Sayama was one of the few teachers I met in my life that clearly had extraordinary powers. She would often answer my questions before I asked them. I would come into her room with a question in my mind and she would immediately start to answer it and so I didn’t need to say anything. So in terms of a student-teacher relationship there was definitely more content, flow and dynamism than the relationship with Goenka.
AMIR: Would you say that in your relationship with Sayama there was a spiritual intimacy or deep connection? Because what you described about her ability to know what’s on your mind and respond—that must have something to do with knowing each other very well or communicating on a deep level.
STEPHEN: Not exactly. There was deep communication but it was not at all personal. It was technique oriented. She didn’t know me or was interested in me as Stephen, with a certain character and personality. I don’t think she really cared about me that much. She was dedicated to understanding and guiding my experiences, on a specific well-trodden path within the frame of reference of the practice. There is a benefit in this dedication, but also a cost, since it is a bit like a parent only relating to their child according to how well they do at school. A lot will be missing, for example the ability to know the gifts and inner life of each person and so guide the practice more holistically and individually.
Since then, I’ve met many teachers who I sat with and talked to, and though I wouldn’t say they were major teachers in my life, they certainly helped me on the road. Some of those really did have a much more personal relationship with me, such that in a way we never forgot each other. There are a few who I would say have been more significant guides, friends and co-travelers along the way, including Fred von Allman, Joseph Goldstein and particularly Christopher Titmuss, who I have been close to for more than thirty years, and for whom I have enormous respect and appreciation as a friend, a teacher and a colleague.
I want to stress that teaching happens at several levels at once, not all of which may be consciously known by the student. There is the guiding in which the teacher as a kind of tour guide defines the path and the way and supports the student along it. There is the imparting of verbal knowledge, inspiration and hints of what is beyond. There is the modeling, in which the teacher radiates a more invisible way of being. Teaching can also happen when the teacher mirrors or reflects back to you something you asked or did, offering a larger, freer and wiser perspective, and in that moment they become teachers of yours, although it’s not consciously a teacher-student relationship in any way. Once I was in India on a six-week self-retreat, in a small room in an ashram, and there was a spiritual teacher teaching in a nearby ashram. He used to come to my room at 5:30 in the morning every couple of days and we would sit and talk. He would first of all kiss my feet, which is of course an Indian way of expressing his appreciation for my practice, and I bowed to his feet as well because the appreciation was mutual. Then we would talk and I felt that any question I threw out was answered from a huge space, as if throwing a pebble into a great clay jar and listening to the unlimited resonances. You could feel that space behind his eyes, from which I was seen and understood. The words could be about rice and beans or about the subtlest and most delicate movements in consciousness. Everything that was put in there came back out spontaneously, immediately, with no obvious thought behind it, emerging like an echo from this expanded awareness.
He’s not my teacher and I did not see him before or after that, but we had something very powerful, intimate and unforgettable that went on between us. I was clearly in the role of student and he was in the role of teacher. Maybe in another time it could have been reversed, where I might’ve helped him, but that was the framework we chose and kind of agreed on without words, and we were both happy with that.
AMIR: You’re really giving a few very different examples or models of the teacher-student relationship.
STEPHEN: Yes, teaching can be much more existential than sitting on a stage and giving talks. It can be with the eyes, with body language, with the way you are with people, with how you sing to a baby or how you relate to a dog or a cat in the street—and that’s teaching. On a subtle level, it is teaching because it’s coming from that expanded awareness and clarity and wisdom that I was talking about, manifesting naturally within ordinary life. I feel that people who are quite developed teach that way. They don’t always teach as intentionally and consistently, it might be quite spontaneous and actually they can’t do anything else. This doesn’t need a label—but it is teaching.
AMIR: I think you’re saying that for some people the formality of a defined teacher-student interrelation can enhance their ability, pull out of them greater depth, responsibility, care, etc., while for others, it may do the opposite and actually be an obstacle.
STEPHEN: That’s right. In many cases, it is really needed to start off, as it sets the scene, defines the territory of teaching and is familiar to students, a bit like going back to school. Thus it is an agreement that reduces the concerns and insecurities of the unknown. But indeed, there are some students who don’t really need this theatre and for whom the projections and roles of teacher and student are just a nuisance. More than that, it may trigger psychological resistance and friction, perhaps because of some previous pain connected with their relationship with “father.” In any case, the formality and the separation and the roles gradually break down along the way, and then the word “teacher” becomes irrelevant. When you talk about a deeper level, the roles, concepts and words tend to break down and cease to function as a medium of teaching. One should be aware of that. The teaching then happens naturally because nothing else can happen, and it is expressed in speech, body and mind. There isn’t anything that a teacher needs to do, he or she is manifesting their spirituality through themselves. The role vanishes, and there is no thought that says: “I’m going to teach now. Look at the way I’m walking down the corridor.”
AMIR: And yet you seem okay with being called a teacher, you seem comfortable being in that position and fulfilling that function—why is that? Are there any benefits, psychological or spiritual, that you get from being a teacher?
STEPHEN: For sure. The importance is in the doing of it, not in the label, which is not interesting. If I am called a teacher or not called a teacher, it doesn’t turn a hair. One benefit for me is that the expression or teaching of the dharma releases more of the stream. Teaching moves through me and out, so I feel the flow and that’s joyful, and that’s one reason why I keep teaching. Another reason is that there is nothing more interesting for me to do in life.
What else is there? Go to the office every day and do an ordinary job? It’s so joyful to be in the environment of the teaching situation and to be creative and playful. It brings out of me qualities that are needed in this struggling world, so I think it’s what I can do to help the world. Another benefit I feel is that teaching simply opens the heart in the present moment meetings with an individual or even a group. In the last year I have been going ’round pubs and bars, under the title “Buddha at the Bar,” giving talks and meditations to large numbers of people, and it warms the heart to bring a different message to young people who are often so much in need of a more hopeful and meaningful view beyond the usual diet of conflict, materialism, competitiveness, pressure and agitation.
AMIR: I think you’re saying that to have the right relationship to what comes out of you as a teacher means that you have to let go of any sense of possessing the teaching.
STEPHEN: Yes, definitely. You let go of possessing the teaching, of owning the role, and in the same way you let go of you possessing yourself—the self that’s on stage. You have to let go of that. The Dalai Lama expresses this very beautifully before giving teachings by symbolically bowing down to the seat before sitting on it. It’s a ritual that says, “I’m going to sit on that seat and honor the role given to me, but I wear the role like clothes, and then come down and take the clothes off.” Someone once told me that being a Dharma teacher is not about giving the most charismatic and wonderful talk you can give; but if you give the worst talk ever, you get up from your seat and have no more thoughts about it.
AMIR: Do you think that, as the Dalai Lama sits on his seat and wears those clothes, he also activates in himself certain human qualities that are required of anyone in that role? Is that something you experience when you sit on the stage in front of people asking you questions,