Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson Armstrong answers a question about how Buddhist traditions can move forward in the West, and he warns against dogmatic attachment to scripture, institutions and gurus. He argues that teacher and student should walk together as fellow learners who can both make mistakes, and that ongoing relationships, including family life, show us our blind spots so we can keep growing.
Key points
- Dogmatism about scripture and institutions can split communities and, at its worst, lead to wars and destruction, so the blind spots this creates need to be addressed.
- Delson draws on Ken Wilber's integral framework and says waking up has to be paired with cleaning up, growing up and showing up, rather than treated as a static achievement.
- He criticises the guru-devotee dynamic where the teacher is deified, since it gives the teacher a power trip and leaves students open to manipulation or abuse.
- He proposes that the teacher-student relationship be one of shared exploration ("I've been here, do you want to tag along?") rather than one of higher and lower status.
- He holds that teachers can be wrong and that his own students act as a mirror, showing him what he needs to change; relationships of give-and-take are where much karma is exchanged.
- He suggests that humility and willingness to say "I was a jerk here, I can do better" is the healthy step, whereas a teacher and student who both believe the teacher can never err make a bad mix.
Themes
Transcript
Introducing the teachings in the West
Do you have a vision for how traditions can move forward or how we can continue to introduce these teachings, especially in the West that maybe are less familiar with them, especially in the context where what we mainly hear about in the news is when gurus do terrible things, which for all I know might be the minority, it's just the ones we hear about, I've got no idea. But yeah, is it something you've thought about beyond just your personal journey?
Yeah, yeah, I definitely have contemplated on this, and one thing I'll say about it is, well, a few things. One is, you know, I have seen the risk of what happens when we become too dogmatic about scripture. We've talked about this a little bit, but they become too dogmatic about institutions and scriptures. Yeah, I mean, at the very very least it causes a rift in the community or a rift amongst two people or something, and at the very worst we've seen that it causes wars and it causes devastation and destruction. So those blind spots that humanity has, I think, needs to be addressed in some way. And this is where, you know, I love to bring in someone like Ken Wilber and his whole integral theory, because there we're looking at not just waking up but also cleaning up. This process of cleaning up is not as explicit as it was as it is now, as it was when we were talking about like 2,600 years ago or 3,000 years ago. Yes, there is ethics and yes there's sila, and that's wonderful.
But there's also bad eggs, yes, and there might be not that many compared to all the well-intentioned practitioners, but I think the process of cleaning up is one part, and the growing up and showing up continues to evolve. So we should not make waking up a static thing. We should see it in tandem to growing up and showing up, both as teachers, like for myself, and the community. So some people love to be in, like, satsangs or places where they're doing bhajans, where they're giving wonderful offerings to the deities and these kinds of things, and then they deify the guru, and that's just their devotion, but that gives a very very potent power trip, or can give a very very potent power trip, to the guru, who is by all means human, and that risks them being manipulated, abused or whatever by the group. So I think the solution to this is that the relationship between teacher and student needs to be
needs to be understood not as, hey, I am higher and you are lower, but that, hey, I've been here and this is the stuff that I know. Do you want to tag along? Do you want to see it? And there are people who come and say, yeah, I want to know it, and we walk as friends, right? And so we walk with the understanding that our teachers can be failures and that our teachers may not know what they're talking about. I think if we have that tempered kind of viewpoint then we won't go wrong. And as teachers, for myself, if I understand that, hey, I can make mistakes, and if I can accept it with some level of willingness to change it, then the student is teaching me, the student is reflecting to me what I need to change. And that's the whole purpose of relationships, whether it's teacher-student, romantic relationships, relationship between siblings, parents and child. There's always a give-and-take, and that's where a lot of karma is exchanged in relationships. So
If you truly want to test out the idea and the notion of the perfected enlightened being, as the joke goes, spend a weekend with your family and see how that goes. So that's why I say relationships allow us to continually evolve. If we have the humility and the openness to say, you know what, I was a jerk here and I probably should have done this and this and this, and I can do better, I think that's the step in the right direction, instead of where the guru is concretized and says, I can never make any mistakes. And the student also believes the same thing. That's a bad mix.