On The Responsibility of Mentoring

If what “Buddhas” realize is a static, fixed “perfection just as it is”, there would be no teaching called “Buddha Dharma”. That is, why would a “Buddha” teach anything, if everything is already “perfect”? What would be the difference between one action and another? Why do Buddhas become teachers, instead of becoming bank robbers and tyrannical dictators hell-bent on violence and oppression? We intuitively feel the dissonance in this line of reasoning.

One of the things that Buddhas wake up to is the fact that every other sentient being can become a Buddha – that is, that all sentient beings also have the potential to wake up to Buddhahood. Buddhahood is not only waking up to the fact that life is an all-inclusive playground, but it is also waking up to the fact that playing on the playground is a responsibility. 

To clarify, “playing” does not mean pleasure pursuit, leisure, and so on. Rather, “playing” means creating and maximizing one’s life in order to enhance the shared, collective experience of the “all-inclusive playground”. Shifting our view away from our limited, self-centered life approach and embracing the all-inclusive responsibility of true play is very difficult, and Buddhas are heartbroken by the fact that their family often prefers to remain fixated on the illusion of comfort that the habits of isolation, competition, and fear provide – rather than stepping out of the comfort zone and stepping up to the plate to play.

Buddhas also realize that if they don’t create, teach, or innovate, the playground and all its players suffer, because Buddhas aren’t the only ones shaping the play experience. And since most players aren’t in any rush to stop shaping the experience into various means of commodification of self and other, Buddhas “take vows” to endure – and to do whatever is necessary, on behalf of their beloved playmates – ultimately, to help the beloveds learn more constructive, fulfilling, and meaningful ways to shape the shared experience.

One of the many benefits of working with a “qualified” mentor is that, like working with a personal trainer provides us with more perspective and motivation, working with a mentor and the lineage assists us in ascertaining what “the next steps are” in our quest to be of greater and greater benefit to ourselves and others. The more we come to realize how beneficial that added perspective and motivation is, the more fluid and efficient is our forward progress.

Returning to the misconstrued notion of “enlightenment as a realization of a static perfection”, if “enlightenment” also meant that “humility supersedes responsibility”, none of us would have ever learned anything about anything, in any discipline. We learn precisely because those who teach us have been confident enough to do so. Such confidence is also the reason we are enjoying ongoing and constructively evolving social freedoms. And how else would those freedoms become manifest, other than through the far-too-often-ridiculed efforts of pioneers? Mentors are pioneers, and pioneering requires that courage take precedence to humility. But true courage is rooted in humility – the willingness to protect and serve. Pioneering is the ultimate service.

The mentor’s pioneering responsibility is to mirror the adamantine strength of the total malleability of inclusivity – all the time. True “strength” is not a “hardened and fortified” structure. A city that seeks complete safety only by sheltering behind its walls is easily starved into submission. Any city that seeks lasting peace must be willing to create friendships and ensure peaceful diplomacy with life outside the walls. Like a receptive and fluid Tai Chi master, the true strength of a mentor is rooted in the understanding of reality as infinitely malleable. This kind of strength is only developed by viscerally and fully experiencing one’s interconnectedness to all other beings and phenomena. Like a mother who miraculously lifts a car to save her child, the strength of a Bodhisattva or a Buddha is derived from the indestructible bond they perceive to other beings, and it compels them to act for the benefit of those beings.

Many of us feel called to mentoring. It is a natural response to a growing sensitivity to the suffering of others – the wish to be able to do something in order to relieve their pain. However, while wanting to jump into mentoring straight away is a noble intention, it is not necessarily a skillful one. It is wonderful to want to take real-time action right away, but it is not necessary to immediately go out and proclaim teachings to educate others. There are subtleties that all mentors develop prior to being able to engage effectively as mentors. These subtleties can be gleaned only through prolonged exposure and proximity to the lineage. What develops through this exposure, then, is beyond mere information. It is an electro-magnetic phenomenon that arises from being really plugged in to the current of the lineage. 

Once plugged in, the real teaching that comes through is more than just an imparting of information to students – it’s a palpable link to the mindstream through which the teachings flow. This aspect of teaching cannot be overlooked or rushed in its cultivation. Time properly invested is the student’s most important ally. If a student is truly engaged in the practice of increasing and maintaining proximity to the fount of the teachings for the pure motive of benefiting others, then the electro-magnetic bond will be established, and gradually the teachings will flow effortlessly and spontaneously through her or him. There will be no need to force the when, where, or how of the expression or the teaching. There will be no need to “engineer” or anticipate what teachings to give or how to express them. 

To reiterate, there is no mentor without the current of a lineage flowing through the mentor. To mistake oneself as the absolute source of teachings or information is a grave error.