FORUM | HEAR OUR VOICES 57
NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSON: Exactly.
But it took me a while to see it, that what
was really being said to me was, “Don’t
stand your ground.”PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: What I
would pass on to a young teacher is to
really sit inside your values and your
love of dharma. If you are following
the teachings as they have been taught
to you, if you’re practicing dharma in a
way that not only brings you light but
illuminates everyone who’s connected
to you, then focus on only that and
let all of the other noise subside. It’s
just like the dharma says: there are six
realms of beings, and they will have all
the six types of reactions to you as a
teacher, and you will need to ride stead-
ily through that and get used to people
having all kinds of reactions. It’s not
you—it’s people discharging tension.
They don’t know how to digest their own
tensions in practice, and they have tre-
mendous suffering.
I would also add the importance of
having periods of time when you’re not
a teacher—to always also make time,
if you can, to be a student. It’s import-
ant to have spaces or relationships in
which you’re not the leader, you’re not
the authority, you’re not the teacher, so
that you can keep developing these other
dynamics and other dimensions of your
practice.NARAYAN HELEN LIEBENSON: I havetrained and am training young women
teachers. One thing I find to be really
important has to do with confidence—it’s
easy for younger women to be knocked
off course, particularly by older men
telling them how they should be offering
the dharma. The other is the encourage-
ment to find your own voice. It’s just so
important that the voice be authentic.
The feminine voice is different. When I
was debating whether to write a book
or not, someone said to me, “We need
more books by women. We need more
feminine voices.” It really made the
choice for me. In my book, I don’t talk
about women or gender or anything like
that, but my voice is different because of
my experiences growing up in this cul-
ture and growing up in the dharma as a
woman.
I do think, in terms of the double stan-
dard, that women teachers are allowed
less space—they can play with fewer
colors of the rainbow in terms of tone of
voice and vocabulary, that kind of thing.
Show the tiniest bit of passion and people
get upset. So I say, find your own voice
and share the dharma in as powerful a
way as the moment calls for. We must
encourage younger women teachers to
find their own voice and to find a kind
of authenticity within their own experi-
ences, whatever their experiences have
been. You can be married or unmarried,
have children or not. Get behind the
form you’ve chosen, without shame.
Really be out front with it.