Quotes about Teacher

The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves. That is why we have teaching. But the teaching is not ourselves. It is some explanation of ourselves. To study the teaching is to know yourselves. That is why we do not ever attach to the teaching, or to the teacher. The moment you meet a teacher you should leave the teacher, and you should be independent. You want a teacher so that you can be independent. So you study yourselves. You have the teacher for yourselves, not for the teacher.

We are all teachers and we are all students, and we must share our knowledge with each other.

Eventually we will all understand that all wisdom is within us, and as we remember, practice and access this wisdom, we will become our own best teacher.

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.       

When you act like a teacher, it's usually because you're afraid to be the student.

Fear is a great teacher.  It shows you what you still need to learn.

"This world is your body.
This world is a great school,
This world is your silent teacher."

``Sri Swami Sivananda

I was encouraged from the beginning to see the Earth as the best teacher and in addition was taught the old Gypsy arts of surviving the gaujo [non-Gypsy] world, much of which involved surviving the world outside your door emotionally.

Master

Don't ask my master for a quick fix,
there are no band aids for these wounds,
Instead he will give your heart a check up for free,
And tell you why it shuts down ,
when it should be singing for joy.

Don't ask my master to shed a tear for you,
Infact his eyes may even seem to playfully mock you,
'Cause his heart is already bleeding ,
for the unncessary load of pain that you carry.

Don't ask my master to bless you,
He has no time for it,
And in any case his hands are busy,
going up in gratitude on your behalf.

The world wants us to be who we truly are, not who we think others want us to be.

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild.  A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

I am at the same time both teacher and student mostly teaching myself or at least learning how to learn which may be the most important lesson of all in which case I may be my own best teacher because if I pay close enough attention to myself then I can see my own pitfalls as well as my strengths as long as I ALSO notice the times when my ego is involved and I then transcend my own ignorance and barriers to learning.

Perhaps the only real teacher is the person themselves and perhaps it is only when the person themselves allows themselves to teach themselves that the person truly learns and then both teacher and student appear simultaneously?

Once in every generation, if we’re lucky, a character shows up who can teach us about reality because he’s more real than ourselves. Melville called such a character a “Drummond light” after the type of light once used in theaters that was capable of providing illumination in many directions. May one of us create such a character. Better yet, let’s buck tradition and create a string of Drummond lights, each a brilliant facet of the Hope Diamond that is our new fiction. Let’s turn away, once and for all, from old Enlightenment tropes toward a new narrative of Enwritenment. Together let’s write light.

You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light. You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in times of confusion. You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest love. You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself as these things. Choose now to know yourself as these things always.

It doesn't matter if you win or lose, or even how you play the game: it only matters how good you look! *wink*

NO ONE WHO IS TRULY WORTHY EVER FEELS WORTHY

 How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?...His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker.

At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

You can't buy enlightenment, but you can hire a mirror so you can watch it happen.

May the Lord of day grant us peace.
May the Lord of night grant us peace.
May the Lord of sight grant us peace.
May the Lord of might grant us peace.
May the Lord of speech grant us peace.
May the Lord of space grant us peace.
I bow down to Brahman, source of all power.
I will speak the truth and follow the law.
Guard me and my teacher against all harm.
Guard me and my teacher against all harm.

A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him. In this way, a true teacher regards himself as a student of his students. If you will teach your pupils with this attitude, you will benefit much from them.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

The teacher if he is indeed wise does not teach bid you to enter the house of wisdom but leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

Revere your teacher as you revere Heaven.

One must marvel at the intellectual quality of a teacher who can't understand why children assault one another in the hallway, playground, and city street, when in the classroom the highest accolades are reserved for those who have beaten their peers. In many subtle and some not so subtle ways, teachers demonstrate that what children learn means much less than that they triumph over their classmates. Is this not assault? . . . Classroom defeat is only the pebble that creates widening ripples of hostility. It is self-perpetuating. It is reinforced by peer censure, parental disapproval, and loss of self-concept. If the classroom is a model, and if that classroom models competition, assault in the hallways should surprise no one.

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.

What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination.