Don’t confuse the directions for the destination
I’ve been teaching for a number of years and the longer I teach, the more I realize how hard it is.
How do you describe the sensation of a technique to one who hasn’t experienced it?
It’s like trying to describe a place to someone who’s never been there before.
Like trying to describe Houston to someone who hasn’t been there before, you can fall back on analogies and say, “Well, Houston is a bit like Dallas,” (assuming he or she knows Dallas) but that still doesn’t convey what the real Houston feels like.
To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, “How do you describe the cold to someone who’s warm?”
If you’re not careful, you might emphasize the wrong thing, miss an important detail, or miss the big picture altogether, like the seven blind men of Indostan.
Zen masters like to use the analogy of the finger pointing at the moon.
Don’t confuse the finger for the moon. Don’t confuse the directions for the destination.
That’s what directions and instructions are, just fingers pointing at the moon.
It’s why Lau Tzu had to start with a disclaimer in the Tao Te Ching.
“The Tao that can be described is not the Tao, the name that can be named is not the name.”
And then proceeded to describe the Tao and name all its eighty-one names.
Perhaps that’s what we teachers should do too, start with a disclaimer.
“What I’m teaching are just words, to understand the real thing, you’d have to experience it yourself.”
And then try to describe or explain it anyway.