Heart and Mind Yoga
Yoga in the Deepest Sense

Meditation: How to choose a good course or teacher.
(this could also be used to choose a good yoga teacher but it was written with meditation in mind.)

By Sarah Lionheart © 2003, Appeared as Meditation: how to choose a good course or teacher, Yoga and Health, June 2003, p18-21

As yoga teachers and students, we all know that meditation is important to our practice.  The problem is – there are so many schools and types of training out there that is difficult to know who to trust when we are beginning to learn.  There are the ‘meditation classes’ posters in the local post office.  Quite often they do not say which ‘school’ of meditation they come under, what type of meditation they are teaching and also, many of us do not know what questions to ask when we do go to one of these introductory classes.  How do we ascertain which are genuine and which are perhaps a little bit suspect?  This is not easy to work out even when one has been involved in this area for many many years!!  So below I shall list some of things to ask or look out for.

First of all, ask the tutor whom he/she trained with.  Ask for the specific names of teachers and the tradition name and look this up later – the Internet is great for this kind of research.  If there is anything the teacher is hiding about their tradition – it will usually come up on an Internet search.  Having said that, there are often branches of one tradition that are fine and genuine and another offshoot that has chosen to become an offshoot for reasons that may be questionable – so if you find that one school is not okay – don’t leap to assuming that that whole tradition is not okay.  It may be just that branch of it which may be a bit suspect.

If the meditation is advertised as being a way of reducing stress and feeling calm – with no mention of the spiritual aims of meditation – question the tutor at the first class.  It may be that they decided that if they mentioned the spiritual application of meditation – people might not choose to attend something that they would find very helpful.  (This happens a lot with advertising yoga classes – so we can all be sympathetic to that approach.)  Yet it is important to realise that meditation is not simply about reducing stress although it does achieve this.  The ultimate goal of meditation is to discover the mystery of Being however one may phrase that:  to know God, the true nature of the mind, to find the True Self, to become enlightened, to become realised.  It is the ultimate journey of the human consciousness.  

Also be aware of any school/tradition that insists that the way it teaches meditation is the ONLY way.  This is a tricky one because the reason that your meditation tutor is teaching that particular method is because they have found it to work for them and their own teachers have found that it works for them.  But a good teacher admits that there are many ways of meditating  and many methods and that it is important to find one that you feel comfortable with and follow that.  

Common sense and a bit of wisdom come in very helpful on this search.  It is no use being naïve and overly trusting here.  Meditation is a big investment of time and quite often money (which I shall come to) and just as you would take time deliberating over the kind of house you buy – so you need to be very sensible and practical about the kind of meditation training you opt for.  People seem to think that once they attend a ‘spiritual’ kind of course or class, they should leave their normal scepticism outside.  A healthy dose of scepticism is good on the whole.  

Money.  This is a difficult one.  I have given over large sums of money to meditation teachers.  None of it have I exactly regretted but looking back I could have been a little more cautious in some instances.  
There are two sides to this.  The first is that meditation teachers need to buy food and pay for their rent and have certain living costs accounted for.  They have also quite often given up a large amount of their money in their own training over the years.  Their expertise, if it is genuine, is very valuable and worth a great deal of respect.  What they should not be involved with is making large amounts of money for unnecessary personal use.  Being greedy and being a meditation teacher are not compatible.  A meditation teacher would teach for free if they deemed the student worthy and ready enough – but in our society there is hardly anyone who cannot pay a reasonable amount for the training.  Also it has been found that meditation students do not value something they are given freely – they need to feel that they have worked hard to pay for it and put time aside to learn it.  Usually this gives them an incentive to continue the practice.  Also, in our culture, we pay for other types of training.  We do not expect to be given tuition for free.  

As a meditation student/teacher I have found this money issue quite difficult. I have used the money I have earned teaching meditation to fund my own training and also to pay for large donations to the lineage that I train under.  This has felt ethical.  I also allow a sliding scale of payment and only rarely do I find people abusing this. (I think of the one woman who said she could not afford the class fees and yet kept disappearing for a week or two here and there.  I later found she was going to exotic places on holiday – which was obviously affordable to her.  Yet she felt she had no funds to pay for the meditation training.)    Most people recognise that the need to be honest is part of the training.

One thing I have found over the years, is that it doesn’t take that much to sound very knowledgeable about meditation – at least to the average westerner who is new to this.  The trouble is that there are a few simple things that you can say about meditation which sound incredibly profound and if a student is open enough, can almost feel like they have just heard an amazing truth that can start to change their life.  So the student goes ‘Wow!’ and believes the teacher is the best thing since sliced bread and sense and caution can be thrown to the winds.  Not a good idea.  It is really better to remain a little cautious at first.  It helps in the long run.  I speak from personal experience of learning this the hard way.  

So check out whether those you are learning from do really allow you to question or whether they only SAY you can question and when you do question,  they then tell you that you must stop thinking too much and just get on with it. (Oooops.  Unfortunately this approach can be valid too – so this is why it is so hard to judge these things!)  

Look at the person.  Are they genuine?  Do you feel they are honest about their own failings or are they not quite ringing true?  Do they do or say anything that you feel is inappropriate?  Do they belittle you for your western approach?  (The Dalai Lama is quite upfront about praising westerners for their analytical and scientific approach to meditation – he thinks it can do a lot to help general acceptance of meditation as a valuable training as well as throw insight onto the process of meditation.)  Do you feel valued yourself as a meditation student?  Do you feel that your own tutor cares about you or would be interested to hear about your sorrows or griefs?  (This is also a tricky one for genuine good teachers can sometimes, for good reason, ask students to stop being caught up in what they might see as repetitive habitual emotional patterns and seem very uninterested in our tales of woe or blame.)  

Is the teacher interested in our ultimate good or more interested in themselves?   Do we feel that they genuinely want to help us and will find ways to make the teachings more accessible and more understandable for us?  Are they humble? Are their own motivations for teaching pure and honest? Are they committed to their own practice and development as well as to helping us with ours?   Do they boast about their own meditation achievements?  (Not a good sign.)

  My own teachers who have taught me well are often very honest about the failings in their own practice and at most might refer to glimpses of insight they have had – but would not speak of themselves as enlightened.  One teacher I knew announced that not only was she enlightened but that this had been verified by her own teacher.  She was greatly respected by many people I knew and taught in a way that was both helpful and inspiring.  But her certainty of her own ‘enlightenment’ led me to look elsewhere for my own teacher.  With great glee I tell of the very first question I asked my own teacher.  I said ‘I know this is an unskilful question and I apologise.   I really need to ask it. …… Are you enlightened?’  There was a silence.  I felt I had really put my foot in it – but – heck – I had been looking for a genuine teacher for 17 years and I was getting tired of being uncertain and checking people out…
So this teacher looked away and said, softly, ‘We don’t really speak of such things in our tradition’.  And I went away disappointed – feeling that if he knew me at all he would have realised why I needed to know.  But if he had said ‘Yes, I am’ I would have also walked away disappointed.   Instead I spent time around him and his students and went on retreats and judged whether the teachings were good and helpful and whether I thought they were helping and I am still there, still learning, still asking questions, still respectful but honestly cautious too at times.  I don’t take the teachings hook, line and sinker but stay true to my own integrity and honesty and questioning and practice the best I can.  

This article is not about whether to have a teacher or not.  I am afraid that I have found that if I do not know about something – then I need to find someone who knows more about it and can help me with it. One does not need to become over dependant on them.  I may come to love and trust them deeply, feel enormous gratitude for the gems and gift of their wisdom and wish to become as wise and insightful and as compassionate as they.  My teachers inspire me and rekindle the fire for Truth in me.  They have come from varying traditions and they have each shown respect for other traditions whilst daring to say where some schools or traditions are weakening the training or understanding.  They also understand that there is a lot to be learnt from each other.   And they remain fearless in their pursuit of the Truth.  

So my best advice is to look up a meditation training course.  Then check out who is running it i.e. what school or tradition or faith.  Ring up the tutor or organiser and ask some questions over the phone.  Only go if you feel comfortable.  Take a friend if you are nervous.  Ask if you can attend just an introductory session.  Don’t be made to pay for a whole course up front on the very first session.  Go home and think about it first.     You may not like it or feel comfortable with it. Only expect to pay about what you would for a yoga training course or retreat.  (I know some organisations are now charging £1,000 for a 10 week meditation training course of a 2 hour class a week.  This seems a high fee.)   On the whole meditation can seem wonderful at first, there is a phrase ‘beginners mind’ – where the newcomer accesses experiences of deep peace, well being and calm.  This is when it is tempting to pay anything that is asked.  It feels so good!  Just go home and think about it for a few days.

Maybe if it is being run from a centre, go and visit the centre beforehand.   Are the people friendly?  Do they claim that you will achieve siddhi (psychic) powers?  (True meditation teachers warn you about getting distracted by such things.)  Do they ask you to adopt the dress and language of another culture?  (This may be an enjoyable experience but it is not necessary for learning how to meditate!)

Also remember it can take quite a while to understand what meditation is really about.  Sometimes a very long while.  It is not about brainwashing or ‘not thinking’ or ‘emptying the mind’.  It is in fact very simple but not easy.  And it requires commitment, patience and quite often a sense of humour.  But good luck – it is well worth the effort!


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