The Teacher

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

I was listening to an interview with the Dalai Lama this week where he spoke about the role of a teacher in one’s life.

Having sat with many master teachers like the Dalai Lama over the past twenty years, I’ve noticed a common thread in their sentiments — about what it takes to be a genuine teacher.

It lies in the intention.

His Holiness said: “A teacher is one who brings awakening to the lives of their students in their hearts. But one cannot be a teacher without the student. The student creates the teacher.”

He went on: “The only thing you need to focus on in becoming a teacher is the benefit that you bring from your own practice to others around you.”

As I listened, I thought of my teaching in the arts—but more so, I even began to refract this through my work with customers at Mighty Networks. Whether I’m teaching acting or technology, my goal is the same: to be of benefit to others and to meet them with a compassionate heart.

I’m also still thinking about that idea—that the student creates the teacher. It’s humbling, right?

It’s a reminder that I don’t need to push or prove. I simply need to, in any situation, show up, ask how I can be of service, and stay rooted in my own practice.

Because in the end, maybe teaching isn’t about always having the answers. It’s about becoming someone worth learning from.

A POEM

“Joy is Such a Human Madness” by Ross Gay

originally published in The Book of Delights

Among the most beautiful things I've ever heard anyone say came from my student Bethany, talking about her pedagogical aspirations or ethos, how she wanted to be as a teacher, and what she wanted her classrooms to be: "What if we joined our wildernesses together?"

Sit with that for a minute. That the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexpected territory, and that yours and mine might somewhere, somehow, meet. Might, even, join.

And what if the wilderness - perhaps the densest wild in there - thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines and rivers (have I made the metaphor clear?) - is our sorrow?

Or... the 'intolerable.' It astonishes me sometimes - no, often - how every person I get to know - everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything - lives with some profound personal sorrow... Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness?

Is sorrow the true wild?

And if it is - and if we join them - your wild to mine - what's that?

For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.

What if we joined our sorrow, I'm saying.

I'm saying: What if that is joy?

Grateful,

Michael