As teachers we often feel inadequate. Even after a lifetime of studying our art and how to teach it we find it hard to understand why so many can never penetrate the soul of what we teach.

But we can only do our best. We can’t do any more. We write, we film, we blog, we post, we find a myriad of ways to explain simple ideas and concepts that to us are glaringly obvious but elude the cluttered minds of others that are either distracted or apathetic.

We get students to look through windows from all angles at the same thing, but to them each window looks at something different.

But it’s not always our lack of skill. Sometimes it’s their inability to comprehend and I think that this adaption from paragraphs 64 and 65 of the Dhammapada describe it well.

‘Learning from a teacher, some will never get it in the way a spoon never tastes the soup, others will quickly comprehend the teachings just as the tongue immediately tastes the flavour’…..