Quotes about Teaching

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” 

The teaching of the buddhas is: Find time and a place to remain unoccupied. That’s what meditation is all about. Find at least one hour every day to sit silently doing nothing, utterly unoccupied, just watching whatsoever passes by inside. In the beginning you will be very sad, looking at things inside you; you will feel only darkness and nothing else, and ugly things and all kinds of black holes appearing. You will feel agony, no ecstasy at all. But if you persist, persevere, the day comes when all these agonies disappear, and behind the agonies is the ecstasy.

True teachers not only impart knowledge and method but awaken the love of learning by their own reflected love.

The fundamental motive of true teaching is the love that seeks and studies and performs.

If people need to grow at their own rates, then you might ask, "In what way is it your opportunity to help others grow spiritually?" And I can offer two answers: first, it is appropriate to share your views when someone asks, and second, allow that you may know more of the situation, have greater insight into both the nature of the problem and the solution, than you might share with that person. A true spiritual teacher knows more than he or she necessarily verbalizes, using temperance and love to be guided to say what is appropraite without showing off his or her knowledge or saying what would not arise from the greatest care, kindness, and compassion.

We have to teach young people that "No" is a complete sentence.

The Buddha's teachings on love are clear. It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love.

If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.

Jesus taught us many things. But so did Muhammad and Buddha and countless others. You don't need priests or prophets to teach you. People and events in your life can teach you.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

You cannot teach a child any more than you can grow a plant. All you can do is on the negative side - you can only help. It is a manifestation from within; it develops its own nature - you can only take away obstructions.

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.

"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."

"When we give thanks in all things, we see hardships and adversities in the context of the purpose of life... We are meant to learn and grow through opposition, through meeting our challenges, and through teaching others to do the same... the Lord will not only consecrate our afflictions for our gain, but He will use them to bless the lives of countless others."

"Contrast within polarites is a teaching aid and, being that and only that, the message it carries with it shoud be clear: its task is to show what to avoid and what to seek, the contrast lessens. Of course, for each time polarities are embraced they are unified and for this alone cannot present a contrast any more."

    Every human being is as special as every other human being who has ever lived, lives now, or every will live. You are all meesengers. Every one of you. You are carrying a message to life about life every day. Every hour. Every moment.
    Everything you think, say, and do is a message. Your whole life is your teaching. If you thought that others, tomorrow, would walk in the path that you have taken today, would you take the same path?
    You may think that people do not look to you, but they do. More people than you know. Everyone, in fact whose life you touch is touched by your example. You are giving them data about life. You are telling them how it is, how things operate, how things are, and they will emulate you, they will copy you, they will take your data into their world and make it part of their own lives.
    Your family will do this. All people, family or not, who see you and know of you and are touched by you, will do this.
    Your neighbors will do this. Your nation will do this. You are the nation. The nation is made up of you. You are your religion. Your religion is made up of you.
    Everything starts with you.
    You are the first domino. All the rest of the dominoes fall when you do. What you "fall for" is what they'll fall for! Therefore, don't fall for anything...but, rather, fall in.
    Fall in step with your highest self, for your highest self steps on the Path. Fall in line with your grandest thoughts, for your grandest thoughts lead you to that Path. Fall in love, for love is that Path. Then, watch things fall into place, all because of you.
   

If you weren't CEO, what would you really love to be doing?

In some next life, I want to do something where I could give back. Teaching is one way. I would probably teach business, somewhere, someplace, somehow. I'd love to say I could teach math, but I can't even help my daughter with that.

You don't have to be a "person of influence" to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.

Many teachers will tell you to believe; then they put out your eyes of
reason and instruct you to follow only their logic. But I want you
to keep your eyes of reason open; in addition, I will open in you
another eye, the eye of wisdom.

Since you do not know the nature of the aleph, how are going to teach me the bet? Hypocrite, if you know, first teach me the aleph then I will believe what you say about the bet.

Not even the best teacher can present one with consciousness, or fill one with knowledge; but in a man suitably disposed it is possible to arouse reactions which will lead in the right direction.

            Often it is useful to prepare the ground by clarifying essential ideas in order to get rid of prejudices.  But the most effective instruction is that which leads the seeker to put his problems clearly to himself so that then he can find he answer for himself in meditation.

If you want to learn a thing, read that; if you want to know a thing, write that; if you want to master a thing, teach that.

Listen to your parents and teachers. they got a line on most things, so don't treat em like enemies.  There's always a chance you could learn something.

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.

There is a form of poetic and esthetic and moral genius necessary to make philosophical issues truly incandesce for students, and even though I indeed had some world-class professors myself when I went through the curriculum, I rarely saw such gnosic or concretist/poetic passion among them.  I am not speaking of broad histrionics or melodramatic delivery, but rather a moral investment of concern, of loving delight and pathos in exposing one's consciousness to the full horrific and magnificent implications of the materials.

Because of the very intimate character of philosophical norms and criticisms, a teacher in philosophy has to be like Alexander the Great:  never issuing dictates as to what his soldiers ought to do that he was not ready and willing to leap into doing himself.  An excellent teacher is one accomplished in serving as an exemplar, every act of every kind of thinking and every form of perspective must be something he is prepared to illustrate by carrying out himself.  Students need to see the incandescent arc-welding that joins ideas together into thoughts.  If one is saying something that inflicts suffering, one by all rights had better be prepared to suffer along with the student, to sympathize and assure them that the profit for this agony consists in freedom and clarity. 

It is not the business of a teacher in philosophy to "confuse" students any more than it is to "resolve" their confusions.  It is his business to explain in broad metaphysical and moral terms the difference between the kinds of factors in our lives that serve as raw material and the kinds of factors that act as organizing forms.  A course in philosophy raises on this basis issues that students ought to trouble themselves to evaluate on their own:  is this something matter or form, does it tend toward chaos or toward cosmos?  If I try to deploy this as a principle or concept or value, what will the teleology of this attempt turn up--an organismic system, an accomplishment of harmonic order, or a self-conflicted and incoherent contrivance that defeats the criteria of the mind?

It is not enough to say that a philosophy teacher presents students with counterpoint to their customary ways of seeing things.  A teacher in philosophy is not necessarily very profoundly philosophical for that reason, nor need he or she be.  The teacher may be only a few leagues ahead of the students, and may frequently find that a superbright student will tax his or her supposed mastery of the issues.  To be honest about these relations and difficulties, I have always assumed that as a professor I was no more than an exemplary student, and "mastery" was merely a way of gaining momentum, not declaring the race was over.  Self-mastery in philosophy is how one orchestrates the energies to be able to dislodge really prodigious monolithic belief-systems.  It is by no means any kind of self-congratulation. 

What we actually learn from trying to carry out the program of philosophical education or teaching in the humanities or liberal arts (no matter how it may be done or via what materials), is demonstrably a lesson in diversification:  if there is anything "universalist" or "uniformitarian" about human nature, it defies being evidenced.  Students as individuals and as groups are very differentially susceptible to learning the arts of self-mastery and self-criticism:  if every human being were equitably competent to penetrate and discompose his own illusions and delusions, not just philosophy classes but education at large would be mostly superfluous.  People in general could just sit and think for themselves. 

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.