The “Chicken Suit”

The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Neurotic Interaction to Guru Yoga”

It seems you have these strong habitual tendencies and project them onto an environment stimulated by just about anything. And when the stimulation looks like it’s even on the same continent as a predetermined habitual karmic scenario that you have been going through cyclically, you’ll do it again.  So many people do not have a good or honest or true relationship with their teacher because they are basically having a relationship with their own neuroses.  That’s the truth!  That’s the truth!  They’re having it with their own neuroses. But you see here again is a mystery, something beautiful that you really need to understand. I’m using a very western way of explaining this so that you will understand better.  That’s part of the gift of having a teacher.  It’s part of the gift, because the teacher will show you your own mind, will mirror something.  There’ll be that little bounce-back phenomena there so that when you have a meeting with the teacher, and something begins, you begin to feel like, “What’s happening here?  I’m beginning to feel a little itchy twitchy.  Now wait a minute, I’m seeing some authority figure stuff come out.” Or, “Oh God, that reminds me of my mother!!”

Or men are like, ALL women do that!!  I hate that!!  So that will start to happen, and when that starts to happen, what the student doesn’t realize is that is a perfect opportunity to look at your mind.  It’s a gift.  Of course, you can make this gift happen anywhere in your life and actually this is the best way to practice Guru Yoga.  There is a lot of poetry and a lot of very profound Dharma text written about seeing the Guru’s face everywhere—in every person, in every situation, in every hardship, in every joy, in everything that comes to you one way or the other—seeing the Guru’s face, and therefore turning adversity into felicity.  Using the practice of seeing that the teacher’s face, the Guru’s face  is everywhere.  Therefore I turn all adversity into felicity because I honor that blessing, you see.  So that would be a great way to practice.

But what happens instead is that we project our own neuroses onto the teacher.  Now as a teacher I’ll tell you that oftentimes what happens is that you have to hang back and just let the student do that thing they’re going to do.  Just let them spin around and do whatever it is they have to do.  Go on, knock yourself out. You kind of watch them go through their little freak out. They’re smooth. They kind of do their little neurotic thing, and they’ll freak in their response to this and their reaction to that and so forth.  After a while the student will kind of calm down.  What they’ll find is that it will come in their face so much that they’ll have to work some of it out.  And they’ll also notice that, pretty much, the teacher’s not playing.  You know, the teacher just doesn’t play the game with you.

Once in a while a student has been so locked in that confusion that (I’ve had to do this too) I’ve seen teachers kind of put on the chicken suit and go in there and dance with the student a little bit, because they need to make some kind of connection.  They feel kind of out in space somewhere and they need to make some kind of connection. So even if there aren’t honest and true, disciplined and pure student-teacher relationship responses happening, there is the introduction to that which is the student and teacher kind of dancing around a little bit. But you must understand the teacher is dancing with your neuroses.  That’s what’s happening.

In order to practice Guru Yoga well, here’s the trick: Most people think that Guru Yoga is about giving up your will.  Now you don’t have to think any more, you have a teacher.  Wonderful!  Mazel tov!  This is terrific! In fact, when you have a teacher, what that means is that you have to take responsibility.  It means more responsibility, not less.  The teacher is not here to blow your nose for you.  The teacher is not here to take responsibility for you.  If the teacher were here to take responsibility for you, the teacher could also have your enlightenment. And since that’s not what she wants because the teacher has already got their own situation handled hopefully, then you must understand that the responsibility is yours.

Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Norbu Lhamo.  All rights reserved