Failure As Teacher

The whole idea of labeling something a failure is itself a problematic thing. So can we ask the question, what does it mean to call something a failure? The idea of failure is a magnet for all kinds of ideas and values, judgments, fears and expectations and it can become really heavy for some people.
When we see, what we could call failure, is it possible to change the language or change the view of it?

Transcript

So this week I would like to explore the concept of the wounded healer and the term was popularized by the psychologist Carl Jung but its roots go back to Greek mythology and in the myth the centaur Chiron was wounded by Hercules poison arrow and so Chiron's wound sent him looking for a cure and his journey inspired him to serve the less fortunate.

So in the story his wound became the gateway to his transformation and I think a lot of us on the path our wounds become the gateway for our transformation.

So with this is the backdrop to our exploration I want to talk a little bit about failure.

I don't talk much about failure in practice.

There was a pioneering teacher in the insight meditation tradition a woman some of you may know her name was Ruth Denison and she died several years ago but she had started teaching you know around a lot of the time when the founding teachers like Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein started teaching so in the 60s really actually probably before they they started bringing it here and she taught for many years in Southern California and as she became elderly her mind wasn't as quick as it used to be you know as sometimes happens right and she was the primary caregiver for her husband who had Alzheimer's and so she would stay up with him and she wouldn't get much sleep because she was taking care of him for just all throughout the night and she had a teaching engagement in Oregon for a weekend retreat so she decided to drive from Southern California all the way up to Oregon and there was a big public event before the retreat where people in the community were invited to this big auditorium where this famous teacher was going to teach and so the auditorium I don't know how many people showed up but it was a big auditorium and she got up on stage and she started sharing the teachings the Buddhist teachings that we talk about here and then she started telling a story of caring for her husband and then she got back to talking you know teaching for a while and then again she told the story about caring for her husband and then she jumped back into teaching for a while again and then started repeating the same story of caring for her husband again so people in the audience were getting kind of restless and this one person got up to leave and from the stage she said wait wait you're witnessing something very special you're witnessing one of the senior American Buddhist teachers failing and so the man he sat down again and what I like about this story is she wasn't defending herself or explaining away her forgetfulness or denying that it was there she couldn't remember what she was saying and she was repeating herself and she owned it in a way that was relaxed and easy and the man in the audience wasn't defensive he sat back down and so she did this in a very open public way in front of an audience of people and I find this inspiring that you know maybe I can fail and perhaps fail in a relaxed and easeful way and be okay with it you know it sort of allows for that so the benefits of failure you know one of the aspects of our meditation practice is that it's kind of a great place to fail you know maybe a lot of what meditation is about is failing and learning from failing for me I probably fail more in meditation practice that I succeed you know my husband is a big baseball fan and so I've learned that some of the best batters in baseball fail more than they succeed so and the way that looks in meditation is that we sit down to meditate and we sort of say to ourself that you know I'm gonna follow my breath that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna sit down I'm gonna follow my breath and I'm gonna stay with it and so we sit down and we collect ourselves and then like two breaths in the mind wanders off you know our we failed in the grand plan to stay with the breath after just two breaths so we're facing kind of a small failure in that so what do we do with that you know we begin again and then maybe we settle in and we get four breaths or five breaths and then the mind drifts off again so conventionally we can see you know that there's failure in what we're doing so what do we do with that well we just return right we just come back to it over and over so one of the benefits of seeing this sort of little way in which we fail is that we can learn you know it's a little laboratory that we're doing here each morning we're studying ourselves and we study the ways in which we relate to all kinds of things including failure failure is a big part of life you know when we have expectations you know what we want when we set out to do something and we don't succeed so our relationship to these kinds of failures you know we can see the small kind of failures in meditation as a way of studying how we relate to other failures in our life you know how does it land do we get disappointed or do we get angry with ourselves do we tighten up and get hard sometimes we give up you know sometimes we despair in meditation you know sometimes we just go with it and we check out and we just go into the fantasy like this is too hard I might as well just fantasize with my time these are the kind of things that we can learn about on how we relate to kind of this little f failure I've had all kinds of ideas of what's supposed to happen in meditation practice you know I'm measuring myself against not just following the breath but I have this story or I've had this story that I'm supposed to get calm I'm supposed to develop wisdom and I'm not supposed to be a certain way like here I am a meditator for years and I'm not supposed to get so grumpy you know I'm not supposed to yell at my husband or get frustrated with technology I'm not supposed to be irritated I'm not supposed to be despairing I'm not supposed to be wanting you know I'm a Buddhist teacher I've meditated for a long time I should be more comfortable with uncertainty and I'm failing at this too so it's really easy to have those thoughts the whole idea of labeling something a failure you know it's in itself it's a problem it's a problematic thing so can we ask the question what does it mean to call something a failure the idea of failure is a magnet for all kinds of ideas and values judgments that we have fears and expectations and those things can become really heavy so when we see consciously or even unconsciously what we could call failure it's possible to change the language or change the view of it ongoing learning right you know taking the example of meditation practice the mind drifts off quickly from the breath and rather than calling it a failure it's just that the mind is drifted off and now it's time to start again so we don't get caught up in the valuation of success or failure it's just a rhythm one of life's many rhythms you know there's a rhythm of the day as it meets the night of being awake and going to sleep there's a rhythm of working and resting there's always a rhythm to the things that we do and there's a rhythm of breathing in and breathing out that's the rhythm of our practice the rhythm of being present for what you're paying attention to being present for the breath and the rhythm of drifting off and then coming back and then you wander off and you come back there's a rhythm to that and then rather than fighting it or feeling like a failure what we're doing is learning to work with the rhythm like oh this is just a part of the rhythm there's one more story about failure that I want to share before we talk a little bit together about the benefits of failure and this is a story from the Zen tradition so in Zen monasteries they typically eat their their lunch meal in the meditation hall and they're usually sitting around the edges of like a big square or rectangular room and the Abbot sits in the middle and servers come and serve the food in individual bowls so it's all very meditative and it's a very contemplative and peaceful way of eating so this one day in the monastery they're having they were having turtle soup for lunch and somehow one of the heads of the turtles ended up in the soup and the person who got the head was the Abbot so the Abbot he picks up his bowl and sees this head floating in the soup and asks for the cook to come into the meditation hall and so now all the monks who were just sitting gather around the Abbot and wait for the cook with the Abbot so this is kind of pretty public right public failure and the Abbot demonstrates the public failure by simply just pointing his finger into the bowl at the turtle head and the cook came over and looks at the bowl and he saw the head and he picks it up with his fingers pops it in his mouth swallows it and walks out and in Zen this is called eating the blame so he didn't defend himself he didn't explain himself he didn't apologize he just ate it he just ate the blame and went back to the kitchen I love that story so now what I'd like to do is I'd like to open it up and the prompt for sharing is something that you've learned in your life so far about how you've benefited from failure how you've benefited from failure and I ask that you keep it short so that more people can share so was was it a failure like what the question is what was the failure that I benefited from the benefits of failure

Reviews

Failure can be a gateway to transformation 🙏🏼 ☺️💗

🙏🏾 you.

Really good

This teaching hit the spot - thank you so much for sharing 🙏🌺