Hi Fitter -
Let's see if I can be easy to understand and useful. Thank you for the invitation to try again.
Honesty is a positive attribute. Indeed, honesty is a virtue, because it is needed especially when dishonesty and/or concealment of wrong action/wrong speech arises.
Given the summary I posted above in response to Daniel (which you're replying to here), should I or should I not repost my original message? Does it sound like the content of what I was saying is something that belongs on dharmaoverground or not?
It can be useful to honestly recount an event, particularly one that is giving rise to stress.
Here is how I think your event can be beneficial, whether or not you wish to make it public (where you will receive the attention and feedback of others):
1.
satipatthana --- one of the oft instructed teachings of Gotama for those who seek nibbana: taking up the event to the best of our ability with mindfulness for how personal realities are constructed based on aggregates (body/mind/feeling/dhammas) , such as
- sensation arising in the aggregates (were the five senses detecting actuality with sensations pleasure, neutrality, or displeasure? Was mind sensing displeasure, neutrality, or pleasure at the outset, middle and end of the interaction?
- then perception (recognition/familiarity-categorization) arising in the aggregates: such as
anticipating one's interview with the teacher based on the state of pleasure, neutrality, or displeasure at the outset, middle and/or end of the interaction; were eyes
recognizing (apperceiving) visible objects in a specific way based on a displeased/neutral/pleased manner (e.g., apperceiving a snake when there is only rope); was hearing apperceiving (recognizing/categorizing) sound in a displeased/neutral/pleased manner (e.g., pleased by the sound of this voice/voices/some voices); was taste recognizing a specific taste one a displeased/neutral/pleased sensation; was mind apprehending the actuality of "the teacher" as an assumed entity (assuming the person as "some kind of teacher", versus observing the person as they are actually arising and passing during the interview*) based on a displeased/neutral/pleased sensation at the outset, middle and/or end of the interaction, (aka: coloring the mind's recognition, as well as influencing events to some degree, with a prior-now-habitual "(I recognize) recognition of this kind of teacher"-perception, which recognition is displeasing/neutral/pleasing?)
- volition: adding volition to the perception (for example, adding to displeasure "feeling indignant", or adding to pleasure "feeling gratified", or adding to displeasure "feeling used by a needs-to-vent teacher", or adding to displeasure "feeling disillusioned of a reputed institution and the 8-fold path", or adding to pleased perception the volition "feeling desire for a good teacher/sangha", or adding volition to a pleasing perception "feeling superior to this teacher"*, etc)
Many many many perceptions and volitions may arise in every micro-moment. The aggregates compose what is "me".
2. As challenging as the above may seem, insight develops through satipattana.
- awareness of constantly changing (even condensing, reifying) sensation, perception(familiarity/categorization) and volition is obviously part of mindfulness meditation: steady, equanimous (non-judgmental) investigation of the four foundations leads to insight (e.g., was the teacher/was I in poor health and thus operating from displeasing tactile sensations/unfit perception, which displeasures and recognition of unfitness influenced volitions (e.g., grouchiness, envy, etc); did the teacher/institution have signs of non-practice/Wrong Speech/Wrong Action/Wrong View, but which I missed because I saw a name and assumed a reputable institution, thus absorbing pleasing sensation (reputation = good place to go), creating "pleasing perception" without mindfulness of my assumptions, upon which I grew a volition of desirous expectations; was my practice so pleasing that I brought my volitional conceit into interview and watered an ignorant/ill-willed seed in the teacher?*
*Here, I do want to say,
you are the student and the teacher and institution are rightly accountable to a highly accomplished standard of 8-fold practice, which they set themselves by charging money versus accepting donations as renunciant non-householders (who maintain their standards through vinaya and scrutiny, but also with some issues arising)
Insight is also not a permanent entity; insight is also not inherently free from stress.
3. Mindfulness (satipatthana) and insight are not easy for newbies like me, simply because it takes practice and there is countering a good deal of well-established habit. One needs to have good equanimity and a modicum of concentration available. You know, I cited Thich Nhat Hahn as being ousted by the Buddhist Church of Vietnam for his opposition to the war, it has occurred also to me over the years that that ousting may have been the Church leaders' insight that more monastics would survive and fewer citizens would be harmed by effecting his exile. I do not know. For the same war, Maha Ghosananda was sent out of Cambodia to study. I have no insight into these events, but I can see how effortful insight and mindfulness are in a simple transgression (perhaps a teacher gossiping, perhaps a student affronting), and how, ultimately, self-reliance, nibbana, is not, per se, a life of pleasure perception nor bliss. It is seeing things as they are, always, and being unbound from that while being a part of that. (This is why sometimes fear comes and goes during the practice in different degrees: It is almost natural to recoil from that kind of freedom. On the other hand, the freedom to act without stress and with some knowledge...has samadhi to it. I digress and risk speaking beyond my more familiar terrains.
So, I think it is safe to recommend that you:
practice satipatthana,
study your insights, and
speak honestly (if you choose to speak) and not harshly (harshness has limited and questionable utility, from my personal experience)
Best wishes and thank you. It is not an easy experience for those of us who are lower on the fetter chain, and I think several people experience this, even in renunciant communities, and institutions often struggle to deal with wrong action/wrong/view/wrong speech internally as well. At least in its ubiquity, it is easy to have some metta in however you proceed.
edit: a few edits to clarify #3
edits: *
edit: had to reverse "apprehend" and "apperceive", still a habit!
edit: woohoo: major oversight --- I have combined perception and sensation in rushing, so: corrections!