Teacher Bio & Photo
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(12) TEACHER biography
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TEACHER Biography • Photo • “Kalyana Mitta” – 'Spiritual Friends & Mentors' • The Seven Qualities of a Good Friend • "The Road Less Traveled" Robert Frost’s poem • Mentoring: A Dharma Teacher's Purpose To read Here just begin to SCROLL ▼DOWN “daily-life itself as sacred-relationship” |
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"spiritual friendship" ~ a good friend,
a virtuous friend, a noble friend,
an admirable friend, a spiritual friend.
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" Don't walk in front of me, I may not always follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not always lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend." ~ Albert Camus
As a 'mentor' or "spiritual-friend" the traditional Theravada Buddhist teacher
is often referred to in South Asia meditation-settings as a 'Kalyana Mitta'.
It is a Pali term that literally and simply means "A Loving Good Friend".
It is often used to describe someone in the guide-teacher-mentor-role.
"Hey Coach, can I see you 'bout something?" Availability & Access.
The 'Teacher' as a Kalyana-Mitta
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What's "the teacher thing" all about anyway - and the
particularly different form of it in Theravada Buddhism.
Traditional 'orthodox' Theravada Buddhism does not really ever use the over-exposed,
now tainted-word 'Guru' or even suggest a hierarchical arrangement, a mystical-position
on the basis of some sort of reincarnation, or even a God-related 'authority'. 'Kalyana Mitta'
is a Pali (a Sanskrit-derivative) term that literally means "A Loving Friend" ( Friend-Loving;
‘Mitta’ as in ‘Metta’ ) It is often used to describe someone in the so valuable guide-teacher-
teamleader-mentor-role. AND - it also can refer to absolutely anyone at all on the Practice
Path of Dharma who is a simply a friend, guide, supporter or especially a 'practice' co-traveler,
a traveling companion on The Way – making it all the more possible for true Sangha bonds
to grow strong & healthy, as well as fully providing an inclusive enough trusting and truly
safe-setting for a really fruitful exploration of Dharma-understanding to bud, flower & bloom.
This deepens the overall development of “Daily-life itself as sacred-relationship” - one of
the Ultimate Awakenings as a supreme 'Practice Opportunity' ~ Yup, simply a Good Friend.
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Please also see “A Path With Heart” by Jack Kornfield. 'You Can't Do It Alone:
Finding & Working With A Teacher". Chap.16 - p.228. Graze around in there for
the tone – as well as the highly accountable, relevant teaching on 'Teachers'.
Sure, some of us still have big resentful issues with 'authority' or 'dependency'
that still manifest in a number of limiting ways. I always wanted a good friend.
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♦ One of Buddha's close students once said to him ~
"It seems, venerable sir – that half the holy life
is having good spiritual friends –
like in our Sangha."
The Buddha immediately replied:
"In fact, the whole of the holy life
is having good spiritual friends !"
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Each of us can benefit greatly from having Dharma-friends as allies,
who genuinely Support the practice of our own individual spiritual journey.
In Buddha's words, he said:
"The qualities of a Good Friend, brethren, is one who ~
1. willingly does what is hard to do ( seva - service )
2. generously gives what may be hard to give ( dana - generosity )
3. listens, and un-resistingly hears what is hard to hear or bear
4. openly and bravely shares their own secrets with you
5. honorably keeps others’ secrets, and does not judge
6. when in obvious need, forsakes one not, but is available
7. distains or despises not, when one is in ruin, but comforts
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Akasa-Maitreya Levi Theravada Vipassana Kalyana-Mitta
Photo by Matt Schwartz |
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And, so sorry I could not travel them both
And being only one traveler, long I stood
And looked down each road as far as I could
Then I took the other road, though just as fair But with leaves no step had yet trodden bare Because it was grassy and it wanted wear Two roads diverged in a wood, and I … I chose the road less traveled by – And that has made ALL the difference ~ Robert Frost ( 1916 ) please wait for photo to load |
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Akasa-Maitreya Levi, DhMA ( D.Min ) ~ SUNY Harpur College / Binghamton University - New York.
An ex-pat American of the Sixty's Counter-Culture generation that went to live in Asia for the full decade
of the 1970's to be with the last living spiritual teachers of the pre-global era. Akasa Levi is now 68.
Arriving in India in 1972 as a filmmaker & student of the Gurdjieff 'Work' - he became an early Vajrayana
initiate of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan, Nepal & Dharamsala, India ( the
Gelugpa monk-founders of Wisdom Publications ) " The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery "
Akasa was a personal pupil of both Subhuti Shibuya Zen-Sensei and Sri Anagarika Munindra, the renown
Vipassana Mindfulness teacher, both in the busy little holy village of Bodhgaya, India – sort of the Jerusalem
to Buddhists, where the famed sacred Bodhi Tree stands that the Buddha sat under ( 528 BC ). Akasa was
an early Vipassana Insight student of S.N. Goenka, when he gave all the teachings in person. "Don't believe
your own mind" Goenka-ji so firmly said. Akasa became an ordained Buddhist 'Bhikkhu', a Vipassana forest
monk for 6 years in cotton robes in Sri Lanka - trained and ordained into the Theravada Monastic Order by
the revered late Venerable Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Maha Nayake Thera, head of the Amarapura Nikaya
Lineage. He came August 24, 1896 ~ he went July 18,1998, at 102 years. Whew!
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Akasa's major scholastic influences came thru his mentor Venerable Ananda Maitreya & Nilambe's Acharya
Godwin Samararatne; and The Buddhist Publication Society's Nyanaponika Mahathera and Bhante Piyadassi
Mahathera; and especially thru the controversial teacher Henri Van Zeyst - all in upcountry, Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Later, he was Western teacher-in-residence at the forest-yogi Bhante Polpitiya Kassapa's Rockhill Hermitage.
Akasa practiced Non-Duality Advaita in satsang with the wonderfully notorious Bede Baba, Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj in Bombay ( there are some books on his teachings "I AM THAT" ) – Maharaj certainly was THAT.
And of course there was Shibuya San and Munindraji – all on a daily dosage of their grateful tutoring.
______ "Everything we've ever, ever learned - we've learned somehow from somebody else." _________
After returning to the USA in 1980, to be with Zen-master Thich Tien-An at The University of Oriental Studies
& The International Buddhist Meditation Center in LA's Koreatown. Akasa then developed an enduring friendship
with pioneering woman Vipassana teacher Ruth Denison at her Dhamma-Dena Retreat Center in Joshua Tree, CA.
For years, The Laughing Buddha Sangha's monastic-affiliation has been with The Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara
( Sri Lanka Temple & Monastery in Los Angeles ) and it's Abbot, The Sangha-Nayake 'Bhante' Walpola Piyananda.
Akasa Levi is now a Bodhi-Acharya 'lineage-holder' of the Theravada teaching-transmission. As a Dharma 'mentor'
he is simply 'available' - serving as a Kalyana Mitta: a guiding 'spiritual-friend' to Dharma students. No gurus here.
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Akasa studied Western psycho-dynamic analytic theory and it's applied therapy at UCLA Westwood. He offers
Buddhist-based individual therapy and relationship counseling as a possibly effective spiritual 'complementary
medicine' or as a mindfulness-based 'alternative' to the standard secular, non-spiritual Western therapies.
Akasa guides The L.A. Medicine Men's Lodge and leads the all male weekly ZEN MEN: Inner-Growth Groups
• "Good Men Becoming Even Better Men" • "Every Guy Could Use a Men's Group - at some time in his life".
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After a strenuous early life on the road, Akasa is now quite travel-saturated, and rarely teaches outside California.
This ole' tribal sage is simply content to grow exotic plants in his garden and work with people close to home.
Akasa is known for his spontaneity & wry, unpredictable humor in his approach to the Dharma. Testimonial:
Jack Kornfield refers to Akasa as ‘The Old Rogue’ ~ from the Trickster-archetype of the Angelic Troublemaker.
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"Our 'Life-Fears' are educated into us – and can be educated out."
~ Karl Menninger
One of a Dharma Teacher's Primary Purposes is to responsibly, intentionally pass along what
they know to another generation of Dharma-students – possibly even encouraging future teachers. It keeps
the Buddha's brilliant teachings alive & fresh through application – so crucially important in this indifferent world
of so rapidly ‘vanishing traditions’ of live, hands-on, ethnic or native indigenous, cultural, healing and spiritual
compassion & wisdom 'knowledges'. There are now accredited institutions that offer exemplary training. Ask !
Teacher-succession, along-side with scholarship, is key to the preservation of All the world's Great Teachings.
"The yin and yang of life is that we grow wiser as we get older.
We have less & less time to use that wisdom to enrich our own lives –
and so we pass it along to others, enriching the world in the process."
~ The Tao
Lineage or Branches of 'Practice-Schools':
A "Lineage" is a group of teachings or practices handed down from teachers to their students, who become
teachers in their own right. There are also ordination-lineages: that is the line or ordination (monks and nuns)
which is always traceable back to the Buddha as the founding-teacher as revered in southern Theravada.
'Lineage' is considered vitally important in all Buddhism, particularly in the northern traditions of Zen, Chinese
and the various Himalayan schools, where the master or guru occupies the main role in spiritual development.
Certainly, there are some basic practices, meditations & texts which may be learnt from 'secondary sources',
such as books and CDs – and yet some which must be given directly in an 'alive' teacher-student relationship.
But before teaching any of these, a 'beginning-teacher' should have received authorization or permission to teach.
The giving of this 'permission' is dependent on spiritual understanding and attainment. Almost never is it a personal
or an allegiance matter. Lineages are traceable back to the original Buddha or sometimes, to a great and highly
acknowledged later master. New lineages are started by people who are regarded as 'masters', those few existing
teachers in each generation who are considered extraordinary. ~ www.buddhanet.net/masters/index.htm
( please be courageous enough to inquire about ‘teaching-assistant’ training here or elsewhere )
"In the end we will conserve only what we love –
We will love only what we understand –
And we will understand only what we have been taught."
~ Baba Dioum, African ecologist
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"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
~ Andy McIntyre's bumper sticker
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“The real accomplishment in life – is the Art of Being a ‘Spiritual Warrior’. A ‘spiritual warrior’ is the only way to balance the terror of being Human with the wonder of being Human.” ~ Carlos Castaneda |
solitary wandering monk....................wait for image |
“No 'failure' – we are all learning.
The real failure is giving up learning.”
~ Shi'an
"The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows."
~ Sydney J. Harris
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of that candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared."
~ The Buddha
"And if we do act - in however small a way ...
We don't have to wait for some Grand Utopian Future.
The 'future' is an infinite succession of 'presents'.
And to live now as we think human beings should live,
In defiance of all that is bad around us,
Is itself a marvelous victory in itself."
~ Howard Zinn - ‘The Optimism of Uncertainty’
Again, traveller, you have come
a long way led by that star.
But “The ‘Kingdom of The Wish”
is at the other end of the night.
May you fare well, companero –
let us journey together joyfully,
Living on catastrophe,
eating the pure light.
~ Thomas McGrath “Epitaph” 1916-1990
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Please also see
(11) What is The SANGHA Community ?
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What is SANGHA ? – Spiritual Friendship 3 Jewels • Buddha • Dharma • Sangha • Are You Being Open to Practice-SUPPORT ? To Spiritual Community? To Sangha? • Sangha / Satsang .. Definition • The Journey: to find, nourish and cultivate wise, kind, good Dharma-friends • The Buddha's "Rhinoceros Sutra"
• 'Connection' is our natural state Allowing Yourself to Be ‘Supported’ You can’t do this journey alone ! • FREE Meditation-Practice Consultation: Personal Support from our teacher n' crew • Encoragement to keep sitting Regularly... • "Sell your cleverness" ~ Rumi poem • "You are part of a huge groundswell now" • Having a consistent ongoing meditation group for 'practice-support' |
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