BG 183: The Timeless Tradition of Spiritual Apprenticeship

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Episode Description:

In the last part of our discussion with Buddhist teacher and scholar Hokai Sobol, we wrap up our exploration on some of the important influences and forces that shape Western Buddhism. As part of that we discuss the fluid nature of his consumer-client-colleague model. We also talk about the deep problems that have arisen from adopting traditional models, instead of current ones, and how this has generated a multitude of scandals—including scandals of power, sex, and also of the generational problem of their being so few young practitioners today.

Finally, we talk about how to reinvigorate “the timeless tradition of spiritual apprenticeship.” Hokai speaks about what he calls “essential apprenticeship,” and also brings up a couple of questions related to the way that spiritual apprenticeship relates to current cultural forms.

This is part 4 of a multi-part series.

Episode Links:

• Hokai Sobol : Practitioner, Scholar, Pathfinder, Buddhist Geek

Transcript:

Vincent: As you’re describing this, I’m just thinking of going, for instance, to a retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. And I can see that, even on a retreat, I can see myself in all three of these positions. For instance, just me signing up for the retreat and paying money and seeing the description, I’m definitely a consumer in that moment. And then I come to the retreat and I hear dharma talks, and it feels like, in some ways, I’m sort of in a consumer moment at times, because I’m consuming the material. Other times, I’m kind of connecting with the teacher who’s presenting it, and I feel more like a client. Then, from there, I go into interviews, one-on-one interviews with teachers and sometimes I have relationships with these teachers. So, it’s definitely more of a client position or mindset. Then, there are even times during those interviews where it becomes something of a colleague relationship, where teacher, especially if you have a relationship for years coming in, there’s moments of recognizing our mutual interest in this topic, and in some cases, even knowledge.

So I can see, yeah, that I go through these different mindsets, but I can see that they’re also not really clear, they’re really morph in and out of one another. There’s definitely no way of distinguishing, in a formal sense, at least, in the dharma circles that I’m in.

Hokai: Yes. It’s very difficult because there are objective and the reasons why it’s so difficult to distinguish them, one of them is definitely, because we have been relating to the student-teacher notion and practice now for maybe 40 years. We still haven’t really come up with a description of a viable, sustainable model in any of the great dharma streams, that would be accepted across the different lineages or influential groups or whatever. We haven’t come up with a description of a model that would include economic, psychological, communication, autonomy, and mutuality and authority and verticality and governance. All these and other aspects that have a place in determining this dharmic exchange situation.

So, because a model is still in the process of being described, being formulated, being settled somehow, there is still a negotiation going on. That’s the reason, mainly, and it’s an objective reason, basically. That’s the reason why it’s so difficult to distinguish them. But, once we figure out how to put these different streams of conditioning and influence that is present as a force field in our exchange, we will find ways to fix them and to make them more precise so that these three are not made rigid somehow so that you must behave as a customer when you pay for the retreat. But it will be a clear, financial transaction without a shadow, without anything sticking to it. Then, when we are there in an instruction, or coaching context, or a dharmic therapy context or whatever, we will have, again, no shadows sticking to it. Whether it’s appropriate or not, there will be transparency and clarity about these different modes of learning together, learning from someone, learning with that someone, and learning in the context of relationship with someone.

So, these different degrees of engagement and demand on the student’s attention, effort, energy, and even money, will be more clearly defined, and someone would much faster learn what it takes to become a committed student and what are the pros and cons of becoming a committed student or a full time student for a year, three years, five years, or whatever. One wouldn’t have to become a dharma senior with 20 years of experience to find out what it all means. I believe that three or six months of engagement with a group, organization, or teacher should be more than enough to know all you need to know on the outside about the different models, dynamics, demands, prerequisites, etc.

Of course, some groups, institutions, organizations have gone a long way towards clarifying those questions, but some others have not done sufficient in that direction so that the overall degree of maturity in the Western Buddhist scene is rather varying. Somewhere you cannot find any answers to questions because they haven’t been even approached and somewhere you can even find Q&A’s, where some of these questions are articulated and answered very precisely, while some are still in the process of being answered or even defined.

I was just wondering that, as we were looking at the client, what the client and the customer or client and consumer differentiation, that a similar differentiation exists for the colleague a model namely, in the case of the colleague. And most serious students of Buddhism in the West see themselves as somehow a colleague between themselves and as junior colleagues to their teachers. Most have this experience at least, even if they wouldn’t self-identify like that. Also a large number of teachers in the West feel very comfortable if they can instruct or teach or lecture by inhabiting, at least partially, a professor mindset. Somehow this cultural role is a lecturer is somehow one very easy to slip into and out off. So it has been used quite a lot. We use the word teacher of Buddhism mostly. Very few people use master, or very few people will use some other word when they do their best to translate whatever their title is in some of the eastern languages if they use that as well.

So, specifically a colleague ,as opposed to whether a client or customer or consumer—a colleague will shift the bases of exchange of the relationship in such a way that he or she will recognize something you mentioned when you were talking about your experience in a single day of a retreat. They will recognize a mutual basis for a relationship, namely this relationship will not be necessarily or predominantly based on something which puts the two parties somehow against each other or face to face to each other. The relationship will be based something that draws their attention together. So we can image colleagues standing shoulder by shoulder looking in the same direction. They are not standing face to face anymore necessarily exchanging something.

Vincent: Yeah.

Hokai: But they are now looking together in the same direction and probably making observations on what they experienced there. Then the student continues learning from the observations of whoever the teacher is, by direct observing something and seeing a different observation or a different description of what is being observed together. The student learns about a possibility, of a fresh way of seeing and experiencing things.

So the main or the most sharp distinction between a colleague and a client would be that the colleague is actually interested to inhabit the space described by the teacher, not in a personal sense in this case, I mean in the universal human senses as a basic perspective, which is deemed by the junior colleague as more advanced or more profound, or in every case desirable. In spiritual terms, we often speak of more advanced cognition or a deeper understanding somehow. While this wish to inhabit the same space is very present for a colleague, and this same space gives a basis for trust and relationship to the junior and senior colleagues, and even between junior colleagues and between senior colleagues. It is like their lingua franca, their language of understanding. It’s implicit in their relationship that’s it is all about the space they inhabit together, an inner space namely. While in the case of the clients, the client is more than happy to receive some of the benefits from the person inhabiting certain space of knowledge and skill but not necessarily moving into that space, at least not for the moment right, not in the present?

Vincent: Yeah.

Hokai: May be sometime in the future. And the consumer, if you go even further on the scale or to which ever direction the consumer will not even be interested in that space. You know the consumer will be more interest in how is that space expressed in this space. If the teacher simply describes the space their in, and the teacher is really someone with an authentic realization, most probably they will not even get the interest or attention of someone who is in the consumer mode. Because someone in a consumer mode is already largely identified with the present space they inhabit. And they are simply looking how to refurbish it you know or how to equip it better to make it more functional. Well sometime even it’s not a sin to make it more entertaining. Why not? Many people have visited a first dharma discourse out of curiosity. Maybe they had an evening off, they had nothing else to do. But this doesn’t mean that it cannot be a beginning of a life long and meaningful relationship with the dharma. So I hope the distinction is a little bit sharper now.

Vincent: Yeah definitely. And it feels like your getting into starting to describe how this sort of ancient idea of apprenticeship, which you explained happens in the West. You know were there’s a Western model for that that’s thousands of years old and it also happens in the East.

Hokai: Yes.

Vincent: And it seems like there’s something really deep and profound about that. And it seems like what your describing of a sort of flowing upward through these mindsets that something that kind happens naturally with a commitment, that that contains in it some of that apprenticeship model. But I’m wondering how else we can make sure that we don’t throw out the sort of deep wisdom that comes with that sort of personal interaction of the apprentice model—is it possible to have an apprenticeship with this consumer client colleague model as well?

Hokai: Well the attempt at the apprenticeship has run into some serious difficulties in the Western spiritual scene at large. And these difficulties where not generated by the influences of client mindset or consumer mindset necessarily. These difficulties arose from two main cultural influences. One of them was a rigid attempt to reconstruct, or simply copy, certain traditional manners and certain traditional power structures and authority models. That have, well frankly, have ceased working largely even in the cultures that they stem from.

Vincent: Would this be something like the Tibetan Rinpoche model, or things like that?

Hokai: Definitely. That’s one example. That’s just one example. We have examples from every Eastern country imaginable, and from every stream of dharma there is… not just in the Buddhist tradition of course. But we have a similar models slowing dying off even in the Western traditions. You have a very strong model in the catholic church, at least in the contemplative orders, there is a strong model in the Orthodox Christianity very strong for example in Greece where there are several centers of ordained male, mainly male practice. And it’s not just that these models of apprenticeship and guidance deserve less and less public recognition. It’s not just that they provoke less and less respect or awe, in the eye of the public culture that has largely has become ignorant or disdainful of them even. But its also a problem that the reasons with which and the motivations with which these days people expect to receive the dharma have significantly shifted, not in a wrong direction or in a good direction, they have changed considerably and the spiritual traditions have been very, very, very, slow and reluctant in reacting to that, and in developing new ways of engaging prospective students, irrespective of there degree of commitment. So that one of the results of such shift, and the shift has been going on since the advent of modernity but it has become very radical after the 2nd World War—one of these results is a series of difficulties that we like to call scandals. It’s a series of scandals that I hope that we won’t go into now. [Laughter] But these scandals are all over the cultural scene.

Vincent: Yeah.

Hokai: It’s the Catholic Church with their litigations and their abuse cases in the courts, which now number, I believe it’s thousands. It’s the Buddhist scene, because it’s mainly male heterosexual teachers so it’s mainly sexual impropriety and abuse of financial resources. And then in the Hindu yoga scene, Hatha yoga, etc. and other types of yoga, there has also has been a series of situations, publicized or not. And then especially in the scene of independent teachers—when I say especially I don’t mean they are even worse, I just mean that it’s been very well publicized.

Vincent: Yeah.

Hokai: Many, many cases of abuse often concerning governance, money, and sex all at once, not by just the leading figure, but it was wide spread by those who were more influential in the structures of these organizations.

So, these are just one set of problems. An other sets of problems it the obvious decline in the generational dynamics, if you’ll look at the statics of membership of the Western Buddhist organizations. The wave of the majority of memberships have moved from 20 somethings, to 30 somethings, to the 40 somethings, to 50 somethings and now it’s moving into 60 somethings. It began in the late 60′s and early 70′s with very young people being very eager to find out about these things. But then at the time went on this same group remained the majority of membership in most established and permanent organizations. So that this is another problem, and most people don’t see it as a scandal, but I see it as a huge problem. I don’t say others are oblivious to it, I just believe that it deserves much more attention, than several rogue teachers.

Vincent: Yeah.

Hokai: But of course, it’s much easier to talk about improper behavior, which is rather simple to take care of if we’re willing, then to talk about this structural problem, which is not so simple to tackle, namely the generational problem.

And when we’re speaking about preserving or reinvigorating the ancient and timeless ideal of apprenticeship, let me make clear first that when I at least speak of apprenticeship, I don’t mean necessarily an apprentice to someone. Of course, an apprentice usually and typically in over 90 percent of cases will have a teacher, or several teachers. But apprenticeship, first and foremost has a value in itself. Namely we are lifelong apprentices, even in the path models, which describe an ending point, there is a sense that one continues being an apprentice.

When Siddartha Gotama, the historical Buddha was awakened, one of the stories that described his awakening, relates that after looking around he thought, “Who is the one that I’m going to pay my respects to now? Who is the one higher or deserving my respect, deserving my devotion?” And then he realized it’s the Dharma. For him of course, an awakened one, that was the nature of reality itself.

So, in a way one remains a devotee, one remains an apprentice, in that sense forever. It’s a vulnerable, sincere, sensitive and open position towards everything that arises. That’s the source of apprenticeship. We could say that discovery and curiosity about everything that never ends would be a source of apprenticeship.

So, we must recognize this source, not to identify apprenticeship necessarily, with being in a student teacher relationship with anyone. We can recognize that the source of apprenticeship, this sort of essential apprenticeship ideal, invigorates such a relationship. But only if both the student and the teacher recognize the importance of apprenticeship. Because in a sense, especially in some later, historically later Buddhist models, the student may have his eyes on the teacher, nonetheless, it’s the teacher who serves the wisdom that is yet to be born in the student. The student is the locus, where something is about to happen, so that somehow the student need not be too self-aware in that process. Because he or she is already the place of action. So that there is a natural inclination to look elsewhere, as it were.

This is just a description of some sources of apprenticeship but the cultural model that grew around this ideal and this source-energy of human curiosity, openness, rawness, vulnerability, and devotion, convection, and all these other qualities that together make the apprenticeship ideal and practice. The cultural models that grew around these were more or less appropriate responses or solutions for the time and space where they so evolved.

If we look at the early Indian tradition and then later we look at the early Tibetan tradition, and the later Tibetan tradition, and if we go around Asia and if we just confide ourselves to Asia in the history of Buddhism, we can see numerous different types of apprenticeship. We can see specifically the guru model developing specifically in Tibetan situation in a way that didn’t really catch anywhere else in that precise way. And then within each of those cultural models there were significant differences in precepts, customs ,specific ways of doing stuff. If we look at the financial dynamics, if we look at the social dynamics and the way in which these relationships were initiated, sustained, and ended in different epochs, in different times, we will see substantial differences even if we stay in the same place like Tibet or China or Japan. And if we move through the time and space we will see that they have already in the history of Buddhism been many many different ways of practicing apprenticeship, and path walking in real-life conditions. And these different ways encourage us to be confident. First of all that we can establish a new model here, and also encourage us to be creative, as long as we are informed by what has worked and what hasn’t worked in the past. So it’s kind of meaningless being creative if you know nothing of what has been achieved already because you are going to have to invent the wheel, and hot water and fire and all these things.

Vincent: It could take a while.

Hokai: Yeah it could take a while another billion years you know to come up with something like the 1st word you know like “oh yes.”

So basically what were dealing with here is not to save something that is time-honored, but how to allow it to do two things at once. Namely apprenticeship is a lived subjective experience, is well known intimately to every seriously committed student of any spiritual—and I would even say any human tradition, even philosophical traditions or psychological traditions at their best at their more serious—provide very rich situations and context to experience authentic apprenticeship. I would even say some arts even some physical disciplines provide pathways to experience at least some aspects of deep authentic apprenticeship. So that we have to ask ourselves two questions: One is how does apprenticeship healthfully and functionally and appropriately express itself through existing cultural forms? And that is behind this discussion of consumer, client, and colleague.

Vincent: Yes

Hokai: These are existing cultural reliant forms. We seem unable to escape them completely and it seems a waste of time trying to do so. And embracing them mindlessly could only worsen the situation, because most times we embrace them mindlessly and unwittingly. So the 1st question is how does this ever-fresh ideal, I wouldn’t even call it ancient or old ideal, I would call it an ever fresh ideal of apprenticeship, how does it express through existing cultural forms? And second is while it’s expressed through these forms, how do we move beyond these forms to discover the new face of this apprenticeship at this time and this place where we find ourselves, namely the early 21st century Western culture?

If we put these two questions, I believe we are already beginning to see the way of moving forward from the present situation wherein we’re still in a pretty mixed-up situation here because at least from what I’m seeing in the Buddhist media available publicly, and from my conversation with students and teachers from different traditions when we are asked about this problem, especially when we are asked by the practitioners from some other tradition we tend to go back to the reserve position, namely to the historical definition of apprenticeship, or being a teacher. And these historical positions or ideals are only reminders of how some basic principals were formulated in the time past. They are not instructions really how to do this today in these present conditions.

For example, if you ask… if you’re not a Zenny and you ask someone in the Zen tradition, “What is a Zen master?” They will give you, most often a formulaic answer to that referring to no one specifically or referring to some person, constraining that person into a description that doesn’t really fit anyone these days. They will often find recourse to a description that doesn’t really fit real life examples of authentic Zen teachers and Zen masters that are successful in transmitting the teachings these days. And the same goes for Tibetan masters or Rinpoches, whether Western teachers or Eastern Rinpoches. And I believe the same goes in Theravada, or more generally vipassana tradition which perhaps has more than the other two traditions mentioned, developed a new way of describing a teacher, whereby it has borrowed both from the therapeutic tradition in the West and from some other models available. Namely through cross-pollination between the different Buddhist streams of practice.

If we don’t move beyond the present unclear definition of these relationships and open up this discourse in a more dynamic way, then it’s very possible that a very small percentage of Buddhist practice will make itself really accommodate and integrate the Western situation.