Generational Issues in the Student-Teacher Relationship

Stages in the Contemporary Life Cycle

In New Passages, Sheehy explained that the stages of the human life cycle vary according to socioeconomic class and the conditions of the times. Using this thesis, she discovered a new paradigm for the adult life cycle of contemporary, middle-class or semi-affluent, socially mobile, educated Caucasian-Americans. The paradigm contains three stages: provisional, first, and second adulthood.

Sheehy then analyzed the manner in which each of the current generations within this group has been passing through the three stages. Her proposition is that understanding the behavior of people from this socioeconomic class requires placing them within the context of their generations and their stages in life. Moreover, she contended that Canadian, Latin American, Western European, and Australasian members of this mobile class are fast approaching a similar pattern of threefold adulthood. In each country, however, cultural factors will modify the pattern as it emerges.

Most spiritual seekers who go to Western middle-class Dharma centers in the United States fall into the class of people that Sheehy analyzed. Sheehy's scheme provides a useful analytical tool for understanding some of the problems that these people have encountered in building relationships with spiritual teachers. It may also be relevant for understanding problems that may arise in the future in other subcultures, both in the United States and elsewhere.

Provisional adulthood is a prolonged adolescence characterized by experimentation and non-commitment to either a career or a marriage. It lasts through one's twenties. The times in which it occurs tend to set the general tone for the rest of one's life. First adulthood follows from around thirty to the mid-forties, during which one tries to prove oneself through a career and/or raising a family. Second adulthood then begins in the mid-forties, starting with "middlescence," a period of experimentation akin to a second adolescence, from the mid-forties to around fifty. During this period, one may be laid off or forced into early retirement and one's children may be away at college. An age of mastery follows until the mid-sixties, often with a new career or a new life partner. One may find a new synthesis of one's life that brings more fulfillment. After sixty-five comes an age of integrity during which one no longer feels the need to prove oneself and can enjoy the synthesis that one has found.

The generation that has consistently comprised the majority of spiritual seekers attracted to Tibetan Buddhism in the United States has been the Baby Boomer or Vietnam Generation, born from the mid-forties to the mid-fifties. A far smaller proportion has come from the Me Generation, born from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, and even less from Generation X or the Endangered Generation, born from the mid-sixties to around 1980. Let us examine how factors of generation, life stage, and the times have affected the approach of these groups to spiritual practice and their relationships with their spiritual teachers.

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