Being Seen
In my college days, a thousand years ago, I used to hang out in part of the library that contained a large multivolume work: Pokorny’s Indo-European Etymological Dictionary. I would idle away hours looking up the derivations of words and tracing their meanings as they wended their way through many languages and cultures. It instilled in me a spirit of looking beneath the surface of a word to find the depth and breadth that lay within.
When I first discovered that the word “education” derives from an ancient root roughly meaning to draw out, to lead out, it lit up my mind. At that point, education had seemed mainly to be a process of having information and ideas poured into you, or wisdom bestowed on you from on high. This deeper sense of education conveyed both something being drawn out from within as well as the prospect of being led on a journey of discovery. It was a revelation, and an inspiration.
Even if I was overthinking the etymology—we can’t really know what people thousands of years ago meant when they used a word; the great Julius Pokorny was only making educated guesses—I came to find teachers who met this deeper standard of education. They were teachers who elicited something within that was ready to be brought out. For sure, they led me to new information, but with a spirit of inquiry and examination, rather than indoctrination. Many of them taught me mindfulness.
Patiently Planting Seeds
When it comes to learning meditation, having teachers who guide you in this facilitative way is vitally important. Meditation lies somewhere between an intellectual pursuit and skills training of the kind that athletes, martial artists, and musicians, among others, rely on. It involves techniques that have physical aspects, and it is indeed a bit like building up a muscle—at first the “attention muscle”—so some coaching and coaxing are integral aspects of real teaching.
If you think you need a teacher, chances are you already
