The Buddhist student-teacher relationship is transformative from the outset
because it carries a belief in the teacher’s perfected spiritual state (enlightenment,
liberation, satori, etc.). The student initially sees this particular teacher as spiritually
advanced, and wants to attain this for herself or himself, and so decides to follow the
teacher’s instructions. In Zen, a teacher who has been sanctioned to teach by her/his
teacher has theoretically equalled or surpassed the teacher. So there is a reality to the
student’s belief that the teacher is well beyond the student in spiritual attainment.
And yet, true and deep spiritual attainment should not set a teacher apart from others;
the most spiritually adept teachers are often known for being very ordinary people.
Paradoxically, then, a spiritual master in Zen (called a ‘roshi’) is both an especially
enlightened or realized person and an ordinary person.
Such a teacher speaks from an authority that the psychotherapist or psychoanalyst
lacks. Whereas the effective psychotherapist may still be almost as neurotic as the
patient—although able to use insight, the transcendent function, and compassion to
continuously transform neurotic habits—the Zen teacher is certainly not as ignorant
of the nature of spiritual reality as the student is. In short, the realized Zen teacher is
fundamentally unequal, spiritually speaking, with her or his student at the beginning
of the transformation process.
This difference in status effectively eliminates the sense that the two are, on some
level, just two human beings struggling together to discover meaning. The developed
teacher has mastered her or his mind and not merely the knowledge of Buddhism
and its methods. Many roshis would say that they definitely know what is best for
their students without the kind of uncertainty that an effective therapist feels and
expresses. In order for teacher and student to ‘intertwine’ in the way that Kopf (1998)
describes, the student must learn the ways and means to her or his own True Nature
or Mind. By the end of this process—if the process fully evolves between a particular
teacher and student—the student will have assimilated her or his spiritual nature that
was originally projected onto the teacher.
In Zen, the actions of the teacher in the process may be harsh and seem hostile, as
well as openly caring and compassionate. These extremes are aspects of Zen teaching
and not considered a personal matter. The student’s reactions to such expressions by
the teacher are not interpreted as they are in psychotherapy, and yet they will stir
rather extreme transference feelings and fantasies in the student. The dependence and
trust that are necessary in the effective Zen teacher-student relationship guarantee
that there will be struggles with dependence-independence, trust-betrayal, and
engulfment-abandonment between student and teacher. These often repeat or react
to the student’s parental or other familial patterns. The student feels vulnerable,
dependent, and deeply concerned about the teacher in a situation that is unpredictable
in regard to the extremes of the teacher’s responses. Without the benefit of personal
insights into specific personal habit patterns, the student must stop behaving and
feeling like an omnipotent or victimized child. This happens, when it does, through
the student mastering the reliable spiritual practices offered by the dedicated teacher.
At the point that the student awakens to the reality of Buddha Mind or True
Nature, the student and teacher are one, although they remain two individuals. This
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