The Teacher You Only Understand Later
El Maestro que solo comprendes después
A reflection on how a student gradually comes to recognize the depth and literalness of a teacher's words, often years after they were first spoken, along with vivid memories of the teacher's unconventional methods.
The Teacher You Only Understand Later
A reflection on how a student gradually comes to recognize the depth and literalness of a teacher's words, often years after they were first spoken, along with vivid memories of the teacher's unconventional methods.
It's amazing, because he would say many things in the groups. When he was talking, he would often say something like, "What I'm saying now is mostly for afterwards, when you hear it in a few years. Maybe then you'll get it." And it really was like that. You start getting him much more only years later.
Recognizing what was always being said
Last year it was extraordinary. I kept thinking, "Why didn't he talk about all of this?" But in the group we're part of, people constantly edit sections of old recordings, so we listen to him. And I realized: he was talking about it all the time. I just never understood what he was saying.
Things I had assumed were merely poetic, because he would sometimes launch into spontaneous, recited poetry, turned out to be something else entirely. The ways in which he spoke came from many different places, and it was wild. I always thought some of what he said was just being poetic, not very literal. Now I realize how much of what I dismissed as poetry was him being as literal, descriptive, accurate, and factual as possible. But in my mind, I was denying it by telling myself, "Well, that's just poetry. That's just him being poetic."
The screaming that woke you up
And then he would scream at me. It would be like having lunch, and he would scream at me with someone sitting right next to me: "You don't listen to me! All of your energy goes to ignoring me, to resisting me."
Was that helpful? It was hilarious, actually. It would basically reflect something I wasn't aware of. He screamed a lot, and his screaming was often a kind of wake-up energy. But it was also, depending on the moment, quite hilarious.
There was no length he would not go to in order to reach his students. Sometimes it was extreme, screaming at you: "You're crazy!" If anybody else shouted at you like that, you would totally go on the defensive or run. But you could sense a loving energy behind it. He was very special.
I remember once I said something and he screamed, "If I could only give you a lobotomy, I would find the part of the brain that created that idiotic thought and remove it!" And then I would just start laughing. It was his way of saying: drop that thought completely. Drop the belief.
Comedy as a gift
It's hard to replicate him, but comedy was one of his true gifts. I'll tell one more anecdote because I love talking about him.
There was a visiting teacher who would come twice a year to Argentina and stay with him, and then they would do workshops together. The visiting teacher would lead his sessions, and the other would lead his. They were doing a weekend workshop, and the local teacher was always there in presence, quiet, letting the space belong to the other's work. But you can't not have him in the room.
During breaks, the visiting teacher would hold the space. About half the people were the local teacher's students, and another twenty or thirty had come just to see the visitor. Most of those people had no idea who the local teacher was.
In one of these breaks, the visiting teacher went out into the sun and sat on a bench. I came to sit with him. The local teacher was inside with about twenty or thirty people, and we could see into the meditation space from where we sat. At one point, he was standing on a chair, screaming, "You insignificant insects! You are all so small! I will stomp you!" Just going on this wild rant. And from the group, roaring laughter. This madness of people completely losing control, laughing helplessly.
The visiting teacher, whose workshop it was, sat outside watching and said, "He is my alter ego. I cannot handle this guy." It was just so funny. They had very, very different styles, to put it mildly.
The visiting teacher kept hearing the screaming followed by these roars of laughter and kept asking me, "What is he saying?" He didn't understand Spanish. So I would translate, and he would just shake his head.