Does Mindfulness Require A Teacher?

I must state clearly that my teaching is a method to experience reality and not reality itself, just as a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. A thinking person makes use of the finger to see the moon. A person who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon. – Buddha

Recently, someone asked me whether I thought a teacher was necessary to live mindfully. It was a great question and one I couldn’t answer simply with a “yes” or “no.”

The history of my own practice speaks best to my viewpoint on this inquiry. The path to my current mindfulness practice did not evolve in a straight trajectory, but rather, as a meandering course with lots of stops and starts along the way.

Over twenty years ago, I picked up a book on meditation out of a desire to bring more health and well-being into my life. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the first practice I learned was a sitting meditation called Zazen, which as it turns out, is at the center of Zen practice. In simplest terms, Zazen is learning to follow the breath and returning to the breath when the mind begins to wander. I enjoyed the simplicity of the practice and utilized it as my primary source of meditation.

Very quickly, I found that Zazen brought an exquisite peace into my otherwise chaotic life – a peace I had never before experienced. It became a source of refuge for me. And although my commitment would wax and wane, I would inevitably find myself back on a cushion sitting with my breath.

I was approximately fifteen years into my practice before I ever heard the term “mindfulness.” It was as I began to inquire about Buddhist teachings that I discovered many of the insights I gained through meditation closely aligned with the precepts of Buddhism. My personal revelations were finally being met by an external source of validation.

Around this time, I also began working one-in-one with a couple of teachers who introduced me to other formal practices and teachings that greatly increased my understanding of mindfulness. Their wisdom and extensive practices were immensely helpful in the evolution of my own. Although my relationship with a formal teacher has not been consistent, I have come to understand the importance of maintaining relationships with others who keep mindfulness at the forefront of their lives. It is within these associations that I find a strong sense of communion and discourse that further reinforces why I do what I do.

In general, though, my everyday life is the greatest source of on-going insight and motivation for maintaining a practice. For me, it is in the laboratory of life where we really come to understand how things work and why. Today, it is quite clear to me that life is constantly communicating with me, always nudging me towards a greater understanding of reality.

I think the key to knowing whether we need a teacher at any given point along our path is to begin by questioning exactly what it is we seek to learn. If we have a desire to gain knowledge or technical skill, and by this I mean a mental understanding of something, then reliance on a teacher may prove to be very helpful. To this end, a person can impart their understanding of a teaching, provide instruction on techniques and give general guidance as questions arise.

However, from my perspective, whatever intellectual knowledge we’ve gained, whether it be transmitted by a tradition or formal teacher, it should always hold up against personal experience. This is where the rubber really meets the road, because this is when knowledge becomes “knowing” – and by this I mean it becomes fully integrated into our approach to living.

Mindfulness is an invitation to be fully present in our lives. The more conscious attention we place on what is happening within and around us, the more we will come to inherently understand both ourselves and the nature of life. To that end, we are both the teacher and student. For it is the depth of our observation that will ultimately inform not only the lessons we need to learn but also when we choose to accept them. As the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”