teacher

I closed yesterday’s email with these words:

We are students. We are one half of the experience. The other half is the teachers of the path.

This is important, because meditation is not only about our individual journey. It is about the very sacred, very profound, seemingly impossible existence of a path that allows this evolution, transforming a person within the years of a single lifetime. The path is given to us by humans of the previous generation. It is about all of us, all generations.

In every generation that enters the journey of dharma and meditation, three generations need to be present.

1. First, it takes the person who was there before us, our teacher (we may have more than one).
2. Second, it takes ourselves and our peers, those who will newly benefit from all that has been maintained for us and offered to us.
3. Third, it takes those who will benefit from all our efforts to deepen and grow. These are our students, the next generation.

We help the next generation in many ways: as teachers who present the dharma teachings and practice, as family members or neighbors who introduce new practitioners to others like them or to those who can mentor them, and as colleagues, co-journeyers who share the ups and downs of the path. And we can all at least become models of meditative development.

the fresh face of the older generation

Meditation leads to transformations that nothing else can approach. That makes elder practitioners unlike their elder peers. Elder meditators are not the same thing as elder artists, elder social activists, or elder community builders. All elders are valuable, and all are needed. But elder dharma practitioners are very special types of human elders, because they have cultivated something particular and identifiable through their years of meditation. They have meditative wisdom.

What we have available to us today has passed through the caring hands of 2500 years — about 100 generations. The path, along with its teachers, has been serving its function for thousands of years, providing instructions, knowledge, and encouragement.

elders are generous

And even if meditation traditions have evolved over the centuries, one thing has remained unchanged. One thing has always been a part of learning the path: the welcoming faces of the older generation ready to give you the amazing inheritance of methods and knowledge.

They are prepared to hand over everything they learned from their teachers. Everything their teachers learned from their own teachers and so on, long before the internet, long before electricity, long before the printing press.

Some things have benefitted from continual advances in technology, but lots of things really haven’t needed it: loving, singing, dancing, writing, guitar playing.

Dharma has not needed technology. It hasn’t even needed science, which says something about how deep dharma is. Generally, science has a lot to offer, but not everything benefits directly from science. Dharma is pre-scientific, and it will always have a respected place in the human legacy as something lasting and irreplaceable that began long before the modern age.

Looking into the faces of the teachers in our world, we see those who carry one of the wonders of the world. Don’t you feel lucky to have at least some things that don’t bend before the altar of progress and industry?

overcoming isolation

We live in a strange time where people assume they can and should do everything by themselves. We may feel disgruntled by expertise. Life is so complicated that we have to submit to a hundred people a year for our needs to be met and our life to work: health, finances, taxes, news, auto repair, plumbing. And usually, we have to pay them. So much of our experience of community has been touched by commerce.

And yet it isn’t our imagination: life is so complex that we need specialists for parts of our everyday world to function. We may not always need to take our car to the shop if we can repair it ourselves, or call pay for a repair on household items that we can fix with the help of a Youtube video. But none of us would attempt to fill our own cavities or let a friend perform hip replacement surgery on us. We need our experts.

We recognize expertise in the extremes, but are quick to assume that most things are within our reach unaided.

Meditation is within our reach at the very, very beginning. We can learn to sit in the posture and tune into our breath. But soon after that, we move beyond what is familiar, and we find ourselves in states of mind that are unusual, or confusing, and that is the point at which we can either make rapid, deep development, or where we can spiral into deeper, subtler layers of confusion.

When we move outside our habits of mind, every internal voice will try to guide us back to familiar territory. But it won’t be guiding us into wisdom, it will simply reroute us back to our habitual mindset. The only voice that takes us out of confusion is the voice of wisdom, and we have not learned that voice yet. That’s where a teacher comes in.

intuition is not wisdom

We might be very intuitive people, and navigate our life skillfully by relying on our intuition, our “gut instinct.”

But intuition is not wisdom. Intuition is not the same thing as dharma. Intuition is a survival intelligence rooted in our body and mind. It is not rooted in our awareness. Yes, it will help us navigate within samsara and avoid dangers, but it will not lead us out of samsara.

We will not escape fear and confusion completely by following our intuition. Even with good intuition, we need a teacher.

the voice of wisdom

Dharma is what the voice of wisdom shares. Dharma is the body of knowledge that illuminates the way out of confusion and fear. But dharma is a body of knowledge without a mouth, so it doesn’t speak.

Dharma is given a voice through a person who speaks the language of dharma: the teacher. There are lots of teachers of the dharma, and we are lucky in this way. But we only need one to begin.

You might think, I’ll start on my own and find a teacher later on. This can work, but it’s important to follow through with finding a teacher, if we push it off we can end up down a sidetrack without knowing it.

It is best to join with a teacher and fellow students from the very outset of meditation practice. The biggest enemy of genuine development in the meditation path is our own lack of maturity, and our stubbornness in trying to guide ourselves. That’s why we need a teacher’s perspective. We also need their patience, clarity, skill, and experience.

Seeking a teacher who knows the path is the best way to begin. Doing so, we follow in the footsteps of every single generation before us. It worked for them, so it will work for us too.

communities of practice

One of the greatest joys in the meditation path is connecting with a community of teachers and students. Some communities are vast, with dozens or hundreds of teachers circulating within them. Some communities are small, and form around one teacher. If we don’t have an accessible community nearby, we may have to travel to engage with one, which is quite common.

If travel is out of the question, you can find communities online. Our community, Finding Ground Meditation, is an online community.

The path of meditation lasts our entire lifetime. Communities of meditators stay in touch throughout across generations, so there are always elders and new people in your life.

When I train yearly with my teachers, I feel the continuity of a dozen generations and more. It stabilizes me. I look around at my fellow students, and we exchange the same glance, the one that says what a relief it is knowing that such a wise tradition is alive.

My teachers were all part of a system, so they taught and guided practitioners along the same path. Now, there is a global network of students from these teachers who stay connected. It works well and fosters community, because people who share a set of instructions also share the experiences of the path. This continuity makes the new generations of students much better supported. Continuity means there is a modern “history” and a modern culture for new practitioners to learn within.

Continuity like this is really important for human health. Until the 20th century, this was something you could take for granted, it would be unlikely to encounter teachers of vastly different outlook without traveling to other parts of the world. But things are different now. Everything is available all at once, and in our bewilderment at the options, we fail to appreciate the important distinctions between things that really are what they seem, and things that only seem to be, but aren’t.

In particular, in 2024, people don’t seem to recognize that not all “teachers of meditation” are teaching the same thing — or even similar things. Meditation is unregulated, and the only place you will find standards of practice are in the well established traditions that have a reputation and a generational heritage to uphold.

training with multiple teachers

If you train under more than one teacher, just make sure they are from similar systems and have similar training. Mixing systems is a pathless journey. Every year I work with students who have spent 20 or 30 years hopping around various teachers and approaches. Sometimes they feel inspired, and at other times they feel lost. Eventually they all come to the conclusion that they should have chosen one approach and committed to it.

my advice from the heart

So my genuine advice: look carefully at anyone who teaches meditation. Make sure they have the training a teacher should have: they should have done thousands and thousands of hours of meditation, and spent years under the guidance and oversight of teachers. And they should have a healthy relationship with other teachers. Make sure they are joyful, and that they love people. Meditation brings joy forward, and fills people with love.

If any of these are out of place, you will be the one that pays the price.

examine your teachers, don’t settle

There are two things to watch out for in selecting a teacher: untrained or insufficiently trained.

1. untrained

Real teachers are parts of meditation communities, they aren’t isolated “gurus” who have no colleagues. If you can’t easily determine who a self-professed “teacher” trained under — if they seem vague or irritated at the question, that is all you need to see. Move on, you are dealing with someone who is not trained. Avoid.

2. insufficiently trained

This next thing must be said in the age of the internet: qualified teachers aren’t young. Qualified teachers spent their youth in training. When they are ready to step into the role of teaching, they aren’t young any more. Usually, they will be in their 40s.

Really.

Even in the Tibetan system, where people are selected to become teachers while still in their teens, very few complete the full training before they are 30. And even if someone is an excellent teacher at 30, they are still only 30, and they are probably sheltered from the problems most of us face in our everyday lives.

A 30 year old teacher will have spent 20 years of their life in constant supervision by elders: studying, going into retreat, and doing absolutely nothing that resembles your life. They are very often raised in monastic settings and deal with monastic situations, not in urban settings dealing with urban situations. They know nothing of life at that point.

The best ones will admit it. They usually tag along behind older teachers and gradually learn the role and responsibility of being a full teacher. It’s a big job, a big role, and has the capacity to harm every bit as much as it helps. It takes mentoring and time. Stick with teachers who are visibly adults.

One of my teachers, a prodigy who was legitimately teaching in his 20s, told us that he is nothing more than a “dharma princess,” a monk who has lived in the care of others his whole life and really shouldn’t be talking about anything other than meditation. We all laughed, but we knew he was telling the truth. In my tradition it is generally thought that the ideal age for a teacher is around 60.

I have four living teachers: one is 48, another 57, another 73, and the oldest among them 90. Another teacher passed away last year at 90.

Real teachers are unmistakeable. The best way to begin is by starting with a real teacher!

I’m not a great example of this rule of thumb. I was trained and “empowered” to teach in my early 30s, and given further authorizations regularly up into my 40s, up to the point of training and authorizing new teachers. I think this was only because there was such a high demand for teachers who spoke English, and who understood the life of the West. From my earliest days as a teacher, my students were usually over 40 years old. Sometimes I wince to think of what I must have been like as a 32-year old meditation teacher, but I must have been ok, because I avoided scandal and maintained relationships with students from all the way back.

our course has come to its conclusion!

Over this week we’ve been on a walk through the important concepts of meditation that every meditator should know from day one.

keeping in touch

After this, I’ll send you emails every week (or so) that talk about the practice of meditation, and the way it can stabilize us, even within the turbulence of unsettling times.

But the best and most rewarding way to stay connected is to attend our monthly Finding Ground Home Retreats. This is where you’ll find a full path of training from the traditions we’ve talked about in this series. You can come as a beginner, or as a seasoned practitioner, and we have lots of people who are jump-starting a stalled practice.

Finding Ground Home Retreats are an easy, modern and well-supported ground for putting a meditation practice in your life. You can hear the teachings that accompany meditation, browse archives of video and audio teachings, and use our recordings to support your daily meditation practice. We have a forum where you can post questions and meet other meditators.

For many people our monthly retreats are a way of staying committed and accountable, and keeping their journey alive.

Come join in the fun! I look forward to meeting you and hearing a bit about your life and what led you to meditation.

I wish you all the stability and clarity and strength in the world,

Jeffrey Stevens