Quick hit: service to the teacher

I've blogged recently about the experience of entering a new physical training regimen, and all the complicated monkey-mind psychological baggage that brings up. But I've also blogged about my sense of debt to my teachers, and the sense--pretty much arising from the Sino-Japanese-Tibetan contexts in which the debts were incurred--of privilege that ensues when you actually have some grasp of the magnitude of what the teachers have willingly given you. It certainly informs how I myself think about teaching, and about the nature of the bond--the commitment beyond death--that can, and maybe should, obtain between teachers and students of concomitant commitment.

And I also recognize that, in the mercantile West, and especially when you introduce purchase-and-sale into the exchange, such dynamics can't, and maybe even oughtn't, to obtain. But that doesn't mean that I can't choose to perceive, and proceed from a perception, that connects me with ways of proceeding and interacting with the teacher that feel right.

Not everybody relates to the teacher this way. Not every teacher is right for every student. Not everybody should relate to the teacher in this way. But I do.

So when I read on the teacher's blog that, due to the demands of building the business, she winds up eating take-out and frozen food, I find myself thinking, "That's not appropriate, that my teacher should have to do that."

And so, at an hour when I'm usually thinking of going to sleep--and of the goddamned 8:00AM meetings which loom about 10 hours away, I'm making the hummus recipe that another admired friend gave us one magical night. And when I have the chance to pass this along as an offering to my admired teacher tomorrow night, it's going to feel like closing a very important circle. Or, as she would say, "a loop."

Once again.