How would someone go about getting you to formally be their teacher?
What would that entail?
I get this from time to time.
How to take you on as my teacher even though I live thousands of kilometers away.
I tried doing some online courses for a while.
Practically speaking, there's not that much I can do for people who aren't in my immediate vicinity.
So the obvious answer is, well, if you want,
someone to be their teacher, you should go to them.
And I always think back to this movie, King of American Shaolin, about this guy who goes, when I was younger, I saw it, it's an 80s movie, I think.
And he goes to the Shaolin monastery in China, I think, and they make him sit out in the courtyard, kind of like Fight Club, which was a 90s movie, I think.
They make him sit out in the courtyard and they don't let him in.
And so he sits out in the courtyard and he waits.
And he spends like days out there in the rain until they finally let him in.
And I always think back to, well, maybe that's sometimes how hard it can be to get into a meditation center and find a teacher.
that it may not be easy and sometimes expecting it to be easy or it just may not be possible to find a teacher in your immediate vicinity or be able to stay at home and find a teacher when I was looking for a teacher I got on a plane and flew to Thailand and
just started wandering and finally found the place where I began to practice.
So, practically speaking,
There's not much that can be done.
But this is a different question.
People often want to feel somehow that they formally have a teacher.
It's very traditional and ritualistic, and I kind of shy away from the labels that it involves and entails.
But in our tradition, it is common to take a teacher and they have a whole ceremony for asking someone to...
Not just to be your teacher, but asking for the meditation training.
It's called Kunkamathan, which means entering into the meditation, the state of being a meditator, entering the meditation practice.
So we can do that, but again, not something you do over the internet, for example.
So I guess I'm going to go out on a limb or go out and go ahead and say that you'd have to come here if you want me to take you want to take me or anyone as your teacher.
The thing to do is to find that person in person, visit them, at the very least visit them and have a ceremony.
I mean, that would maybe be something to do.
Come, do a ceremony and then give you some basic tips, pointers, instruction on meditation.
And then you can go home and continue practice.
And then, like, I know you.
And then I can have an excuse to say, well, this person I've met, so when they send me emails, I will respond to them.
because otherwise I don't respond to all the email requests and and inquiries into practice because it's just too much so that would be something that would be a step come meet and we can even do a an opening ceremony to give you the meditation practice formally without