Finding a Spiritual Teacher

Differences in Circumstances

At the present time, our situation as Buddhists in the West is really quite different from the classic structure in Tibet. To begin, most of us are not monastics. In Tibet and in traditional Buddhist societies, someone who wanted to engage seriously in Buddhist training became a monk or a nun. Householders didn’t have that much access to teachings. Most were illiterate and couldn’t read the texts. They occasionally would go to discourses and so on; but they wouldn’t receive the detailed training available to a monastic.

In fact, teaching meditation to householders is a very recent phenomenon that started in Burma in the early part of the twentieth century. I don’t think it went back as far as into the nineteenth. Meditation was not generally taught in the Tibetan tradition to householders. Aside from going to some teachings as mentioned, householders basically recited mantras, memorized a few prayers, circumambulated, offered butter lamps – these sorts of things.

Today, in the West, there are many differences. Not only are the majority of students not monastic, but we have many other aspects and involvements in our lives. As monastics we would only have Dharma study, practice and rituals as our main focus, and they would be all that we do. In addition, we Westerners already have an education. We’re not approaching the Dharma as uneducated children. Most of us don’t have close contact with the great spiritual masters and we certainly don’t live with them, as many young novices do in Tibetan monasteries. Also, in most situations, we have to pay for teachings. We don’t live in societies that support the Buddhist institutions and monasteries with offerings and such. Still, rent needs to be paid, people need health insurance, food, and so on. So naturally the situation is very different for us.

Most of us only have very limited contact with the current great masters. Perhaps we’ve had the good fortune to attend to a large teaching of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Occasionally some great masters might come to our city, and we go in a large audience to their teachings. The rest of the time, what is available to us in our cities is a much less experienced and less qualified teacher, whether a Tibetan geshe, khenpo or an educated monk or nun. Sometimes, we don’t even have that, and we just have senior students leading discussions.

Original Audio from the Seminar

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