A Sacred Contract

There are times in each of our lives when a contract is made or a vow spoken. This vow, the sacred contract, is made knowing that life does not run smoothly, that there will be times when, being human, we wish to run away or change course or abandon our original heart path. A vow helps us through those rocky times. A sacred contract is a lifebelt to hang onto when unimagined obstacles arise that encourage us to throw away the relationship we tied ourselves into years back when things were very different. Doctors make contracts with their patients, vows are exchanged to seal a partnership, a priest will make a vow of service to God and a therapist makes a contract with his or her client. All these contracts are sacred. When these contracts are severed, lives are shattered. There is also a contract between a teacher and student. This too is sacred.

We first meet this contract when as little children we are placed in the care of our primary teacher. We may fall in love with this teacher, it can be our first experience of loving kindness outside the family circle. Adoring our teacher, bringing our mentor little gifts, declaring our undying love for them – all can be very innocent and fleeting. As we grow up this first love is quickly forgotten. But not that experience of being inspired by another through their skill at teaching, a true form of teaching which draws out and inspires the learning. The body remembers, the heart too.

As adults we search for meaning and power in our lives. Finding a teacher who inspires, who moves us out of a place of dullness and depression into meaning through their skills can be awe-inspiring. The mature adult discerns the difference between loving their teacher for the wisdom they pass on from falling in love with this special being. Someone who cannot discern this difference falls in love with their teacher as they fell in love when a little child, and not understand what is happening.

The teacher is a human being. Carrying the responsibilities of transmitting knowledge that has fired and inspired them to follow a path of tutoring can be at times dispiriting and unrewarding. For weeks the sessions are dull, things plod along at a pedestrian pace. One day a new student arrives. This person soaks up everything offered and demands more. This is exhilarating. The teacher is re-inspired, is fired again with enthusiasm. Magic.

Education is sexy. We long to learn. We long to be empowered. We are empowered by many subjects: academic, artistic and physical. At every stage when we stand in front of a teacher, or we are the teacher standing in front of the student, making clear the different roles is crucial to a clean student/teacher relationship. In Asia the student touches the teacher's feet as a sign of respect. This act can be shocking to those educated in the West who have a more informal relationship with their professor or instructor. Witnessing this ritual we see that the student is paying homage to the knowledge being passed on by the guru. The student recognises the teacher as the container of the knowledge. When the feet are touched by the student the guru passes this blessing up to a higher power in the understanding that all teachers are only containers for a certain set of skills. Both student and teacher are human, yet separated by their different roles. The guru does not touch the feet of the student.

As human beings our own nurturing was most probably flawed. Our parents did their best, but like us, they were human too. A part of our psyche remains in childhood and longs to be nurtured. An element of a teacher's remit is to hold and nurture the student. Another element is to help the student mature, become autonomous and independent. Many teachers have not looked closely at their own needs. They forget that they too wish attention, to be nurtured. They find having power over someone else very sexy. Their own un-nurtured child interferes with the clarity of the student/teacher relationship and inappropriate behaviour starts to arise. The play 'Oleanna' graphically deals with the stepping over of these boundaries and the teacher taking advantage of their power over the student - or the student taking advantage of their power over a professor. Both are stepping into places that harm the quality of the transmission. They are not able to see the muddle that arises when a need for intimacy clouds integrity. The sheer joy of finding something that ignites a reason for living gets confused with physical attraction or romantic need. Our want for nurturing and excitement is so present that the unaware teacher or student can lose his or her self in the bliss of learning and can delude his or her self into believing this to be true love.

I have seen this so often: a person’s life becomes dull and grey, then something comes along that helps the sap to rise. It might be pottery, gardening, cooking, or T’ai-Chi. As this greyness disperses there is the potential for confusion to arise between the teacher and student. This confusion gets worse when the student is vulnerable, the teacher powerful and neither have the maturity to recognise their own needs. Teacher: ‘At last, here is someone who loves this as much as I do!’ Student: ‘This is fantastic, and he (and it is usually a he) is so powerful, soft, compassionate. I have never met anyone like this before.’ Both: ‘We have so much in common.’ The teacher’s sacred contract is forgotten. The boundaries are crossed. The transmission is no longer pure. It becomes muddled and muddied.

Life can be tough. At times harsh and heart aching decisions have to be made. How can I live with myself if I do not respect the sacred contract entered into when a new student arrives? The practice of T'ai-Chi Ch'uan goes beyond the outer, beyond the physical inner, into the heart of integrity and respect. The teacher‘s role requires wakefulness and responsibility for the roles that respect their sacred contract. When a student regresses and becomes that adoring child how we, the teacher, manage that moment, then we will know how much we have absorbed T’ai-Chi beneath our epidermis. If we have integrated some of the practice into our every day life then it is possible to keep to the often unspoken contracts made between the student and teacher. Without that absorbtion, a contract can be shattered with devastating effects.