Monat: Juli 2012

The scene is a lecture room in a Medical Faculty of a University. The eminent Professor of Medicine is addressing the students at the end of the last lecture before their final exams.
„Ladies and gentlemen,“ he says, „I congratulate you all on completing my course of lectures. I wish you all well in your future honorable profession. That leaves only two more thing to say.
„The first is this. Half of the things I have taught you as medical facts are, in fact, false!
„The second is that neither I nor anyone else today knows which half!“

Leslie Cameron-Bandler was working with a woman who had a compulsive behavior—she was a clean-freak. She was a person who even dusted light bulbs! The rest of her family could function pretty well with everything the mother did except for her attempts to care for the carpet. She spent a lot of her time trying to get people not to walk on it, because they left footprints—not mud and dirt, just dents in the pile of the rug.
When this woman looked down at the carpet and saw a footprint in it, her response was an intense negative kinesthetic gut reaction. She would rush off to get the vacuum cleaner and vacuum the carpet immediately. She was a professional housewife. She actually vacuumed the carpet three to seven times a day. She spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get people to come in the back door, and nagging at them if they didn’t, or getting them to take their shoes off and walk lightly.
There were three children, all of whom were there rooting for Leslie. The family seemed to get along fine if they were not at home. If they went out to dinner, they had no problems. If they went on vacation, there were no problems. But at home everybody referred to the mother as being a nag, because she nagged them about this, and nagged them about that. Her nagging centered mainly around the carpet.
What Leslie did with this woman is this: she said „I want you to close your eyes and see your carpet, and see that there is not a single footprint on it anywhere. It’s clean and fluffy—not a mark anywhere.“
This woman closed her eyes, and she was in seventh heaven, just smiling away. Then Leslie said „And realize fully that that means you are totally alone, and that the people you care for and love are nowhere around.“ The woman’s expression shifted radically, and she felt terrible!
Then Leslie said „Now, put a few footprints there and look at those footprints and know that the people you care most about in the world are nearby.“ And then, of course, she felt good again.

By good fortune, I was able to raft down the Motu River in New Zealand twice during the last year. The magnificent four-day journey traverses one of the last wilderness areas in the North Island.
The first expedition was led by „Buzz“, an American guide with a great deal of rafting experience and many stories to tell of mighty rivers such as the Colorado. With a leader like Buzz, there was no reason to fear any of the great rapids on the Motu.
The first half day, in the gentle upper reaches, was spent developing teamwork and co-ordination. Strokes had to be mastered, and the discipline of following commands without question was essential. In the boiling fury of a rapid, there would be no room for any mistake. When Buzz bellowed above the roar of the water, an instant reaction was essential.
We mastered the Motu. In every rapid we fought against the river and we overcame it. The screamed commands of Buzz were matched only by the fury of our paddles, as we took the raft exactly where Buzz wanted it to go.
At the end of the journey, there was a great feeling of triumph. We had won. We proved that we were superior. We knew that we could do it. We felt powerful and good. The mystery and majesty of the Motu had been overcome.
The second time I went down the Motu. the experience I had gained should have been invaluable, but the guide on this journey was a very softly spoken Kiwi. It seemed that it would not even be possible to hear his voice above the noise of the rapids.
As we approached the first rapid, he never even raised his voice. He did not attempt to take command of us or the river. Gently and quietly he felt the mood of the river and watched every little whirlpool. There was no drama and no shouting. There was no contest to be won. He loved the river.
We sped through each rapid with grace and beauty and, after a day, the river had become our friend, not our enemy. The quiet Kiwi was not our leader, but only the person whose sensitivity was more developed than our own. Laughter replaced the tension of achievement.
Soon the quiet Kiwi was able to lean back and let all of us take turns as leader. A quiet nod was enough to draw attention to the things our lack of experience prevented us from seeing. If we made a mistake, then we laughed and it was the next person’s turn.
We began to penetrate the mystery of the Motu. Now, like the quiet Kiwi, we listened to the river and we looked carefully for all those things we had not even noticed the first time.
At the end of the journey, we had overcome nothing except ourselves. We did not want to leave behind our friend, the river. There was no contest, and so nothing had been won. Rather we had become one with the river.
It remains difficult to believe that the external circumstances of the two journeys were similar. The difference was in an attitude and a frame of mind. At the end of the journey, it seemed that there could be no other way. Given the opportunity to choose a leader, everyone would have chosen someone like Buzz. At the end of the second journey, we had glimpsed a very different vision and we felt humble – and intensely happy.

I have been teaching for a long time, almost 20 years now, and I like to believe that I have learned a few things myself, and even that I’m a better teacher than I used to be.
When I started teaching, I used to get angry at students pretty often when they were talking too much, or sleeping, or not paying attention or any of the other ‚misbehaviours‘ that students do in the classroom.
At some point along the line, I gave up being angry because I began to see that if it had any effect, it was usually a temporary one. I found that it was much more effective to actually engage the student in some way, to redirect their ‚misbehaviour‘ into a behaviour that better fitted my goals for the classroom.
Of course, there are times when that anger is still present, and sometimes it might even be justified, but it doesn’t come out in shouting, but instead simmers below the surface and sadly comes out in more subtle ways such as me not being fully present for the students or creating busy work for them.
And sometimes it comes out strongly in other ways. A few months ago, a student kept falling asleep in class, time after time, even after I gently woke him and tried to engage him in various ways.
Finally, in frustration, I rapped my knuckles on his desk near his head in order to wake him up yet one more time. Unfortunately, although the rapping knuckles wasn’t loud enough to wake him up, it was hard enough to really really hurt my knuckles, to the point that weeks later, they are still sore, and I figure that I must have fractured something. Of course, the student didn’t realize any of this and only woke when the student next to him tapped him on the shoulder.
After this incident, I tried extra hard with this student – to engage him, to call him by name, to get him interested in the class.
And it worked – he actually began to smile, to take part in the class activities and to become engaged.
Now, if only I had tried that before I fractured my knuckles.

Once upon a time a man was returning from work via public transport. At some point a father entered the train with 3 kids. The father sat across the man. The kids were noisy, badly behaved and the father seemed not to care sitting there kinda absent. The man was getting more and more nervous and annoyed with the inappropriate children’s behavior, the fathers indifference and decided to approached the father. The father acknowledged the man and said to him that he and the kids just left the hospital, and he is struggling to find the right words to tell the children that their mother has passed away.

One day the Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. „You have no right teaching others,“ he shouted. „You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake!“
The Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man, „Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?“
The young man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, „It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.“
The Buddha smiled and said, „That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself.“

Buddha was giving a talk one day underneath a tree in front of a group of people. Many of the people were already believers, several were interested in hearing what he said with an open mind, but there was one man there who had already made up his mind that he was right and that Buddha was wrong.
All during the Buddha’s talk, the man interrupted and heckled rudely. The Buddha simply responded to each interruption calmly and quietly and despite himself, the man began to become impressed by the Buddha’s words and attitude.
After the talk, he went up to Buddha and congratulated him on a good talk. Then he asked,
“Why didn’t you respond to my heckling – usually people get very upset or start arguing back at me.”
Buddha smiled at him and asked the man a question in return.
“When a person offers you a gift and you refuse that gift, who does that gift now belong to?”
“It belongs to the other person.”
“That’s right,” said Buddha. “And so I left your gift with you to enjoy as you see fit.”