Teachers

The overcast sky in the morning is a reminder to watch closely.  It is grey, but the sun will shine this day.  This time of year, the transition is the common experience in the play with weather.  It is 59 degrees fahrenheit - warm by recent morning standards.  Today is Monday.

"Look at this small pocket in your hand..." as she started the meditation with a few guests gathered to experience an afternoon of sharing tea and time.  "When you are meditating, you are connecting heaven, human beings, earth with every breath."  The instruction was among many that are often given to students of meditation.  There are many different traditions, all sharing a message that navigates to the same place: a path to finding one's true self, deepening capacity for the qualities of compassion, wisdom, love.

Some teachers will build a portal that uses language that aligns with everyday life in societies that have very different customs and traditions for daily living. Some open the door with a practice that has a natural attraction to a very specific audience - martial arts, the way of flower, the way of chanting are among the portals.  Some who have no ability to sit up because the body has lost the capacity to do so,  will navigate to the practice of entering silence and finding the way, by instructing on how to enter while lying down (noting, that reclining too is one of the four sacred positions for human beings).  

This teacher was one who guides using an everyday activity: cooking.  She is not a chef, but one who is on the path to realizing what we are born to be in this world. Her teaching moves beyond language and words.  Culture can be named, but the teaching she brings, cannot.  Bringing body and spirit together through teachings about all life experiences is contained in the one practice of preparing nourishment for both.  One can taste the lessons of life - wonderment, playfulness, sacrifice, gratitude - in every dish that has come from her sincere desire to teach without teaching; to guide, without asking for followers; and to inject a joyful spirit along a world full of tragedy that all beings encounter along the way.

There is attention today on the questions that are the product of many shifts happening in our world - economic, political, environmental, and more.  And as the activities around these concerns invite people to engage in a serious way, there is no time left for seeing reality.  The only opportunity each one has to encounter reality is to recognize the door that waits to be opened.  Once one notices, a teacher will arrive.  It is in the noticing that the guide will appear.  

There is something that we can call karma, that brings certain events into existence.  It was a beautiful stroke of karma that led to one knowing another, who knows yet another, who led to the hermitage many years ago, which led to the friendship from decades past, which led to having a refreshing cup of lotus tea on this day.