What is a teaching? -- 1

This summer's series has been transcribed

from a talk given by Roger Lipsey in Cambridge in 2011.

“Abba, Tell me a Word.” It is an ancient expression, used in the fourth and fifth centuries in Egypt among the Desert Fathers. As you know, the Desert Fathers were refugees from the sophisticated society of their time. They rejected it. They wanted to live ascetically, simply, and seriously among themselves. There were both men and women in these communities—the women would turn to their own elders: “Amma, tell me a Word.” “Mother, tell me a Word.”

Scenes From the Lives of the Desert Fathers, Fra Angelico, 1420, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

“Abba, Tell me a Word.” It is an ancient expression, used in the fourth and fifth centuries in Egypt among the Desert Fathers. As you know, the Desert Fathers were refugees from the sophisticated society of their time. They rejected it. They wanted to live ascetically, simply, and seriously among themselves. There were both men and women in these communities—the women would turn to their own elders: “Amma, tell me a Word.” “Mother, tell me a Word.”

The urging that the young extended to the older—those whom they thought would have something to teach them—was “Tell me a word.” If you listen, you hear in it a plea. But you also hear a demand. The elder would feel required to respond, and so a teaching emerges between the demand and the response, which is generous, a gift back. In that middle place—between these two—is the teaching. That remains true today. A. K. Coomaraswamy, a distinguished Boston scholar, said, "A king without a realm is no king.” And a teacher without this plea and response is no teacher.

A teaching emerges between the demand and the response, which is generous, a gift back.

Why would someone ask, “Abba, tell me a word”? There are two reasons, if not more. The first is something that Gurdjieff called disillusionment. The second he called magnetic center. They interact in very interesting ways.

Disillusionment

Disillusionment is a feature of people of any age, young or old, who are no longer so sure of what they are doing, of their footing, of who they are—no longer so sure that everything is going well. Disillusionment comes—even an unstated disillusionment—when such a person realizes, “I simply don’t know. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t really know who I am. I’m going to ask, ‘Abba, tell me a word; help me with this.’” 

There is another disillusionment which Gurdjieff didn’t speak of, a sense of loss. There are people—often lovely people—who, when they were children, had epiphanies, a sense of belonging to something “other,” something grand and beyond them, often in Nature. They would feel that; it was absolutely persuasive, the most important thing they knew, and then it faded. Wordsworth, the poet, was like this. some of his poetry is a beautiful statement of his sense of loss. Poet or not, one can accept that or it can be a deep aggravation, something that doesn’t leave you alone. These are people who have experienced grave inner loss. Such a person, encountering an authentic teaching, may well say, “Abba, tell me a word.” Tell me how to recover the warmth and vision, the sense of belonging that I had when I was a girl or boy.

There is a third disillusionment; Gurdjieff did speak of this. It was his own. He felt as a boy that he did not understand what he called “the sense and aim of human existence.” He felt lost, ignorant. He was strong, proud, and smart, but he was ignorant and knew it. He had seen things in his childhood that boggled his mind, that were miraculous. He did not understand the meaning of life. That too can be forgotten as one becomes a little older, a little more worldly. Some do not forget it; it becomes an inner aggravation, a call. And when they meet a teaching that feels authentic, they say, “Abba, tell me a word.”

Magnetic center

Teachings are also for people who have what Gurdjieff called a magnetic center. Magnetic center is an affinity. It’s an inner compass. It’s a migratory impulse that takes you over there to talk to those people, or over here to talk with these people. It’s a movement, instinctive like the flight of a migratory bird, that takes you where you belong. Like any compass, it can be fooled. If it is too close to a magnetic source, it can go completely wrong. Magnetic center is not infallible, but it’s pretty good, and with any luck it will take you where you belong.

Some people belong in teachings, and their aim really is to find the proper destination, to find the right address. I have never felt that authentic teachings—Tibetan Buddhism and

Some people belong in teachings, and their aim really is to find the proper destination, to find the right address.

Vipassana, which are deeply honorable and ancient, and Zen and Sufism, the same, and all the disciplines surrounding tai chi—should exclude each other. These are all addresses where certain people belong, and the work for magnetic center is to deliver one to the proper address, to one’s spiritual home, either for an extended period of time or for whatever period works out to be right.

What kind of thing is a teaching?

Once the contact is made, there is the question, What kind of thing is a teaching? What makes a teaching different from other cultural phenomena? I want to pursue that question from a Western, 21st-century perspective. I don’t want to ask it as if we were in India or elsewhere in Asia where there’s a long tradition of ashrams. I want to ask it from here in the U.S. And ask it now.

Teachings are not encompassed by the mainstream culture. The very earliest record of great teachers that we have—I’m thinking of Socrates and Jesus—were not part of the mainstream. They emerged from the mainstream. Socrates was a well-educated Athenian of his era, served in the army, played his role in society, but he was, by his own description, a gadfly. He was other than his society. He had an assignment, he thought, from the Delphic Oracle that put him at odds with his society. He was no longer encompassed by the mainstream.

For Jesus, it was the same. He was part of Jewish Palestine of the Roman era. He had everything in common with the people of his time and place. And yet he was “other,” and what he offered was outside the mainstream. And this remains true on any scale you care to look.

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Next, to be posted on July 15th:

Teaching are ... a genuine critique, an invitation to renewal, rigorous and demanding ... and they ask for time.