, hopefully a better place, but
perhaps a worse one, even a much worse one, like
a wreckage, which happens more often than people
realise.

Namdrol (Malcolm Smith) is a very intelligent and
learned American student of the Tibetan religion
who posted on these boards for many years. He
studied with top-flight teachers from Tibet, and
ended up in some kind of mental seizure.

As to teaching and learning being a game, it is not
if people are honest and frank with each other,
giving honest and frank feedback to each other
without fear.

One very good way to avoid turning teaching and
learning into a game is to conscientiously apply
the very norms and standards proclaimed by the
teacher on himself, so that, say, if he proclaims
no-self, you apply that norm and standard of him
on himself to check whether he indeed practices
no-self, if he proclaims dancing, you apply that
norm and standard of him on himself to check
whether he indeed practices dancing, if he
proclaims mindfulness, you apply that norm and
standard of him on himself to check whether he
indeed practices mindfulness.

You then may discover that even as he preaches
no-self, he grows an enormous self that is prickly
and will blow up all over the place if you
challenge his claimed attainments (for example,
that he has no self left), that even as he preaches
mindfulness, he spends a great part of his energy
denying himself to himself and blocking himself
from himself, with the result that he is mostly
self-alienated, a stranger to himself, that even as
he preaches freedom, he carefully selects students
and followers who are not too smart, not too
perceptive, not too inquisitive, not too
independent, so that they wouldn't question him
(in other words, so that they would be docile
puppets to him who would merely parrot his
teaching), etc.

If he was really practicing what he preaches, for
example no-self, he would have no reaction or
would laugh his teeth off when others question
his attainments and would say: "You may
question my attainments all you like, please get
rid of them for me, too, whilst you're at it, it
doesn't do a thing to me." If he was really
practicing what he preaches, for example freedom,
he would carefully select his students and
followers so that they are smart, perceptive,
inquisitive, independent, in other words, so that
they can exercise their freedom and make up
their own mind, especially about him, e.g.,
whether he is worth his salt or not.

If you look around, many teachers are teachers,
not because of the content of what they teach,
but because they have the charisma to attract
students, with the content of what they teach
being a mere excuse. The content of what they
teach (their religious affiliation, for example) is
quite fungible. What matters is their charisma,
which attracts a herd to them, and the appeal
of them to their students and followers is
largely along the line of the herd instinct. Such
teachers serve largely as herd leaders and their
students and followers as herd followers, so
that they altogether get their herd instinct
mutually stroked all around. The religious
appearance or the teaching milieu is pure sham.

But of course students and teachers have a way
of choosing each other, they have a way of
smelling each other out miles away, even sight
unseen, so that they would know how to adapt
to each other, even before they ever meet.

A teacher who really and truly wants freedom
and promotes freedom will attract students
who are like-minded, and they will mutually
enjoy their freedom, and conversely a teacher
who really and truly wants slaves (though he
hardly can say it out loud) will attract slaves,
and they will mutually enjoy their master-slave
relationship. They grow on each other.

The mutual selection can be enormously helped
by words of mouth, which these days are in their
turn enormously helped by modern
communication.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on June 28, 2004, in reply to a question from "zero" about the value of teaching and learning in esoteric and philosophical contexts. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. This post applies a simple empirical test to spiritual teachers: do they practice what they preach? Tang Huyen notes that the test is usually easy to run — a teacher who preaches no-self but reacts explosively to being challenged, who preaches freedom but selects docile followers, has failed it visibly. More interesting is his analysis of the herd mechanism: many teachers attract students not through the content of their teaching but through charisma alone, with both parties satisfying the herd instinct. The closing observation — that teachers and students select each other by smell, even sight unseen, and grow together in whatever direction they share — is one of his sharpest.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

🌲