My teacher used to say: “There are no good teachers, only good students.” I’ve come to realize he was as right about that as he was about most everything. The best teacher can’t do a thing with an unwilling, disinterested student. The worst teacher can’t even slow down a good student. Goes against everything we’ve been taught to believe, but it’s true nonetheless. How is it true? Whether or not s/he has heard the saying, a good student knows that “one must use everything in one’s experience to see how one causes oneself to suffer so that can be dropped and suffering ended.” There’s not a field of endeavor in which the successful have not applied that principle. Probably an easier way to understand it in most situations is “You need to get over yourself.” If we want to achieve what we’ve set out to achieve--in our case awakening and ending suffering--then we have to move past and through everything that would come between us and that realization.
In the dualistic world of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate fault and blame are “princes of the realm.” Those of us working out our own salvation diligently have no time for those two hooligans. What we know is, with no fault or blame, we are 100% responsible for ourselves, our lives, our salvation. Not in control of, responsible. We are responsible for using everything that comes into our awareness as an opportunity to see how suffering happens, let that suffering go, and breathe in the sweet air of freedom.
That attitude of heart/mind puts the voices of “keep on suffering” out of business in a hurry.
In gassho,
Cheri