A Dharma Student's Bill of Rights

This is a continuation of a discussion started on a thread about the Buddhist Geeks conference, in which a workshop was held on creating a dharma student's bill of rights.

A preliminary list is posted here:
alohadharma.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/a-d...ents-bill-of-rights/

And any ideas are welcome!

There should also be something in the bill or rights concerning "Dharma mission creep".

Not to get too ken wilber geeky, but dharma practice is largely an interior quantrant practice. Obviously, it can't be completely isolated from the other dimensions of life/other quadrants, but there is a serious problem when dharma teachers want to influence/direct the other aspects of people's lives, ostensibly to promote awakening. Many times this is the teacher's shadow, a controlling pathology, masquerading as enlightened guidance. These situations where a teacher wants to influence/control a student's career, social relations, politicial views, artistic expressions, hobbies, diets, etc. "all in the name of awakening" can get pretty oppressive.

Obviously, this is a pretty extreme situation, but some of the other things on the list are equally serious, so I figured I would mention it. This generation hasn't had it's crop of cult-leaders show up yet, but knowing human nature, it's a matter of time.

"dharma mission creep" is one of the best phrases I've heard in a while! I love that. It'll definitely go in.

According to comments I'm getting on and off the site, most people love it, think it is an idea long overdue. Ona made a very insightful point, which is that it might be helpful to more clearly define just what a dharma teacher is and what the relationship with a dharma teacher is about (Ona, please correct me if I did get that right). This is an excellent idea, and I'd love to hear other's takes on this.

What really IS a dharma teacher? What does a dharma teacher actually DO?

Thoughts?

Ha! That's likely to be another separate thread because it's such a huge topic. I've seen very lengthy online conversations and thrashes about "What is a dharma teacher?"

My take on that would be it might be easier to define what a dharma teacher is not:

- your parent
- your therapist
- your doctor
- your lover

IMHO a dharma teacher is mostly a coach and a mentor. Someone who has been through enough of the territory you must traverse to be helpful to you. A dharma teacher is not someone who has authority over you in a material way. They may not even have spiritual authority, whatever that means. It may be someone who has a position or a title, like "Roshi" but that is an organizational authority that points to a certain level of experience and knowledge. "Dharma teacher" is a role that must have better defined boundaries than it has historically benefitted from. It is too easy for the role to be embued with authority as viewed by both sides - student and teacher. When that happens trouble is probably brewing for one or the other, or both.

This is a worthy and complicated subject but I'd hate to see it sidetrack the bill of rights discussion.

I'm going to insist the two are fundamentally intertwined. The need for a bill of rights comes from situations where the student teacher relationship was built on the idea that the teacher has special authority, is a parent figure, is a god figure, etc. That view (from either or both sides, as you say, Chris) is what creates the context for abuses. Including a working definition of what is to be expected in a healthy teacher-student relationship helps provide a ground of expectations against which the bill of rights is contextualized and makes sense, no?

(I've been in a student teacher relationship that was highly dysfunctional. I wanted someone who would be amazing and powerful and supernaturally parental to me. I got it. It was not pleasant and I quickly left, perhaps because I had some latent common sense under my neediness. There were plenty of people who cautioned me to avoid that teacher and plenty of people in line behind me to be the next student, looking for the same thing.)

Ona, I think a dharma student/teacher bill of rights can be a stand alone document to rely on *in practice*. Philosophically, ethically, behaviorally, psychologically, we know that they are intertwined and that the abuses in the relationship between students and teachers come from a lot of dysfunctions and that dysfunction needs to be addressed in some way. But as a very practical matter I believe we need a very simple, readable and easily interpreted statement (bill of rights) that allows student and teachers to see quickly what is and is not in bounds.

Just trying to be clear about the need I perceive, esp. after hearing the abuses delineated at the un-conference a few weeks ago.

I love how teachers are arguing for the student. It's neat.

Ken McLeod has some good stuff on this... and Gira will like how there is something for teachers and students:

The teacher-student relationship is based on a shared aim -- your awakening to the mystery of being. It is not based on mutual profit or on emotional connection. The responsibilities of a teacher are three:

To show you the possibility of presence
To train you in the techniques and methods you will need
To direct your attention to the internal patterns that prevent you from being present in your life
Everything else is extra and is usually based on the projections of the student, the teacher, or both.

You, as a student, have two responsibilities:

To practice what is taught as it is given
To apply the practice in your life
For the teacher-student relationship to work, the teacher must be concerned only with the student's growth and awakening, and the student must know this to be true...

www.naturalawareness.net/mcleod.htm

The more I know of Ken McLeod the more I like Ken McLeod

It strikes me that there are all sorts of teachers and pinning down a single definition of a teacher might not be possible. I recall Hokia Sobol talked about the roles of teachers on the BG podcast and he identified a few different roles that teachers play. I can't recall exactly how he broke it down but here are a few that occur to me:

Coach: focuses on technique and practice. Engages in a lot of problem-solving and morale boosting.

Mentor: provides an example of what the student aspires to become (a poor word, I know). A big part of the teaching is explaining what life looks like from a perspective of awakening.

Teacher: like a professor, this person emphasizes acquiring a specialized knowledge and using it in one's life. Uses technical language, backs up teaching with references and strongly encourages the student to master the academic aspects of the Dharma.

Scientist/Researcher: views the practice as a set of experiments designed to test specific hypotheses. Supports the student in clarifying technique, setting clear expectations, and comparing actual outcomes to hypothesized outcomes.

Guru/Priest: embodies the outcome of practice. Emphasizes devotional practices.

Teachers, me included, move through multiple roles all the time. All these roles have an implicit power difference, and so all of them can lead to abuse. It's my personal opinion that the last one is the most prone to exploitation.

I would also add a newer business term: "consultant" - a person hired briefly and periodically for their expertise during times of challenge.

"
The more I know of Ken McLeod the more I like Ken McLeod

"

ditto to this

"It strikes me that there are all sorts of teachers and pinning down a single definition of a teacher might not be possible. ..."

That list is very useful, really.

One more possibility for the bill of rights, though possibly not one we want to be as ironclad as the other ones. But every teacher has blind spots, and i assume every teacher can have a teaching relationship develop in a problematic manner. This idea was inspired by the practice of psychological supervision.
o: Supervision: The client/student can expect that the teacher (when possible) engages in regular confidential discussion with someone qualified about his/her teaching practice, teaching relationships and specific issues that might arise.

What do you think. Necessary? Generally a good idea? Good ways of going about it.

Villum, that's useful I think - even just in a looser sense, that a teacher interacts regularly with peers and those with more experience whether formally or informally (which would depend on the tradition they teach in among other things). It's a sign of good social relations and communication skills, if nothing else! It also points to this idea: if a teacher can give references, both their own teachers/peers and current/former students, that gives a potential student a lot of info. For example if I talk to some current students and they all gush "He's so powerful, you can just feel his amazingness!" that gives me a clue that this teacher is perhaps more in the guru type role and I can decide if that's right for me. If the teacher notes on their site or in conversation that he/she was very influenced by and/or studied with, say, Adyashanti and Gary Weber, then that gives me an idea of the kind of teaching they might offer and what traditions they are coming from. If they say "life is my teacher and there is no one else who understands what I'm teaching, I'm a unique and special case" then that tells me something important, too.

"The client/student can expect that the teacher (when possible) engages in regular confidential discussion with someone qualified about his/her teaching practice, teaching relationships and specific issues that might arise."

Villum, I'm not sure I understand this. Can you elaborate? Do you mean that a teacher should have a mentor or another teacher that they can discuss teaching issues with? If so I think that's valuable but with the caveat that student privacy and confidentiality is not violated.

Chris: Yeah, exactly that.

I came to this mostly from thinking about the nature of the teaching relationship, and the subtle issues that can evolve in it, like the transference and countertransference psychologists talk about. I don't know much at all about the psychological study of the therapeutic relationship, but it seems to me some of the problems that can happen there, can happen in a teaching relationship too, (likely along with other, more unique issues), Ron might be able to say something about this.

Anyways, yeah, mentor or peer (group), with suitable arrangements for confidentiality.

Hi Villum, I like this idea and once brought it up to Kenneth when I was first considering teaching. At the time, I wanted some supervision similar to a psychological training model. I checked in with him a few times I think, but I dropped the ball on it and became very busy.

In the supervisor model it goes like this: once a week you spend an hour with a senior person in your field and review the cases you're working on. You bring up quandaries, obstacles to treatment or ethical dilemmas that you are struggling with and they help you to think through those things and formulate a responsible approach to your work. It is really good practice and it serves as a kind of gate-keeper function for the field. If someone simply can't do the work responsibly it is the job of the supervisor to help them get on track or keep them from moving on in training (a little harsh I know, but necessary in a field which deals with suicidal people).

When you complete training and go off to work independently you no longer get "supervision" per se, but something called "peer consultation" in which you get advice from colleagues about issues that come up. Sometimes this is done on an informal basis, when something comes up that is confusing you check in with a trusted colleague to get their input, other times it is more formal in that you contact someone with certain expertise and pay them to supervise you on a particular issue. And other times it means meeting with a group of peers for lunch a couple times a month and discussing cases. It's a practice that is drilled into psychologists because it is important to have multiple perspectives when it comes to cultural and social issues that impact treatment.

I think something similar probably already exists in monastic settings, and it would be really great to have a similar approach for online dharma teachers and secular teachers.

This is probably exactly the kind of early stage conversation that led to the formation of the professional associations in various medical, therapeutic and healing fields. I wonder if the idea of having a supervising and accrediting professional organization makes some of the readers (who teach) flinch? These principles are really useful and would help with abuses. Unless there's some kind of repercussion for abuses, though, anyone can hang the seal of approval "I'm a member of Responsible Dharma Teachers Association" on their site or office door. And then do what they please. Sort of like saying your food product is "all natural and chock full of goodness" - it's sort of meaningless. So then you have to have some kind of supervisory component, and next thing you know there are annual conferences, dues, and a board of directors. And politics.

On the one hand this makes me roll my eyes - here we go again with humans turning radical spiritual exploration into an institution... On the other hand, how do you realistically see such guidelines being propagated and used, taking into account human nature (which manages unethical behavior *even* in monastic settings. Buddhist ones, too.)

This is getting a little farther afield... but in the list of categories, for clarity sake, there should probably be "dharma friend" or something like that to help distinquish that from a teacher. All of us have chimed in on other's practice threads, offering advice etc. This input falls short of someone being a teacher, but this learning relationship is very helpful for practice, I think. It could be the same as sanga, but that term is pretty broadly interpreted/used.

It will be interesting to see if anyone does try to create an association. The tricky thing is it would have to distinquish itself from psychology/councilling otherwise it is redundant. So folks will have to out themselves as awake/enlightened/four path/arahat, etc. for it to make any sense!

Some other ideas: a teacher as a contractor -- he/she can do somethings with the student, but if things get tricky or the student wants a particular skill, they get sent to a teacher's colleague that can teach that aspect. The teacher is valued for their own skills as well as the quality of their colleagues.

I think the hardest thing for me to figure out is a teacher's/student's bill of rights when it comes to dark night stuff. How much early warning? How much should a student spin in their own contraction? How much should a teacher mitigate suffering at the expense of minimizing potential insights? This might be intuition as much as anything else, but I'm curious if others have thoughts about this.

Re: dark night stuff, the way it is expressed ranges so widely, and the ability of a given person to be with uncomfortable stuff ranges widely, too. Some people freak the heck out at one little discomfort, others take it in stride. In one student I can see these periods manifesting as a slightly impatient and restless attitude and mild discussion of frustration with not being able to rest in a more tranquil state during meditation. Others get much more frustrated or feel really overwhelmed or even frightened. I think it makes most sense to talk about what's coming up for the student. In terms of "fore-warning" it's enough (in my opinion) to say that meditation is not always easy, and includes both pleasant states and unpleasant states. The process of meditation helps us learn to be with all the stuff we have bottled up inside, and often that stuff starts to surface after some time meditating. If those periods are very uncomfortable there are exercises that can help soothe and comfort (metta practice often works very well, for example).... Always keeping it focused on what that particular student needs at that particular time seems probably the best strategy. I have to say I sometimes think there's a real advantage in naive meditation, too - a student who has very little preconception of what everything's supposed to be like has a much easier time just doing the practice instead of constantly anticipating this or that experience (good or bad). The years-in-the-armchair-with-books meditator who finally starts to practice has built a fortress of ideas about how everything is supposed to go, and that can create a whole extra layer of struggle, I think. Thoughts?

I think there are people teaching dharma who have no business doing so, so I suggested in Ron's un-conference session on this topic at BG2012 that there be some form of teacher certification. It did not meet with resounding approval, even from those who had been subjected to pretty severe abuse from a "teacher." I still favor some kind of certification, if for no other reason than that teachers have to learn some minimalist form of respect and ethics in regard to their relationships with students.

Some kind of mutual supervision/peer review forum with "teaching practice threads" might be an idea, if one does not exist already. Would imo require acceptance from from the students, and should be probably (unfortunately, perhaps, in the bigger context) be very confidential and very closed.

" I still favor some kind of certification, if for no other reason than that teachers have to learn some minimalist form of respect and ethics in regard to their relationships with students.

"

You don't really think that people who are unethical are going to see a certification group and go "oh, I'd better stop that"? do you??? People who harm others have a deep well of their own baggage and habits to unravel. I do agree with the ideal, but expecting that certification will turn everyone into kindly angels is rather naive, no?