1
00:00:00,031 --> 00:00:05,525
Is it necessary to have an enlightened teacher or anyone who has reached a certain level can be a teacher?

2
00:00:07,349 --> 00:00:09,134
You don't even have to have reached a level.

3
00:00:09,234 --> 00:00:16,572
I mean, if you compare it, what your teachers teach, I talked about this last week a little bit,

4
00:00:19,032 --> 00:00:25,122
If you take the Visuddhimagga as a guide, it says anyone can teach.

5
00:00:26,544 --> 00:00:30,010
The more knowledge they have of the Buddha's teaching, the better they'll be able to teach.

6
00:00:30,851 --> 00:00:35,218
And even better than having knowledge of the Buddha's teaching is having the realizations.

7
00:00:35,419 --> 00:00:43,572
So the best is to go to the Buddha, then go to an arahat, then go to an anagami, then a sakitagami, then a sotapanna.

8
00:00:43,552 --> 00:00:48,082
If you can't even find a Sotapanna, then go to someone who has memorized the whole Pitika.

9
00:00:48,844 --> 00:00:56,160
If you can't find such a person, go to someone who has memorized two Pitikas, one Pitika, has a good knowledge of the Pitikas, and so on.

10
00:00:57,710 --> 00:01:04,978
But there's a story that we give of this monk who taught all of his students and they all became enlightened.

11
00:01:06,179 --> 00:01:08,061
And he himself was an ordinary worldling.

12
00:01:08,402 --> 00:01:10,384
Actually the Visuddhimagga has a few such monks.

13
00:01:11,846 --> 00:01:24,039
But this one, he thought he was a great teacher and he was totally oblivious to the fact that he hadn't gained anything until one day one of his anagami students came in and said to him, hey, how about a lesson today?

14
00:01:24,580 --> 00:01:25,781
And he said, oh, I'm too busy today.

15
00:01:25,841 --> 00:01:27,463
My schedule is full.

16
00:01:27,443 --> 00:01:32,150
And he said, no, no, I didn't mean you giving me a lesson, but here's a lesson for you.

17
00:01:32,191 --> 00:01:38,901
And he sat cross-legged and floated up into the air and said, you don't even have time for yourself.

18
00:01:38,941 --> 00:01:40,584
How can you give lessons to other people?

19
00:01:41,145 --> 00:01:42,186
And he flew out the window.

20
00:01:42,327 --> 00:01:43,649
He said, I don't want a lesson from you.

21
00:01:45,451 --> 00:01:51,120
And this really perturbed the worldling monk teacher.

22
00:01:52,102 --> 00:01:55,307
And he went off to practice meditation and eventually became an arahant.

23
00:01:57,616 --> 00:02:03,224
So there's no need to be... The story goes on, actually.

24
00:02:03,244 --> 00:02:05,407
I should finish the story for those of you who haven't heard it.

25
00:02:05,948 --> 00:02:09,332
He went off into the forest where there was nobody.

26
00:02:09,392 --> 00:02:13,098
He said, in that case, this monk is correct.

27
00:02:13,218 --> 00:02:21,970
Or he was just horrified by the fact that, geez, here my students are totally enlightened and they can read my minds and know that I'm not.

28
00:02:21,950 --> 00:02:23,151
How can I possibly stay here?

29
00:02:23,171 --> 00:02:23,812
He was ashamed.

30
00:02:24,793 --> 00:02:28,956
And so he went off into the forest where there was no one and he just practiced on his own.

31
00:02:29,036 --> 00:02:34,481
And he did such strenuous walking meditation, pushing himself really hard.

32
00:02:34,501 --> 00:02:45,631
And this is what happens when people learn too much because they feel these expectations on them and they have this desire to become enlightened, these expectations, and pushing themselves to become enlightened, which is hopeless.

33
00:02:46,092 --> 00:02:48,854
It's atta, it's self.

34
00:02:48,874 --> 00:02:51,957
Meditation has to be...

35
00:02:51,937 --> 00:02:52,939
It's natural.

36
00:02:53,300 --> 00:02:54,583
It's about coming back to nature.

37
00:02:54,643 --> 00:02:58,872
So the walking and the knowledge of the walking has to come naturally, slowly, slowly.

38
00:02:59,513 --> 00:03:05,566
Not pushing, but probing and nudging the mind and easing the mind into place.

39
00:03:05,586 --> 00:03:09,895
You can't force the square pegs to fit into the round holes.

40
00:03:12,558 --> 00:03:24,130
And so he got nowhere, and he was totally, he wound up his clock, and eventually it sprung, and he got fed up, and he sat down and totally overwhelmed, and he started crying.

41
00:03:26,272 --> 00:03:40,067
And as he started crying, suddenly this angel appeared beside him, sat down beside him and started crying as well, and he looks over, and here's this angel, because of course it's a forest with nobody in it, there's this angel sitting crying beside him, and he's like, who are you?

42
00:03:41,127 --> 00:03:44,352
And he stops crying and he says, I'm an angel that lives in this forest.

43
00:03:44,372 --> 00:03:45,093
What are you doing here?

44
00:03:45,193 --> 00:03:51,963
Well, I knew you were a great meditation teacher, so I wanted to come and practice according to your teachings.

45
00:03:52,064 --> 00:03:52,905
Well, why are you crying?

46
00:03:53,987 --> 00:03:59,575
Well, I saw you crying, so I figured if he's crying, he's a great teacher, it must be the way to become enlightened.

47
00:03:59,791 --> 00:04:00,752
So the guy's like, oh.

48
00:04:02,115 --> 00:04:04,979
And he, you know, again, totally ashamed of himself.

49
00:04:06,301 --> 00:04:08,424
But crying like that can be useful sometimes.

50
00:04:08,464 --> 00:04:10,227
Not the crying itself, but the giving up.

51
00:04:10,828 --> 00:04:12,110
The feeling how hopeless it is.

52
00:04:12,170 --> 00:04:14,473
Because that's the realization of non-self.

53
00:04:15,214 --> 00:04:16,897
The realization that you can't control.

54
00:04:17,618 --> 00:04:20,803
And that's what allows you to finally give up and really start practicing.

55
00:04:21,223 --> 00:04:26,912
Some people have to reach that again and again and again, like banging your head against the wall until you realize how futile it is.

56
00:04:28,141 --> 00:04:32,048
And so this is what he did, and after that, then he became enlightened.

57
00:04:33,611 --> 00:04:36,836
So this story is a really good example of how this works.

58
00:04:36,856 --> 00:04:41,024
You don't need to be enlightened to teach, but that's not saying anything.

59
00:04:41,585 --> 00:04:45,391
It's not saying, great, sign me up, I'll become a great teacher.

60
00:04:46,253 --> 00:04:53,305
It's saying, don't be, as I said last week, don't be too attached to the idea of being a good teacher or this person being a good teacher.

61
00:04:53,285 --> 00:04:59,334
It doesn't mean quite as much, anyway, as we think.

62
00:05:00,416 --> 00:05:05,464
There are great teachers outside of Buddhism who are able to convince their students of their views.

63
00:05:07,727 --> 00:05:18,263
Now, of course, meditation, having its beneficial side effects, allows you to be a better teacher, but it's not required to be a good teacher.

64
00:05:21,483 --> 00:05:33,083
I guess the only proviso is, whichever is probably going through everyone's mind, is that without the meditation practice and without meditative realizations, it's incredibly dangerous, isn't it?

65
00:05:33,123 --> 00:05:42,158
It's not dangerous if the person goes by the Buddha's teaching, but if the person still is a putu jhana, a person with full greed, anger and delusion,

66
00:05:42,138 --> 00:05:45,343
How can we be sure they're going to go according to the Tipitika?

67
00:05:45,523 --> 00:05:46,805
How can we be sure they're going to go?

68
00:05:47,185 --> 00:06:01,446
So what generally happens is people throw out the commentaries, throw out different suttas, throw out various conflicting ideas, take a part of the Tipitika, interpret it in their own way, and teach some sort of lopsided dhamma.

69
00:06:03,552 --> 00:06:07,517
instead of going by the accepted interpretation.

70
00:06:07,577 --> 00:06:09,339
This is much more common.

71
00:06:09,519 --> 00:06:15,447
People are much more inclined to do this based on their own views and opinions and ideas.

72
00:06:17,109 --> 00:06:27,822
This is a sign of the noble people, from what I've seen, if you're asking me, and you are asking me.

73
00:06:28,375 --> 00:06:46,654
the most noble thing that I've seen and the most noble people that I've seen from my point of view as being noble from my observation the people that I have seen and feel that I feel are the most noble and enlightened turn out to be the people who have the least opinions

74
00:06:46,634 --> 00:06:59,391
will give their observations when they say, well, this is kind of... Like Mahasi Sayadaw, for example, there were at times where he would point out and say, well, you know, this is kind of conflicting, so we're really not sure here.

75
00:06:59,731 --> 00:07:02,795
And it may be that there is a mistake here.

76
00:07:03,356 --> 00:07:03,876
He would say that.

77
00:07:04,237 --> 00:07:06,600
But otherwise...

78
00:07:06,580 --> 00:07:15,219
Almost always he would go according to the Tipitika, the commentaries, the Visuddhimagga, all of this without interpretation, without trying to change it.

79
00:07:15,359 --> 00:07:23,557
He would try his best to fit his meditation into that as best he could while still going according to the observations.

80
00:07:23,637 --> 00:07:26,884
And from my point of view, from what I've seen, that seems to work.

81
00:07:26,864 --> 00:07:52,450
So it takes a certain amount of enlightenment, I think, to do that, to give up your own views and opinions and to just go according to the standard interpretation, which, from what I've seen, turns out to be not perfect, but a good enough shell to fit what might be the perfect meditation into it.

82
00:07:52,430 --> 00:08:07,468
so there may be times where you have to kind of finesse it and kind of say well you know don't take that too seriously or that's just one interpretation which oftentimes especially the commentaries are

83
00:08:07,448 --> 00:08:19,026
But why I go to this depth to explain is because the danger of not having enlightenment is that you will misinterpret the teachings.

84
00:08:20,589 --> 00:08:20,709
One.

85
00:08:20,769 --> 00:08:25,356
Two, that you will misuse the teachings.

86
00:08:25,336 --> 00:08:54,533
many many examples of this where a teacher becomes gets a guru complex and begins to encourage this attachment to their person and taking them as refuge and so on like that even to the point of abusing it as far as taking advantage of one's students

87
00:08:54,513 --> 00:08:56,896
We take advantage of people.

88
00:08:57,758 --> 00:09:20,290
These sorts of teachers, who I claim I am not one, will try to get money from their students, for example, a very common thing to do, but less common, but that does still happen, is they will, and sometimes it seems they're just unable to control themselves, but they'll actually have relations with their students.

89
00:09:20,650 --> 00:09:24,115
They'll start to have sexual or romantic relations with their students.

90
00:09:24,095 --> 00:09:31,545
still trying to be a meditation teacher and at the same time fooling around with their students because they just can't control themselves.

91
00:09:32,547 --> 00:09:33,909
So these are the disadvantages.

92
00:09:34,149 --> 00:09:42,520
The best thing is to find an enlightened being, but it doesn't mean that we should denigrate a person who is not enlightened but is able to teach.

93
00:09:43,482 --> 00:09:49,410
And more importantly, it means that we should not...

94
00:09:49,390 --> 00:10:15,988
we should not consider just because someone is a good teacher means that they're enlightened just because they talk like an enlightened being because when I first started teaching it's kind of embarrassing but it's also kind of encouraging encourages us as new teachers that I was able to sound like Ajahn Tong my teacher so when I taught in Thai I would speak and have the same nuances that he had

95
00:10:15,968 --> 00:10:19,594
And it worked.

96
00:10:19,634 --> 00:10:22,198
It did make me a good teacher fairly quickly.

97
00:10:22,719 --> 00:10:24,121
It doesn't make me a good person.

98
00:10:24,161 --> 00:10:25,904
It doesn't make me an enlightened person.

99
00:10:27,726 --> 00:10:33,596
But, you know, it really, you could say even it fooled my students.

100
00:10:33,636 --> 00:10:42,530
And you could say that probably some of my students were fooled into thinking that I was more than I was, thinking maybe he's an arahat.

101
00:10:42,590 --> 00:10:44,052
There was actually one man who

102
00:10:44,032 --> 00:11:00,589
that's maybe a different story but there was one man who thought I had told him that I was an Arahant and he misunderstood what I had said I think it's a different story but you know at the very least I would say try your best to get

103
00:11:00,569 --> 00:11:06,034
an enlightened teacher, but don't be too concerned about it.

104
00:11:07,456 --> 00:11:13,141
Be concerned that they're going according to the tradition, both from the Buddha and the commentaries.

105
00:11:13,642 --> 00:11:15,864
People are going to argue with that.

106
00:11:15,944 --> 00:11:23,431
There's a lot of people who will immediately be turned off by the idea of going with any sort of commentaries, as they prefer to make their own commentaries.

107
00:11:26,354 --> 00:11:28,416
But that's my suggestion.

108
00:11:29,594 --> 00:11:47,164
But on the other hand, once you find a good teacher, don't be too sure that they're going to always be in line with the suttas and the Buddha's teaching, because they may not be enlightened, even though they might be able to teach.