Student vs. Teacher, or The Beginner’s Mind

[I wrote this entry last night, and woke up to hear about the great teacher Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’ leaving his body this morning. If you have ever taken a yoga class in your life, it is because of this man’s dedication to the yogic path. Along with B.K.S. Iyengar, he opened the door to yoga and brought the Western world through it. I offer this small meditation to him, with gratitude and pranams for his tireless efforts and lifetime of study and teaching. As my teacher Manorama noted this morning, “The West owes him too much.” May we all continue to learn from his brilliant, shining example.]

We’re all familiar with the expression “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” (If you’re not familiar with it… it’s an expression.) A little knowledge can be especially perilous to those of us that teach things, as it the easiest thing in the world to garland our egos with a sense of superiority: I’m the one in the room you’ve all come to learn from, therefore the learning is only going to flow in one direction: from me to you. If you start to see yourself this way, it’s not that hard to believe it’s true all the time, even when you’re not the one teaching. You are never the Student; you are always the Teacher.

I find it hardest to put aside what I know and to truly become a student when I’m taking class with a new teacher – which, as you can imagine, has been happening a lot ever since I moved across the country. In many ways this has been hugely beneficial, as I’ve been exposed to and challenged and stimulated by a whole new bevy of brilliance, West-Coast style (Jill Miller! Anthony Benenati! Tara Judelle!). But every now and then I’ll be in a room, and the teacher will ask us to do a pose, or sequence something in a different way than I’m accustomed to, and before I can stop it, that little voice in my head starts chiming in. “Really?” it asks. “Flying crow, now? What does this have to do with what we were just doing? Have we warmed up enough for this? This is not what I would do now if I were teaching this class. Who is this person, anyway? How long have they been a teacher? I’m not sure I’m ready to do this pose. I’m not sure I’m even going to try.” 

And therein lies the problem. When we make a decision about an experience before we have it, whether it be the efficacy of a class, or how we’re going to react to a person, or what we think the outcome of a situation will be, we cut ourselves off from learning anything: from the situation, from the person, and from (or even about) ourselves. We stop growing. We sit content with our little knowledge, and we do nothing to test its boundaries, to make it expand and grow. We lose the ability to be surprised, and at best we remain static; at worst, we atrophy.

I was reading about bones earlier today, and reminded about one of their most fascinating features: when we put them in healthy stress situations, like asana practice, our bones respond by depositing layers of calcium into themselves, thus becoming stronger. When we sit around doing nothing, our bones get weaker. It is only when we challenge them to move in non-habitual ways that our bones stay healthy and strong.

So we have a choice: we can sit around, content with the knowledge we already have, or we can challenge ourselves to keep studying and learning, even though we already have a certificate, or a glowing review, or we’re an expert in our field. The best teachers that I know, the ones who I continue to learn from, are those that are humble enough to keep studying, that remain fascinated with the subject matter at hand and are eternal students.

Often it is in greater study that we come to realize how much there still is out there for us to learn. And what a fantastic realization! It’s kind of dull to already know ahead of time how a situation is going to play out, or decide you don’t like something without even trying it, or to detest a person on sight for no better reason than they remind you of your eighth grade nemesis. How much more exciting and satisfying tomorrow becomes when we see it as an opportunity to have a new experience, a new encounter, to dig into that small percentage of our thoughts that aren’t repetitive and habitual (only about 10%!) and maybe expand it for ourselves. To truly have what is known as beginner’s mind asks a little vulnerability from us; it asks that we put down our defenses, if only for a moment, and let something new in.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Peirian spring; there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”

– Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism, 1709

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