No Shame. No Blame.
Sunday, March 5th, 2006The relationship between teacher and student is the central practice of Tantra. Your relationship with your teacher is your sadhana. The View of the tradition is that your relationship with your teacher releases you into an expanded state of Reality. The teacher is your gateway.
The relationship between a student and a teacher in the Tantrik tradition is intense. Tantra is often called “the fast path.” In other words, it’s a faster path to Reality than sitting and staring at a white wall for lifetimes on end. Much of this “fastness” happens between you and your teacher. The teacher does everything in her or his power to provoke, disturb, and generally pull the ground out from underneath your feet.
What you don’t know about yourself and the world will limit you. A Tantrik teacher holds up a flaming mirror so you can see your real situation.
When the topic of “Guru” comes up, the knee-jerk reaction of many Americans, and Indians, is to launch into stories of Gurus gone wrong. Many of these stories are founded on conventional morality and involve the sexual escapades of teachers.
No one in an authentic Guru-disciple relationship with a Tantrik teacher cares one iota about their teacher’s sexual or other activities. And if you do find that you are bothered, you must take responsibility for that reactivity and make it part of your sadhana.
However, taking responsibility does not mean taking the blame. You are no more the cause of your reactive patterns than is anyone else. The ultimate cause of anyone’s behavior or reactions is fathomless and infinite. Switching from “it’s all your fault,” to “I know it’s just me,” is really no switch at all. Both stances further the survivalist goals of small “I.” Both are egotistical.
Taking responsibility means that once you become aware of the reactive patterns you have inherited or collected along the way, you then make the effort to relax them. Ultimately, taking responsibility means demonstrating respect for the life process by doing the work to assist your little piece of it in realizing the full potential of human life.
There’s a famous story about a teacher with a very accomplished student who was nearing the end of his training. The teacher invited the student over to his house, something that had never occurred during all the years they had worked together. Of course the student felt greatly honored. He bathed, put on clean clothes, and bought a gift for his teacher.
The student knocked on his teacher’s door. When the door opened, there was his teacher, dirty, disheveled, and with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The teacher welcomed the student in. The house was a filthy wreck. Books, papers, clothing, and empty bottles of wine and other liquors covered every surface. A woman poked her head out from the kitchen and asked the guest if he would like something to eat. “Allow me to introduce my girlfriend,” said the teacher. The student had always assumed his teacher was celibate!
The student freaked out. He got very angry and felt betrayed. But the years of training eventually kicked in, and the student realized that the freak out was the teacher’s parting gift. Now the student had the opportunity to relax more deeply. In the Tantrik way, being freaked out by your teacher is a form of grace.
We can also be freaked out by the behavior of a less-than-highly-realized teacher. Most teachers are a mixed bag. This is human life. Most teachers have something, or much to offer, but they still have a lot of relaxing to do. As long as both teacher and student
have a solid core of unstoppable desire for Reality, this need not hinder anyone.
Of course, sometimes this is not the case. Abuses and delusions, rather than relaxation and Reality, can build up on both sides. Again, this is human life.
But from the perspective of a sincere student, whether your teacher is a siddha or sleaze ball, or anything in between, the situations are identical in this respect: Your reactivity is still your reactivity. Taking responsibility for your reactivity, expanding your View, and developing greater discrimination might lead to you stay with a teacher, or it might lead to you leave. But whether you stay or go, doing either out of fear and reactivity will cause you to lose the growth potential inherent in any situation.
Looking at your real situation is painful. Breaking habits of shame and blame is hard. Being totally responsible is the key.
Most people on the planet at any given slice of time just don’t want to give up their beliefs, convictions, self-definitions, habitual reactions, and compulsive pleasures. They certainly don’t want a Tantrik Guru messing up their plans and arrangements! We are all tending in the direction of moksha, but some of us would rather just keep on “tending.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Tantra has much to offer those who simply do not want to go faster, or much faster. Tantra offers us beautiful universalist teachings about how to conduct the business of everyday life. These are potentially for everyone. There is no need to do strenuous yogic sadhanas to participate in Tantra and benefit from it.
The desire to embark fully on the Tantrik path is a matter of fate, that huge constellation of unknowable events that burps out a real Tantrika now and then. That same cosmic constellation is also giving birth to every life situation in which we find ourselves.
Our only job is to live authentically and responsibly. No shame. No blame.
OM Shanti,
Shambhavi
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