Tao Te Ching
Teachers
A good teacher can open doors into experiences and understandings we didn't realize were possible. They also can easily become "golden chains" that restrict us to dogmatic world views and narrow-minded opinions. As Hóngzhì Zhēngjué said back in the 12th century, “ten thousand sages are no more than footprints on the trail”and as Bob Dylan sang more recently, "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters." At the same time though, it's hard to get anywhere without the help of a larger and deeper perspective. (Picture here is Aspasia with one of her students, Socrates.)
Quotes (74)
“Stop believing in wise words and reason; you will become your own sage.”
“When leaders work for personal reward, honesty fails and deception rules.”
“Examine my words the way a goldsmith examines gold. Don't just take my word because it is my word.”
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
“Sages… treat the people as if they were their children. Thus, the whole world wants them for their leaders. The people never grow tired of them because sages don’t struggle against them. Everyone struggles against something but no one struggles against those who don’t struggle against anything.”
“The authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn.”
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
“As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha.”
“To follow the path, look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master.”
“unless students can forget the teacher, their vision will be obscured.”
“You cannot expect to enlighten more than one or two men for Ch'an is not so easy to understand. It will suffice to enlighten one or two.”
“Sesame oil is the essence. Although the ignorant know that it is in the sesame seed, they do not understand the way of cause, effect, and becoming and therefor are not able to extract the essence. In the same way, the guru shows the truth of tathata. If it is not shown by the guru, it cannot be realized just like the sesame oil that remains in the seed”
“What sort of man at such a time would come to visit the teacher?
As this is not a time for flowers, I find I've come alone.”
“The heat of a candle flame can’t compete with the heat of the sun… When you grasp this, then all things will be your teacher.”
“Those who recommend faith without understanding are in many cases seeking to cover up their inability to teach faith intelligibly”
“We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”
“No friend is better than your own wise heart [...] no one should be closer to you than your own consciousness.”
“Zui-Gan called out to himself every day, 'Master.' Then he answered himself, 'Yes, sir.'
And then he added, 'Become sober.' Again he answered, 'Yes, sir.'
After that he continued, 'do not be deceived by others.' 'Yes, sir; yes, sir,' he replied.
”
“It is Being itself that becomes the real teacher as we learn by encountering ourselves in and through others.”
“There is no one who cannot teach someone something… Wise men appreciate everyone, for they see the good in each and know how hard it is to make anything good.”
“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.”
“Message to his son’s teacher: 'Teach him the wonder of books but also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside. Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.'”
“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
“The business of the teacher is to produce a higher standard of intelligence in the community, and the object of the public school system is to make as large as possible the number of those who possess this intelligence.”
“Any man can learn anything he will, but no man can teach except to those who want to learn.”
“You have to grow from the inside out. No one can teach you, no one can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
“You must learn not what people around you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammelled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together.”
“Socrates, a unique philosopher, unlike all philosophers that ever were outside of Greece... was everything rather than what we expect a learned man and a philosopher to be... The attitude peculiar to Socrates among all the great teachers of the world: he will not do their thinking for the men who come to him, neither in matters small nor great.”
“The attitude peculiar to Socrates among all the great teachers of the world: he will not do their thinking for the men who come to him, neither in matters small nor great.”
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
“The key to education is to be found in personality. There should be no teacher for whom teaching is less than a vocation, and no teacher should impart his knowledge to a pupil until he finds the pupil ready to receive it.”
“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
“When a person no longer confuses a personal body with self and recognizes all people as members of their own body, neither failure or success can bother them and they become safe to guide and guard others.”
“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”
“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.”
“I would make health a required course in every year of schooling... have our physicians [teach] preventative health in the classroom... form follows function, functin follows desire, and desire is the essence of life.”
“Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people.”
“I put the relation of a fine teacher to a student just below the relation of a mother to a son.”
“The moment you meet a teacher, you should leave the teacher, and you should be independent.”
“A good teacher is there to watch the young person and recognize what the possibilities are—then to give advice, not commands... to talk it out, give some general clues.”
“An authentic spiritual teacher is like the sail that enables a boat to cross the ocean swiftly.”
“I have had a good teacher... my teacher is nature itself. Nature is always perfect in every case. Other people have broken nature down and looked at it only as small fragments, so what they learn is incomplete.”
“Scratch an incompetent schoolteacher—or, for that matter, college professor—and half the time you find a displaced first-class automobile mechanic or a goddam stonemason.”
“The guru introduces us to our own Buddha-nature. Believing with faith and devotion in one’s own guru or sublime teacher can introduce our own mind to its own Buddha-nature.”
“Gurdjieff on the contrary, has become steadily better known, and his influence continues to grow. One of the main reasons for this is that there was so little of the charlatan about him. He is no cult figure with hordes of gullible disciples. What he has to teach makes an appeal to the intelligence, and can be fully understood only by those who are prepared to make a serious effort.”
“I don’t consider myself a teacher… I only try to show people how to turn on their light”
“Whether it is a vacuum cleaner salesman or a guru, we find the same level of salesmanship.”
“According the Buddhist scriptures, a true guide is one who helps you to cross the turbulent river, then burns your boat for you.”
“The search for an external protector has met with no success.”
“Iinstead of seeing things as new, you see them as very ordinary and full of details… You yourself become a living teaching; you yourself become living dharma… the reference point takes the form of awareness… choiceless awareness.”
“In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”
“the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”
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