--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > <snip> > > The "cleanest" religions and spiritual > > traditions I've found in history are those who didn't > > allow this, and expected their teachers -- *including* > > the primary teacher or guru -- to work for a living just > > like everybody else, and do their teaching for free. > > Just out of curiosity, why should spiritual > teaching be the only kind of teaching that is > not considered to be a job deserving of > compensation?
Just out of curiosity (since it's only my opinion and my opinions are always in flux), I'll answer. :-) The short answer is, "For the good of the student." The somewhat longer answer is, "For the good of the student, by ensuring the highest possible state of attention in the teacher." Spiritual teaching is full of pitfalls. Many enter into it with good intentions, but find themselves unprepared for these pitfalls, and thus find their state of attention actually being *lowered* by the experience of teaching instead of having it raised. For example, if you engage in one-on-one or one-to-many exchanges with your students, your ego is getting a *lot* of their attention focused on it. That can, and often does, result in a *growth* of the ego in the teacher, as he begins to "believe his own press" and falls prey to the thoughts and feel- ings that the students project onto him. Take this to its all-too-common extreme, and you find teachers who wind up almost addicted to the focus they get from their students, or who wind up sleeping with students who have developed crushes on him, often to the detriment of both parties. Another pitfall is more pragmatic -- money. If the students begin to feel that the teacher is dependent on them financially, nickle-and-diming them just to get by, subtle resentments build up in the students that are again then projected onto the teacher in the form of anger. Faced with that anger (or the psychic impact of other thoughts projected their way by their students), many teachers give it up fairly quickly. Or, feeling constantly financially "pinched" because they really *are* nickle- and-diming their own students to survive, they give it up and go off and find a job. One of the ways I've seen some spiritual organ- izations avoid these pitfalls is to make sure that none of their teachers -- no matter how gung-ho or motivated they may be or claim to be -- are placed in the position of being finan- cially tied to teaching. They suggest that the safest way to teach -- for both teacher and student -- is to have a job that provides you with a comfortable living and enough free time so that you can teach for free, donating your time and energy as a form of selfless service. Having taught in both situations, I can personally speak for the benefits of teaching for free. You have the constant reminder that you *are* doing what you're doing for free, and *for the benefit of the student*. The fact that you *are* doing all this for free keeps this all-important phrase "for the benefit of the student" an ever-present intent in your mind. Also, you never have to go through all the "Is it more important to teach or to eat this month?" stuff that meditation teachers are so familiar with. :-) Teaching can be the most uplifting experience a seeker has available to him in the spiritual arsenal. Standing or sitting in front of a group of people and allowing them to ask questions and feeling the answers come through you can radically change your state of attention for the better. It's just been my experience that this is *amplified* when you perform the teaching with no thought of "What's in it for me?" Selfless giving is a strong tool of self discovery because it *is* selfless, and because it *is* giving. The more it becomes an "exchange," or a "job," the less it seems to shift one's state of attention to higher and higher planes. In short, I think that spiritual teaching should be done for free because it's better for the teacher. It allows him to keep himself in a clean, high, shiny state of attention, and keeps his intent clean. And *because* his intent is clean, the students benefit more from the teaching. That's the best shot I can give it. Hope it helps...
