Perhaps the primary experience at TAS is the teacher-student relationship. We always a have wide variety of students, but amongst them are always a group of kids who have very shaky relationships with adults. This lack of trust can lead to great harm.
One way that it can be is this: a kid without supervision eventually finds herself largely in the company of other kids not properly checked in with. Kid culture and kid judgment become normative and self-reinforcing. Adults don't interrupt this process, and it carries deep into adolescence.
Compared to the daily support and warmth our students receive, ordinary high school is a big waste of time for these kids. It becomes a thicket of failure, frustration, and reaction.
Early childhood is a period of perfect vulnerability, which is how the most essential foundation of trust is lain there. I wonder how much five years at TAS with a lot of support from the family can alter a deeply troubled start. I think quite a lot.
I am not a great supporter of diagnosis in general, but as a convention it can a reasonably good initial framework for experiencing a very confusing person. As such, Attachment Theory is smart place to start. It is relatively simple, it has explanatory power, and is very descriptive.
Going back to what we may introduce as something of a teaching matrix (adapted from John Daido Loori's work at ZMM), one of the key elements is the relationship with the teacher, who is an advocate, mentor, academic advisor, and to some students, a parent figure. It would be highly instructive to look more closely at the role of this person in the lives of the students who best fit an troubled attachment framework.
This raises another important issue: why is meditation practice alone usually so inadequate for troubled westerners? One would think that of all the troubles that Asian culture might have, orientation to place, family, and clan would be among the least. As those teachers came over to the West they found people quite open to what they had to say, but there was a gap. In a famous story, the Dalai Lama was asked by a young American what can one do about feelings of self-hatred....The great teacher was totally perplexed and had to consult with his translator for quite some time. It was a foriegn concept, yet a primary experience of his audience.
My guess is that early life attachment syndromes are at the heart of this difference, and that Western psychotherapy has largely evolved in response to the tremendous dislocation and disorientation that came along with industrialization in the late-nineteenth century. Buddhism is very adaptable, and it techniques a marvelous adjuct or even primary practice. But it is not enough.
One way that it can be is this: a kid without supervision eventually finds herself largely in the company of other kids not properly checked in with. Kid culture and kid judgment become normative and self-reinforcing. Adults don't interrupt this process, and it carries deep into adolescence.
Compared to the daily support and warmth our students receive, ordinary high school is a big waste of time for these kids. It becomes a thicket of failure, frustration, and reaction.
Early childhood is a period of perfect vulnerability, which is how the most essential foundation of trust is lain there. I wonder how much five years at TAS with a lot of support from the family can alter a deeply troubled start. I think quite a lot.
I am not a great supporter of diagnosis in general, but as a convention it can a reasonably good initial framework for experiencing a very confusing person. As such, Attachment Theory is smart place to start. It is relatively simple, it has explanatory power, and is very descriptive.
Going back to what we may introduce as something of a teaching matrix (adapted from John Daido Loori's work at ZMM), one of the key elements is the relationship with the teacher, who is an advocate, mentor, academic advisor, and to some students, a parent figure. It would be highly instructive to look more closely at the role of this person in the lives of the students who best fit an troubled attachment framework.
This raises another important issue: why is meditation practice alone usually so inadequate for troubled westerners? One would think that of all the troubles that Asian culture might have, orientation to place, family, and clan would be among the least. As those teachers came over to the West they found people quite open to what they had to say, but there was a gap. In a famous story, the Dalai Lama was asked by a young American what can one do about feelings of self-hatred....The great teacher was totally perplexed and had to consult with his translator for quite some time. It was a foriegn concept, yet a primary experience of his audience.
My guess is that early life attachment syndromes are at the heart of this difference, and that Western psychotherapy has largely evolved in response to the tremendous dislocation and disorientation that came along with industrialization in the late-nineteenth century. Buddhism is very adaptable, and it techniques a marvelous adjuct or even primary practice. But it is not enough.
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