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A Zen Helper Guide for Teachers
(don’t read this unless you’re a teacher)

Now, it’s always fun to speak directly to your audience. So, I’m going to guess that you are a . . . teacher! Am I right? If not, you obviously completely ignored the title (and it’s probably good you’re not one)! Anyway, if you’re not, just pretend.

Take a moment to sit back in your desk and rest secure in the knowledge that if anyone around you has been mean today, or inconsiderate, or unkind in any manner — feel secure in the knowledge that they are not real. In fact, nothing much around you is real. Thus, you may feel at liberty to eat whatever you want (especially cocoa derivatives), since calories and excessive sugar are only concepts, and have nothing whatsover to do with reality. You can also do or say whatever you want today, since personal interactions are naught but an illusion (yourself) ‘talking’ to an illusion (other people).

Okay, now we come to the tricky part. It’s time to address the anguish you feel knowing that in teaching your children new ‘things’, you are only deluding them into believing in the world of forms, and preparing them for a life of stress, misery, and repressed fear of death.

Of course, you can get around this by simply teaching them what you’ve come to see– that what they’re learning isn’t real!

“Alright students, today we’re going to learn about the different countries. This is Estonia. Has anyone been to Estonia? No? That’s alright. It’s a country, and people there wear funny hats. But seriously, kids, the important thing to remember about Estonia is that it isn’t real. That’s right! And I don’t mean not real in an imaginary sense, kids. I mean that it’s just some arbitrary lines that someone drew on a map. In fact, no one can really agree on where Estonia is because there are border disputes, and we have border disputes because the boundary is not an existent reality in nature — in other words, children, you would find no objective line or boundary between Estonia and Latvia, the neighboring country. Mostly you could tell that you were in a different country because when you crossed over into ‘Latvia’ (make that little quote gesture with your fingers when you say this), you’d find that people are no longer wearing funny hats. This applies to all aspects of supposedly objective ‘reality’.”

If the children are staring blankly at this point, just smile at them and tell them to hold their right hand in the air. Then read the following dialog.

“Now, children, move your hand sharply to the left. Good. Now do it again and listen carefully. What is the sound of one hand clapping? That’s right, Betty. There’s no sound. Nothing. And that’s what we all are — all of ‘reality’, in fact. Nothing. You too, Betty. You’re nothing. Isn’t that great?”

This should either create a riveting dialog between yourself and the students, or start Betty to crying. Either way, rest assured that you’ve done the kids a world of good.

I hope that this essay has lent a bit of sunshine to your day, teachers. If you enjoyed this segment of ‘A Zen Helper’, you’ll get more installments in the days to come! If you didn’t enjoy it, just draft a ‘non-subscription form’, include $19.95 for processing fees, $5.00 for the envelope opening surcharge, and $.75 to defray the cost of taking the time to remove you from the subscription list. (We’ll still continue sending you ‘A Zen Helper’, since they don’t exist in objective reality, and technically we’re not sending them anyway. Plus it’s a pain to take you off the subscription list.)

Not quite sincerely,

Kenton

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Zen Helpers. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.