Issue No. 22: Kill Your Teacher
Linji Yixuan (临济义玄), founder of the Linji school of Chan (Zen) Buddhism during Tang Dynasty China.
A couple of years ago, I was talking with a friend and he was a bit distraught. I asked him what was wrong and he informed me that he had sent advance copies of his latest album to former performance mentors and they had responded with some quite critical (and, in my opinion, awfully minute and fussy) comments. I could tell that these judgments were weighing heavily on my friend, despite his considerable musicianship and abilities on his instrument. “Ah,” I said. “You must kill your teacher.”
My friend was baffled and perhaps a touch horrified.
In this issue of The Theisen Journal, I will explain what I meant - and still mean - by that purposefully provocative statement.
I have been a music educator for almost two decades. I have a terminal degree, a tenured university position, and am writing pedagogical books. Plural.
You don’t have to convince me of the value of an education.
Teachers are a source of great knowledge, wisdom, advice, and support. We can grow through contact with them and carry their words and insights with us for the rest of our days.
And yet their solutions are, ultimately, their own. Their paths are their own. Their souls are their own.
Not ours.
There simply comes a time when we must rid ourselves of the counsel of our instructors to discover our personal, unique vision.
Learn everything you can from your teacher - then kill your teacher.
I admit that my wording is harsh but it is so deliberately because I am echoing a sentiment expressed by Linji Yixuan, the 9th-century Buddhist, reformer, and Chán master. An iconoclast, Linji’s suggested path to bodhi (enlightenment/awakening) frequently involved striking, shouting, and shocking parables. He believed that the deepest, transcendental truths could be blocked from one’s understanding - even and especially by those who purported to help:
Followers of the Way, if you want insight into Dharma as is, just don't be taken in by the deluded views of others.
Whatever you encounter, either within or without, slay it at once: on meeting a Buddha slay the Buddha, on meeting a patriarch slay the patriarch, on meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on meeting your parents slay your parents, on meeting your kinsman slay your kinsman, and you attain emancipation.
By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through.
Linji’s phrase “on meeting a Buddha, slay the Buddha” is sometimes colloquially represented as: “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.”
Teachers are our scaffolds as we erect the towers of our lives, careers, and personalities. But any scaffolding has a specific function and defined time of usefulness. If the scaffolding is not removed, the edifice will appear unattractive and - worse still - new construction will not be possible.
Teachers are like any other useful tool that must ultimately be discarded for advanced growth. To travel quickly by bicycle, one must remove the training wheels.
Why do so many incredible musicians cling to their teachers (and their methods, opinions, and proclamations)? It is easy to do. I have done it. The allure is intoxicating.
We do it for the same reason we desperately hang onto our degrees, our prior roles, our previously mastered repertoire, our awards and accomplishments: it is our fragile Ego, stealthily protecting itself from damage. If we only obey our teachers, we have someone to blame when life doesn’t go as we think it should or when our endeavors don’t produce the desired results. “It wasn’t my fault,” says the Ego. “We did exactly as we were told!”
The irony, of course, is that by exclusively travelling into the orchards explored and well-plucked by our teachers we return with far less fruit than if we had sought (or even planted) new groves of our own.
At any rate, this is my advice. Perhaps ignore it. Perhaps you should kill this Journal.
By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through.