Our Teachers

My newsletter is a little late today because I woke up this morning in beautiful St Martin. I just completed a month long Intro to Buddhism class that I shadowed along side my daughter. It was a very interesting topic to approach through an academic lens and it has filled in many gaps in my understanding of Buddhism.

One of the many things I learned (I took 60 pages of notes :)) is that one of the ways the Buddhist tradition spread so prolifically was by using stories celestial bodhisattvas (almost god like beings) that had magical powers. 

One of the most famous, Avalokitesvara, is widely known as the Bodhisattva of Compassion. His name means “one that observes all”.  He operates to help people overcome their desire, hatred and foolishness and to free them from their own dangers. To accomplish this, he takes many forms. Sometimes he is a buddha or a teacher, a ruler or king, a god, an elder, a child, and even a female prostitute to teach men about their addiction to their sexual desires. He appears to people in various forms; choosing the form of the best teacher for the lesson they need to learn and there is always the theme of salvation and rescue.

 This got me thinking about my teachers; of course the obvious ones; my mentors, my parents, my friends, my children but then I started to expand it out to think about who else and what else teaches us. Our experiences; both the joyous and the challenging teach us and so do the difficult people in our lives.  I had a friendship end recently; she is a huge teacher for me in knowing what I deserve. Even the kittens I was fostering; they were my teachers in patience, compassion and letting go.

Our bodies are our teachers as well- even (especially) when they aren’t doing what we want them to do and we practiced using our bodies as our teachers on the mat this week. How we do that is a combination of listening and learning and all the while softening the judgment. When we can look at an ache or pain or difficult experience as a chance to learn and understand a lesson, it can become just a bit softer and that helps us suffer less. I like to think perhaps it’s Avalokitesvara coming down to share his compassion with us so we can be more compassionate with ourselves.