As a long time supporter of Wildmind and its work I’ve been reading this correspondence with interest, but also with some disquiet at the underlying assumption of a dichotomy between online learning and a ‘real teacher’ – a dichotomy that isn’t borne out by my own experience of learning meditation with Wildmind.
Whilst I’ve been putting my response together, Karla, too, has posted her own story, and I’ve found it heart-warming to perceive so many echoes of my own meditation journey, even though our lives are probably very different. So I’ve edited my contribution to the discussion a little to focus more specifically on my experience of relating to a ‘virtual teacher’. Karla, it’s good to know you!
The Wildmind courses were my first introduction to meditation. I had been drawn to contemplative practice of some kind for some time, but had only come across it in a Christian context which I found it impossible to ‘own’, so when I accidentally came across Jack Kornfield’s ‘A Path With Heart’ I was seized with enthusiasm and started to read everything I could lay my hands on. I was particularly drawn to the Kornfield/Goldstein version of Vipassana and Charlotte Joko Beck’s version of Zen and wanted to find a centre near me, but further investigation revealed such a plethora of different schools and different traditions that I didn’t know where to start.
So when I came across the Wildmind site it seemed like a good way of getting started without having to commit myself to anything in particular, which I didn’t feel ready to do. And as soon as I started on the first course I knew that Wildmind wasn’t simply the equivalent of a CD with a few extra frills. There was real teaching and real learning in our encounter.
Bodhipaksa’s input was crucial to my positive experience – he was very supportive in his responses to my journal, and had the knack of making those responses personal (though I imagine that many people’s early experiences and questions have a certain amount in common). It was interesting to observe myself feeling that we were becoming friends even though I had no actual proof that he was a real person – he might have been a sixty-year old woman, or even a team, as people often suspect agony aunties of being!
I did find myself depending quite a lot on our correspondence, and creating a sort of virtual ‘guru’ out of how I imagined him to be. This was a particularly easy pattern to fall into since of course I never actually saw him relating to anyone else. I was aware that I was doing this, and it was a useful way to observe projections, plus the need to put my experiences into writing was a very valuable way of helping me collect my thoughts and was often a spur to further reflection, so the virtual nature of the relationship was helpful to me in several ways.
However I did very soon get to feel the need to find a real 3D sangha, and I was delighted to find one only ten minutes from my home in the UK: Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, a Thai Forest monastery in the tradition of Ajahn Chah, and home to the well-respected Ajahn Sumedho, I joined the lay community there and have now been closely involved with them for over five years.
But I kept up a regular correspondence with Bodhipaksa via the journnal for at least a year to 18 months after I started coming regularly to Amaravati and I continued to find the personal contact a very useful support as I was finding my feet. I have no doubt that it contributed to the ease with which I was able to develop a regular practice – the discipline of keeping a journal was a good framework – and I was aware that I was continuing to appreciate the individual support which is not so obviously part of the pattern at Amaravati. During this time the relationship gradually developed into more of a spiritual friendship than a teacher-pupil one, and this too was explicitly negotiated – very interesting, and the only time in my life I have ever reflected so consciously and deliberately on the nature of a relationship.
So there you have it – I have had personal experience of online learning and a relationship with a virtual teacher, and also of a deepening connection with a well-established Theravada Buddhist community. I have developed mutually supportive relationships there with monastics and lay people alike. Both the virtual relationship and the face-to-face ones have been, and continue to be, of inestimable value to me on the path, and I see no dichotomy here, only a rich variety which I treasure and for which I feel deep gratitude.
With metta
Alison