Want to be a meditation teacher?

It's easy.

Just follow these simple instructions you can be the meditation teacher in under five minutes.

First, learn to describe a simple meditation technique. You don't even have to know how to do it, just describe it.

Don't know one? Either search for free meditation techniques or use this one: Put your attention on your breathing. Notice when you are breathing in; notice when you are breathing out.  When your attention wanders come back to your breathing.

That's it. That's the complete meditation instruction.

Next, when your students come up and describe the various problems they're having — and they will have problems with a meditation technique like this, because it's really, really difficult to keep your attention focused on your breathing, unless you're living in a world with very few distractions — here's what you say:

"Hmmmmm…" (as if you're pondering their unique situation)

Then nod knowingly and say:

"I understand. Go back to your breathing."

Then before they can counter with something like, "I've tried at and it's not working," close your eyes and adopt a holier-than-thou peaceful demeanor.

That's it!

Now you can hang out your meditation teacher shingle and have fun.

I hope you realize this is satire. But many of you who've had meditation instruction will see that I'm not too far off from reality.

Here in the West especially, we pay a perhaps undue reverence to the style in which meditation has been taught.  Most teachers simply try to reproduce the way their teacher taught them. The potential problem here is that many of those "root meditation teachers" didn't speak English, or came from a culture where letting the student flounder and discover something only by trial and error after a long period of time is a traditional teaching method.

I've taught Zen archery for number of years and I noticed that it's almost a point of pride among many of the other teachers to speak in the clipped, semaphore-ish cryptic English that our old Japanese Zen archery Master uses.  Our teacher says very few words to us American students. Interestingly, though, when a Japanese-speaking student shows up at our dojo, the sensei (teacher) uses many more words, is significantly more attentive, and gives much more detailed instruction and corrections.

That said, even if he were talking to us as much as he speaks to the Japanese students, there's still a cultural difference worth noting: He doesn't particularly have a interest in speaking about emotional states and how they relate to this particular form of moving meditation. So, not surprisingly, most of the 2nd generation teachers, my peers, don't talk about this stuff either… even though it could be quite useful.

I'm not saying that teaching in a new way is necessarily better. It might be. We'd have to investigate and try it and see.  What I'm really suggesting is that we approach meditation instruction  with some curiosity and wondering rather than merely parroting what we think we've heard our meditation teacher.

In fact, I just remember funny story.  A friend of mine is a radical Zen meditation teacher named John Tarrant… during one Zen intensive for a very particular situation, John came up with an exercise for his students to do.  When he came back to this same city a few years later he found that the students were still doing this practice even though it wasn't relevant for their current situation.

He suggested that they stop, but they put up quite a fight, saying, "Oh, no. This is an ancient teaching from the Zen patriarch!"  And they refused to stop no matter how much John protested.  The students would not believe that the exercise they were doing was made up by him and not some thousand year old technique.

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