Tantrik Tantrum
Sunday, January 13th, 2008A student told me a story about a teacher who expressed disappointment in his students. They weren’t good enough for him.
My teachers, on the other hand, generally did their best to make us students as “bad” as possible.
The head of my lineage, Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati, described his method of working with students this way: “I don’t give them anything they want, and I give them everything they don’t want.” Then he giggled.
This is a recipe for a Tantrik tantrum! When you are not getting what you want, and you are simultaneously getting what you don’t want, the force of your attachments in the form of preferences and aversions becomes naked and strong. In this situation, you cannot avoid learning about your fixations.
Only when we learn about our fixations can we work to relax them using the teachings. What we don’t recognize can and will limit us.
My diksha Guru held three-week-long retreats during which students arose at 4 am and worked or practiced continuously until 9 pm or later. No days off. You can bet that there were a bunch of Tantrik tantrums being thrown at these shindigs!
People acted out their fixations for all to see and experience. It could get pretty uncomfortable. But we understood clearly that any reactivity we experienced to how someone else showed up in the world was just that: OUR REACTIVITY. No one else’s responsibility.
In the end, if you were working your practice, taking responsibility and relaxing with what actually is, you discovered empathy and compassion, even for the student you wanted to strangle at the beginning of the retreat. And for yourself.
Sometimes a student insists on being Mr. or Ms. Holy-All-the-Time. You can spit in such a person’s face, and they continue to project an “above it all” attitude.
Some students continually worry about imposing themselves, are too shy to speak up or speak in whispery, apologetic voices.
And there are the angry ones, the competitive ones, and the bossy, know-it-all ones. And the passive-aggressive professional victims. And the slow ones. And the ultra-serious, over-earnest ones.
Did I mention students who are terminally enthusiastic? Gung ho at the beginning, but never follow through with anything?
My teachers would do anything possible to bring awareness of fixations to students and to give us the tools to help us relax and expand our way of being in the world. I’ve gotten hard sadhana, hugs, and hits.
When you ask someone to teach you in a Tantrik tradition, expect anything. Expect that your teacher wants you to Self-realize and will do anything to help bring that about.
Fixations plus the natural desire to self-realize are the tools we have to work with in Tantra. We always work with exactly what we’ve already got and with exactly what shows up.
If you are a student, recognize that getting naked in a Tantrik tradition does not mean taking off your clothes and hopping into the bathtub with Sting. (Or Trudie.) It means, recognizing your real situation and working directly with that.
Students who try to hide their fixations from teachers only reveal another layer of fixation. So, the first thing that any student of authentic Tantra might want to consider is surrendering or dropping any sense of embarrassment.
Being human is absolutely not embarrassing. Embarrassment and shame are not your inner dimension. They are just the outer controls, the containers for your real life. Let go, and your real life can begin.
Some teachers and students measure themselves by the supposed fabulousness of their own students or teachers. I used to think this way, but it was just a concept.
First of all, anyone who shows up and learns is fabulous. If you are a teacher with something authentic to share, and students want to share that with you, this is divine grace and the life process at work. Nothing more need be said about it, and there is certainly no cause for complaint, other than the cause of ego fixation.
Second, sometimes the best students are the only ones who can learn from the worst teachers, and sometimes the best teachers are the only ones that can help the stick-in-the-mud students.
I once knew a great teacher who generally had what I considered to be lackluster students. I couldn’t figure this out. Then I realized that some other teacher might have given up on these students. But this teacher did not. He had the skill and temperment to work with these students, and so they came to him.
In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi
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