Teaching is an Act of Love

by Sabumnim

It’s not how much you know, but how much you care that makes the difference, and that will leave a profound impression on the student. Teaching is an act of love and therefore it should always come with the attributes of love in all its many forms. Just like water, it will always retain its true essence. Be it soft love, hard love or eternal love, it will always come with the gifts of love which are generosity, compassion, patience, commitment, wisdom, joy, and faith.

Generosity
You must have the ability and willingness to give. It is difficult to be generous if you don’t have an open heart to do so. The willingness of teachers to teach will be greatly affected by the openness or lack of openness of their Sacred Self, their heart, their mind, their spirit, and their soul.

Those with an openness of their Sacred Self have an abundance of being and fulfillment in that particular domain in which they have the ability and willingness to give. A person that has overly abundant grain has it to give; a person that has overly abundant time or money has it to give, and a person that has overly abundant wisdom, experience, compassion, and patience has it to give. So it is vitally important that we start from the heart—from your heart—and make sure that your heart has everything it needs and deserves to have. You must fill all the holes in your heart so you can begin to fill it with the love it needs to achieve fulfillment. Only then will you truly be able to give from the best of yourself. A person who is drowning cannot save another, and a person who is broke cannot pay another, and a person who cannot give oneself the love and support one needs cannot truly give it to another. But once you can do this you can also learn how to give to yourself by giving to others, and how to give to others by giving to yourself. This is the yin and yang balance of the Do that consistently regenerates itself.

Compassion and Patience
A warrior without compassion is worse than a hyena or a pack of wolves—those who prey on the weakest. And a teacher without compassion is like a clanging bell in the wind. The teacher must care for every living and non-living soul just as if it is part of one’s own. As you increase your level of consciousness, you will see into the eyes and soul of another and you will see yourself and all those you have known and loved. At that time, there will be no more need for these words, you will understand and know what all enlightened souls across time and space have known:  we are one. All of humanity are genetically and spiritually one family.

When we harm another, we harm everyone. When we help another, we help everyone. Every learning environment is like a garden. People are like flowers, wisdom is like water, and compassion is like the sunshine. Without water and sunshine, the flowers will not bloom. Compassion creates an ideal learning environment where all can grow to their greatest potential. Different flowers grow at different rates and therefore some require more patience. You wouldn’t pull at slower growing flowers to try to make them grow as fast as some others because that would only damage them. This must be understood and remembered when learning Martial Arts, training and teaching students.

Some flowers grow very slow but live ten times longer than flowers that grow faster. And some students develop slow but outlast and outshine students who seemed to be gifted in the beginning. So patience is always a nearby partner wherever you find compassion.

From the WMAC Instructors Handbook