Who is Your Teacher?

 

Yen

All of us remember our teachers. The ones that stay on with us, reside in the inner folds of our conscious minds. Some stay because of the efforts they made, in getting academic content through to our lethargic brains. Math and science teachers perhaps fall into that category. One of them that I keep close, is the one who read out Shakespeare in Literature class and made the bard’s plays come to vivid life. My romanticism with Julius Caesar or Macbeth, Hamlet etc, is because I went home and dreamt about the class that day.

Those who can make us dream, perhaps stay on…long inside our psyche. Traditional Gurus of classical arts are a different breed. In the old days, their students lived with them and turned out to become disciples. They not only carried forward the art but the tradition and history too, so important to keeping the spine of classical art forms strong, becoming a second nature to them. Today perhaps these descriptions are less understood or not desired in a transactional world, and more so when performances are desired to promote the artists themselves with gurus discarded like confectionary wrappers.

When we think of teachers, then our minds race back immediately to those from our academic lives, less from those who deliberately and consciously sculpted their wards and disciples to learn to get up when they fell, or peeled their perspectives out to wider horizons, with deeper depths of field, or even helped them dig deeper into their own souls, and unknowingly inscribe therein the values of love and humaneness, emotions if indelibly marked would shape them into purveyors of equality, fairness, and peace. If we look around us today, it might be difficult to locate such individuals.

This higher knowledge can be described as divine wisdom, which was one of the reasons such teachers became known as ‘gurus’. They were true mentors. Knowledge without character, intelligence without compassion, and learning without ethical discipline creates exploitative humans. When such of them rise to positions of power and authority, the world cringes and covers, with no way to free themselves. Most of human history is scarred and tainted with examples of such leaders.

A teacher - a true mentor, ought to become a living scripture, a bridge between material knowledge and wisdom, between intellectual understanding and lived experience.

So, can I figure out who were my best teachers?

If we open our minds, we would be forced to conclude that our best teachers were not always human, but were found in the forms of creation itself. Our star the Sun provides energy to all life, sustaining our mother earth, the natural world and all that lives in it… has and will always remain our higher order teachers. They are our best and most irreplaceable teachers. Every object around us, whether animate or inanimate, every tree, every animal, every reptile, insect…. every flower and stone, every blade of grass, water drops or oceans, the sky above or the indeterminate, seemingly infinite vastness of empty space in our cosmos……is ready to impart to us, knowledge beyond even our understanding. All wisdom is encrypted inside it. If only we had to be humble enough to accept it, we could seemingly just with a glance imbibe unprecedented knowledge. Do we care to even observe nature around us?

Think about it… where can we learn better concepts of teamwork, order, coordination, collaboration and organisation skills than from ants, bees or so many others like them? Where else can you learn patience and persistence other than from a spider, or loyalty and love other than from dogs? Nature surpasses all human gurus. Are we attentive enough to learn?

A closed mind sees only objects; an attentive mind sees relationships; a contemplative mind sees lessons, and a wise mind sees oneness and unity in all. Death is the most difficult of teachers as it teaches us to value life. Life’s impermanence gives it beauty and urgency.

A teacher therefore does not always have to stand before us and speak. Sometimes the teacher crawls beneath our feet, flies above our heads, grows silently beside our homes, or disappears in the forest's twilight. If we wait long enough with patience, the teachers of the night, starting with the magic and wonder of the fireflies, will teach you even more than the teachers of the day. When we are humble and bow before creation, then creation itself, which we are a part of, will task itself to teach us everything we need to know. This is the nature of divinity.

Learning is considered as an auditory and visual process. But we humans are gifted with three more senses. Only Nature can teach us utilising all our five senses. That is the meaning of holistic learning. There is also a sixth one. The power and immanence associated with it is scarcely understood. Learning through intuition is at a level beyond. But first we have to learn to submit our five senses to all of creation. This is the art of dissolution. Three of the eight limbs of Yoga are dissolution, contemplation and meditation. To do so is the first step in learning - Observation.

Yen’s World pedagogy incorporates Nature as a core construct among its four foundational limbs. This limb acts as a teacher par excellence. Learning from her is to learn the art of observation. To do so one has to understand the dissolution of our routine sensory inputs, while sublimating all our senses into the act of observation. One learns to become one with it and then one contemplates it as a witness. Meditation means to be in the moment of reality, outside it as an observer but yet inside it as an integral part of it. All knowledge is eventually inside that bubble of existence.

So when we say “Nature” is a part of our pedagogy, what we are saying is that we teach our wards the art of dissolution. To transform oneself into a part of nature is the greatest learning process we can ever hope to acquire.

Nature was and is my best teacher.

Come and experience it at “Yen’s World”.

But a word about institutions too. It's not enough to just implement policies. We have to reform ourselves, save ourselves from obsolescence. The deepest reform is never merely of laws, it is of consciousness. Each child learns to accept his/her consciousness.

Individual consciousness must express itself through authenticity, integrity and competence.

When consciousness changes, character changes. When character changes, institutions change, and when institutions change, society moves one step closer to following dharma.

If we wish to nurture responsible, compassionate and ethical citizens, we must build institutions that reflect values. Values of competency, integrity, accountability and transparency deserve thoughtful public discourse. You as parents ask for institutions that can solve problems instead of merely reacting to them. This is at the heart of our culture. We innovate and pioneer systems and processes long before others do, because we are responding to the subtle shifts in global consciousness. In other words we anticipate where the world is heading, and alter our course to steer our future citizens to successful outcomes. That is why we are proud to call ourselves disruptors. Disruptors of the tired and obsolete educational systems we inherited.

Come and meet us, talk to us and understand how we teach what we do and why.

 Yen

www.yensworld.in

+91-9744960740

Yen's World School

+91-9995510794 / 8891510794

If you would like to know more about the nature of consciousness then please read "Is Reality Real?"
https://amzn.in/d/07yLNtVt

You can request a free autographed copy of the book when you visit the school.