The Legacy of Zen
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
Ch-ch-changes are gathering again, like dark clouds on the horizon . . . but meanwhile, back in Seomyeon . . .
And yes, I am thinking of someone in particular when I make these comments . . .
Despite what regular readers here may think about the often despondent nature of this blog, the people around me in Busan (and my students especially) apparently consider me to be a very positive person. And on a day-to-day basis, it's easy to become so immersed in what we have to do that the positive nature of our activities – in the sense of encouraging non-natives to learn our language and keeping their affective filters as low as possible – is often forgotten, as we negotiate our way through the complications of a week's teaching shifts.
And despite the conspicuous fact that many foreigners who come here to teach English are (in one way or another) quite dysfunctional, often (not unlike myself) gravitating here largely by accident and perhaps here only temporarily before either returning home or progressing to employment in a similar role elsewhere, it's too easy to forget that we are also often in the presence of greatness – there are those among our number who remain here because they have sufficient internal fortitude to adapt to a foreign lifestyle and language, thrive and become something more than they might otherwise have been, had that same fortitude failed them when that fateful day came that they had to leave their familiar shores for a new life.
I write this as I sit on a Thursday night in the Rock and Roll Bar in Seomyeon, oddly close to where I am living here, watching another late-night instalment of this year's Giro d'Italia live on the big screen, rapt as ever in admiration of the younger men taking part in the race, lauding in my mind their stamina and their lack of body fat, how they have the energy to alternately pump their way uphill and then coast downhill again, astonished at times at just how fast they are travelling on what are really only leg-muscle-powered pedal cycles.
Perhaps what I am really adumbrating here is the idea that one remains largely in a positive frame of mind, on a day-to-day basis (of course), precisely through ignoring the negative influences one encounters (which would otherwise drag one down) and seeking out the company of others who have more of a "can-do" kind of attitude, and avoiding the pointless legions of those who are forever complaining about their personal situation but doing nothing to improve it. Those guys in the Giro cycle their way up and down hills in Italy, tens of kilometres each day, and you just bet there's no way they could do that if everyone in the peloton was whining about cramp in their calves, unavoidable punctures or the fact that they were running low on water. They immerse themselves instead in a testosterone-soaked tribe for whom failure (at least in the sense of not completing the course) is a remote possibility and success is (usually) celebrated as a muscular and sinewy group, amongst whom they test themselves against their own internal standards as surely as they are tested by those against whom they compete.
Their spirit of endurance in particular is what is making me think as I sit here, engrossed in the image of their persistence, sitting with my Absolut and tonic in hand, watching their progress through the glorious Italian countryside as I munch away at my plate of poutine, thinking . . . yes, endurance: it is the ability of the foreigner to endure the slings and arrows, the pitfalls and – often – the strange encounters we experience each day which sets the long-term outlander resident in Korea apart from the journeymen, the cultural tourists who spend only a short time here before passing on their way.
If we all have to be somewhere in this life, it is surely better to be in a place where this endurance serves us well. These many years I have spent in Korea – admittedly accidentally in the beginning, but increasingly with intention with time's passage – have been times of intense application and learning. As I look to my next job here – which, it now turns out, will be the same as the last! – the realisation comes to me that I am not the same person who stepped off the plane from Taiwan in July 2003 any more: I have experienced, learned, reflected and grown. By making a conscious decision to leave Taipei all those years ago, I forced change upon myself, adapted to a greater or lesser extent, and survived. And, I would hope, became a better and more useful person to have around.
Today was another of those days when a sequence of events took place and later culminated in what I call a "crystallisation moment" – a moment when, recalling events in the immediate past and being stimulated into reflection in the immediate present, a realisation of some importance descends upon me. The riders in the Giro d'Italia know zen . . . they become completely focused upon what they are doing, to the exclusion of everything else which tries to impose itself upon their sensorium; and they have the rare privilege of financial and practical support for what they are doing . . . and if they could only appreciate it, if for just a moment they could ignore all the daily distractions which assail them, here in a place like Seomyeon, with its crazy drivers and people who walk backwards into you all the time on the sidewalks, young women tottering on crazy high heels whilst yammering into a brick and wondering why that guy in the car there almost killed them – maybe people here would see that their situation is not so different from that of the long-distance bike rider – all you need is persistence and fortitude – and certainly some experience and perspective.
Persistence and fortitude which takes them to a greater acme of greatness than most mortals know in their lives . . .
I guess that what I am trying to suggest is that the foreign teacher who is seen as a positive person by his students is, in fact, a person who knows zen, in much the same way as the downhill skier who wins the tournament at blinding speed might be described as "ski-total", or as the rock guitarist loses himself in the riff, and time suspends itself for a few brief moments of his life as he communes with the numinous; as the potter is absorbed at the wheel as she moulds the wet clay to her will; as the horse rider is with his mount, as the fighter pilot becomes a cyborg for an instant, one with the machine . . . because when a lesson works perfectly and your students return to you the next day, willingly and with that look in their eyes, they know that they have seen the zen of teaching.
And this is the goal of any teaching: that when the teacher achieves zen in his lesson, the affective filter is blasted away, and the students' minds are opened to learning by the teacher's irresistible will.
And the sadness I so often feel, recalling the places I have been and the places I wanted to see but where I still have not arrived, the places where for various reasons I wanted to be but in which the circumstances would not allow me to abide, is at least assuaged by the knowledge that when my students express their collective appreciation, my time here was not wasted.
I do not claim greatness for myself, though like so many, I would aspire to it.
But I do realise, finally, that I have a legacy to leave behind when I am gone.
The legacy of zen.
Tags: career, change, education, elementary, English, english teacher, experience, foreigner, fortitude, hagwon, job, learning, lifestyle, persistence, perspective, public school, teacher, teaching
