If we listen to his words, we can be deceived into thinking we have learned nothing - he has taught nothing. But this is far from the truth, and I can't quite understand it yet. The best I can describe is that a teacher arises from anything. Indeed the wisest of men seem to find teachers in the most universal and inanimate of objects. When a rock becomes teacher, we must wonder whether we understand the relationship between teacher and student.
Here is my thought: a teacher and student are socially imposed labels. There are certain ornaments, rituals, practices we use to help remind us to stay humble when learning, but these are reminders, not the true state of things. What happens when a teacher and student form a bond? The relationship between teacher and student does not arise in every situation. Often I remain resistant to a teacher, and I never allow them to become my teacher. I select my teachers very carefully, but try to learn from everything. (I know this contradicts my above point, but it's 1:47am. Who cares?)
The bond between teacher and student is such that learning takes place more like osmosis than anything else. A teacher may show steps, may give guidance, but the ultimate transmission happens without words, even without physical presence. This is because the 'transmission' was never a transmission at all, but more like a reminder. True learning must come from within. But the interesting topic for me is the spiritual connection between a teacher and student. I feel this bond with Etienne, and though I've only taken 4 classes from him, those classes were times of heightened experience. Something was transferred to me by way of simply looking at his body. You can't really hear Etienne when he talks in class, so some of this is necessary. But I continue to learn, as I silently contemplate his performance. I remember him sitting next to the guy hooking up his electronic music equipment - mimicking. It was a gesture so full of love. I remember the lights fading, the music dying, and suddenly he leaped into the air - dark skin flying through darkness. And the Landing! OH, it was silent. An explosion brings sound; this was part of my reality. Fireworks, a soda can opening, the tests of the a-bomb: all these demonstrate that sound must come from an explosion, but Etienne broke that rule. He shattered the rules of the universe in front of my very eyes. And suddenly, I was forced to realize that my rules are wrong. He simultaneously shows my ignorance and the way.
This is what a teacher is: a person who enables you, in whatever way, to see past your limited views of reality. But the bond between teacher and student - what is that? I suppose it's really no different from the bond between you and every other individual. It's just that the teacher shows what it can or should be.
To learn is a rebirth. It means to sacrifice a part of ourselves, and necessarily blindly. If we are to learn, we cannot know what we are to learn, and we therefore must do so with faith. Faith, faith, faith is the essence of learning. It is the willingness to release those parts of ourselves that WILL not mix with our new being. True learning must involve fear, or we are not risking the death of a part of ourselves. This is why my learning has been so sporadic through the years. So many years of the country's best education, and what have I learned? I can write these blogs - the words can flow out of me, and I enjoy that. But am I really a changed man due to words? Or is it rather the ideas of Plato, Emerson, and all the others that broke and battered me? I would like to say that we should institutionalize this process of learning, but a part of me says that learning can never be institutionalized. It is something so sporadic and naturally arising nothing can make it happen. We are either deathly afraid of release, or ready to fall. Like lemmings, we plunge into real learning.
