Preamble 7: “Remembering This, You Will Weep”

Buddhist literature is certainly rife with the idea of finding a teacher, finding the right teacher. The right teacher is not simply a property of that person, but a property of a relationship that is given rise to by teacher and student alike. Rightness, then, is about what a student needs (and not just what they think they need). But also, rightness is about what the teacher needs as well, and not just what they think they need, what they had planned, what they hoped. When it works, each saves the other from themselves.

Students ask something of their teachers and vice versa, and they can drag each other down or up, in or out. I met David G. Smith in the summer of 1986 after 18 months of unemployment, and, well, we hit it off. We still call each other brother in the now 30-year wake of that meeting.