An excerpt from The Buddha in the Classroom: Lessons to Inspire a Weary Teacher, by Donna Kaishu Quesada
The Buddha in the Classroom focuses on a particularly challenging semester in which I was teaching in a lecture hall full of 125 community college freshmen. In the context of a unique series of anecdotes, I share the growing burnout that put my spiritual practice to the test. By unraveling my personal quandaries, I appeal to the interest of all teachers who have experienced their own versions of the same conundrums, and along the way, illuminate fresh perspectives from the practical approach of Zen.
One mid morning during the fall, our chairperson passed me in the copy room and asked if I wanted to teach an extra course the following semester. This was a boon, considering the plight of many of my colleagues, who had been losing classes since the beginning of the recession.
At the coffee shop on the way to campus, I had been indulging fantasies about quitting my job. Totally cliched ones that involved selling funny snack foods on the beach: churros, or maybe pineapple spears. I watched the steam rise from the cup I held between my cold hands, savoring every last sweetened sip, and escaping further from reality with each comforting swallow. I wondered how I would find the will to talk about whatever it was I had to talk about that day, one more time; to take a three-page roll call one more time; to harness the wandering attention of 125 post-high school kids one more time.
…
I smiled a knowing smile when I later saw the movie Crazy Heart. I remembered feeling like Jeff Bridges’ character. Like my students who would rush to me after class, proud and anxious to share their opinion on this theory or the other - when all I wanted to do was get to my car - his young backup musicians were just as spirited: “What time should we practice, Mr. Blake?” “When are you comin’, Mr. Blake?” Burned out, and reduced to playing in bowling alleys, where he couldn’t even get a bar tab, he had no intention of showing up any earlier than he had to: “You guys go ahead and practice without me,” he’d grumble.
The aging musician was defeated by his own apathy, and by a notoriously fickle music industry that sweeps aside the old guys faster than bugs in a restaurant kitchen. Our stories were different. But apathy and weariness are thieves that steal our sense of vitality, without a second’s thought about who we are or what our stories are. He got a second spin in the end, but it wasn’t without the trials that are so often the very source of rebirth and renewed joy.
Dharma: The Lesson for Teachers
The weariness starts in our minds, that wellspring of all distinctions, even the boredom, which stands opposite everything else in our imaginations. And everything else appears so much more desirable and exciting. There is nothing intrinsically boring - after all, someone is interested in whatever it is that bores you. But there are bored minds. If you’re bored, it’s because you’re boring, my Zen teacher said once. I had tinkered with plenty of logical syllogisms as a philosophy student, but this one hit with a thwack. And it didn’t require any truth tables or diagrams. With nothing but honesty as a tool, the conclusion was self-evident. We are the authors of our own weariness and apathy.
...
The question of whether you’re bored of teaching, or of the subject you teach, may just sink to the bottom of the pond with all the other muck. Both are born of the clouded mind, what my Zen teacher calls, the picking and choosing mind. It is the immature mind that wants to be entertained, and gets upset when things stop being entertaining, like a kid who gets bored with his toys. There will always be fancier toys in the toy store, and a hundred reasons to be bored with what we have.
...
Our perceptions shape the way we experience reality. Whether we live in an enlightened state or a deluded one, derives from our state of mind. There is an oft-used metaphor in Zen of a 100-foot pole. It asks how you might manage to go any further if you’re already at the top. It is only the strings of our attachments that hold us back, but like gum stuck to our shoe, every time we try to cut the stretchy strands, they just stick to the scissors. Desires are difficult to sever. I don’t feel like teaching that today. I’d rather teach this. I don’t like that student. I prefer this one. I don’t like this classroom. I’d prefer that one. All of that debris that clouds our minds, and robs us of the amazing clarity we seek, is born of desires.
You are the universe unfolding, Zen says.
Think back to when you first started teaching. You were bubbling with fun and zany ways to get students interested. And then at some point, you found yourself repeating the same old formulas. Until your mind is clear, you’ll do the same thing in any other job you take, as well. It’s like trying to cover up any source of discontent by drinking, eating, gambling, or even traveling. They’re all temporary escapes. Ways of running away. It’s not that you shouldn’t ever do those things - traveling is fun, as is eating. A good blended Margarita can be lots of fun. But wherever you go, there you are, along with your head - that big globe of grievances and grumbling. So antsiness becomes just another unrelenting habit, and the little pleasures in life quickly become crutches. The pattern will repeat itself until that head is clear.
All formulas get old because the current of life is in constant flow. You are different and your students are different, not only from year to year, but from week to week, even day to day; you’re just too busy to notice. Creativity blooms when you unfold with that flow. You are a part of the unfolding universe; you are the universe itself. There is no separation. Just as there are a hundred ways to get bored, there are also a hundred ways to get interested. And there are countless ways to broach a subject, which change with the changing context.
Excerpt from The Buddha in the Classroom: Lessons to Inspire a Weary Teacher
by Donna Quesada, Skyhorse Publications, Spring 2011
Donna Kaishu Quesada is an instructor in the department of philosophy and social sciences at Santa Monica College. She also blogs as Donna Quixote.