Photo: Yuan Tsur
Astudent chooses teacher
Through a conscious or unconscious search.
Once found, student faces teacher
In the primeval knowledge of one who is closed
And wishes to be open.
Student faces teacher
Through choosing the possibility to open.
Student faces teacher
So that the teacher may crack open the shell
And create an opening and a doorway.
This is a frightening process,
Annoying and sometimes horrifying.
The collision may be prolonged.
The shell of fear is fueled
From the student very core.
And it is this core
That the teacher wishes to reach.
The teacher acts according to his character:
Some attack with full force,
Some give way only to
Return with renewed vigor,
Some are softly seductive.
The right teacher is one with an open gate
Through which the universe may pass
The center that fueled the shell of fear
Is dead.
The student may not communicate with the teacher.
But must stand opposite in order for the teacher
To forge an opening.
Once the door is opened,
Both have the understanding of shared experience
And loneliness.
Often, the guide’s gateway
Is still not open
And the enormous effort
Invested in opening the student
Actually, serves to provide the energy
Needed to open the guide himself.
The teacher feeds on his student.
The encounter is simple and essentially means:
I want that which seems to you
To be the core of your life.
The right teacher sheds his own shells.
Every so often he leaves his student
For a different kind of encounter
And always he returns a different person,
In a new skin yet ever with the same goal.
This is a form of barter,
The student paying pieces of himself
For the understandings
And the ability to be a gate.
This is a form of barter in which the student
Must calculate time carefully
In order to build enough of himself
To permit independent and creative existence,
In order to build enough of himself
To be capable of severing the connection.
