Monday, November 27, 2006

Recognising the Real Teacher

A real teacher will not ask you to have 'faith'.

There is no need for the teacher to ask you to have faith. He/ She knows what she is, knows what she is doing, knows how to express herself, knows how to convey.

And a real teacher will ALWAYS have an active sense of humour--it is the hallmark of a true teacher.

No sense of humour=dead person, zombie with zero insight into the true nature of reality---which bubbles with energy, enthusiasm and joy much like a fast paced techno trance remix! Makes no difference how many books he/she might have read, how many degrees some religious authority might have presented to him or whatever. Without a sense of humour, he is dead, a walking encyclopaedia of junk. The real teacher will be full of love for life and ALL its creatures. A teacher who has conditional love is not a real teacher. This does not mean the real teacher does not criticise or use 'bad words'. He is full of compassion, and his criticism will not be hypocritical.

The presence of a real teacher will speak for itself----there will always be a peaceful aura, bordering on bliss, around the teacher, which can be FELT BEYOND DOUBT when you are in his/her company---The real teacher is centred in stillness and silence---though of course stillness may not be there sometimes, they can get moody too. The real teacher may not have read any scriptures, may not be educated.

The real teacher may be a recluse, or may be a player in the real world---he/she could be anywhere. Could be your pizza delivery boy for all you know.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The concept of faith is like a pretty poison that con artists use to sell religious bullsh!t.

Those teachers you write about are rare. Spiritual teachers are often imagined as being outside of normal human experience. Any so-called teacher who claims to be beyond anger, desire, etc. is a liar in my opinion. But those human emotions don't make a teacher any less authentic.

Vikram Madan said...

Hi Allen,

Yes, the kind of teacher I am talking about in this post is very rare.

The kind of teacher I am talking about in this blog entry is the 'enlightened' teacher, as you might have guessed.

When I say "enlightened" in the above sentence, I do not mean it in a subjective or vague sense. I mean it as something tangible, real, I am referring to the "paradigm shift" that spiritual traditions have been talking about, for ages. The paradigm shift that cleans up a person's (primarily hostile) emotional world, once and for all.

I do not know whether you agree whether such enlightenment is real, and that is fine.

Emotions like anger don't make a teacher any less authentic of course.

It is difficult to be beyond anger, in this world.

But there are some who do not dwell on anger, and the past.

Like Eckhart Tolle writes..."an emotion is a brief ripple in the consciousness of an enlightened being."

Vikram