When the Student is Ready

The teacher will appear, or so Zen precepts say.

Allow me to introduce Brother Servant Salvador, master teacher of simplicity.

Here he meditates, using his mala beads, probably on which lesson the student needs to learn next and what technique to use.

Perhaps the lesson is that all things are temporary? For example, he teaches that the body is temporary in a unique way. He steals all the toothbrushes and hides them. While one isn't supposed to form an attachment to one's body, one's failure to achieve this state is never so obvious as when a molar has to be extracted from a bottom jaw. The roots reach into one's shoulder blades apparently.  Attachment is too mild a word.

Maybe the student's senses should be sharpened by the removal of and/or puncturing of skin? It is a well-known fact that students must be scourged. All religions are cognizant of the value of pain to heighten the senses, instill a healthy sense of fear and impress the need for immediate obedience.

The teacher also encourages simplicity by breaking items of value. The student's favourite vase? A bowl pushed off the counter onto the floor, a six-foot leap ending on the screen on the ipad?

The student's outburst of temper is eventually followed by the lesson of contrition and there will be cuddles. But not until after the shouting has subsided and the teacher has emerged from an appropriate period of contemplation under-the-furniture or in the too-high-for-her-to-reach-place.

The interruption of sleep is another valued tool the teacher uses. "Wake, lazy sluggard; for the hour is 3:00 am and the teacher is an hungered for grilled chicken with gravy from a can in the pantry!"  At 4:00 am the teacher begins to sing, "Wake oh lazy one! Dawn approaches and your toes are both titillating and delicious!" At 5:00 am the teacher begins a course of acupuncture on the student's scalp, a well-recognized technique for curing the migraine now throbbing on the right side of the student's head. 

At 5:10 the teacher is ejected with appropriate curses chanting, from the student's bed chamber. He begins his 80 decibel "song to the morning" howled by his sect from time immemorial. The older monk gets up from his perch on the cat tree, a scuffle ensues, there is some hissing and quiet descends on the monastery, at least temporarily.  

Exhaustion and intimidation have ever been the tool of brainwashing of religions. There is no other explanation for why we  become lifelong students in the school of catzen.

Unless you count kitten kisses.