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Waking the teacher within
I cannot remember which Sage said this but it went something like: "The role of any good teacher is to wake-up the Guru within the student." Richard, I would like to thank you for this site, although I have been following it pretty much from the beginning, the last month has been really interesting. Up until you interviewed Dr. Shankar, not a single teacher has directly pointed out the "traps" of aonother teacher's teaching. I am so grateful to Dr. Shankar for boldly pointing out that many of the teachers you have interviewed do not know of what they speak because they truly cannot know of what they speak. Most of these teachers have great intentions but many of them may be speaking from an immature and unripe "Understanding". I think when the Truth first starts to dawn, the natural reaction is to run out and share it. Please don't misunderstand, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this, I am merely pointed out the value of a more mature deeper understanding that seems to be reflected in Dr. Shankar's interviews. He pointed out how anything known has to be illusionary, and because of this even the "I AM" which many teachers hold as the reference point has to be illusionary. In one of your interviews with Dr. Shankar, a listener came on and she was trying her very best to express that the Truth has to be lived and one cannot know it as knowledge, she was trying to express that the "Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao" and Dr. Shankar pointed out to her that even that was just a concept, trying to live as the eternal Tao is another trap, trying to live without concepts. He repeatedly points out that anything that the can be known is not it, so why are we wrestling with knowing it. Even Being it, is trying to know it. Why would the Absolute try to know itself, when it is itself. Any attempt to grasp this is the Ego...it is all mental masturbation. Life happens to man, full stop. Thank you so much for what you do Richard.
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Yes every word uttered is a concept. Even concept is a concept. It seems to me if a teacher wants to be a servant of truth (yes another concept) he/she should not speak.
Reflecting on this I was wondering why most teachers do speak. I guess it is an expression of compassion. They make (temporary) distinctions to reach out to the need of the seeker. Perhaps on an ultimate level we can say there is no such thing as a teacher or a student. But on the relative level there is.
I heard Mooji calling it writing on water. And if the teacher makes clear to the student that it indeed is 'writing on water' (a temporary distinction) then it has it's function.
In the diamond sutra the buddha compares his teaching to a raft: once you've crossed the river, you can discard the the raft.
Or the good old finger pointing to the moon.
And I faintly remember a zenstory about a zen-master chopping up a wooden buddha figure and throwing it in the fire, in order to shock a student who probably was caught up in concepts. But to me this doesn't mean that the buddha figure didn't have a function. Sometimes we have to walk down a dead-end street, even when we know that it is leading us nowhere - yet we don't know it with our gut, and that's why we have to do it consciously.
But I do wonder if a lot of teachers have this flexibility that is needed. Also the teachers who keep saying that everything is a concept and reject everything are often bound by their standpoint. It's very tricky. But I don't know about Shankar, cause I haven't watched his shows.
It is beyond duality and non-duality. It is beyond oneness and separateness. And it is beyond being beyond. I call this Love with a capital L. And Love doesn't have a problem with anything, not even with making distinctions. This cannot be grasped.
The fact that Love (or What Is or The mystery etc...) doesn't have a problem with anything can be quite depressing for the mind. I think that this fase of nihilism is quite essential. Sometimes I hear teachers who talk the talk and even more or less walk the walk, but I still have this gutfeeling that something is missing, that they haven't gone full circle. Have they fully seen that Love accepts everything? Everything. Everything.
Appropriate picture from the site of Jeannie Zandi:
To totally go full circle. And then mountains are simply mountains again, and rivers are rivers again. Not hanging around in this detached zone.
But for this, unwavering Honesty towards oneself is needed. I'm working on it. 
(Perhaps towards the end I went somewhat offtopic, but I was having inspiration
)
edit: only changed a typo
Hi Arjen,
"To totally go full circle. And then mountains are simply
mountains again, and rivers are rivers again. Not hanging around in this detached zone".
Yes, I agree. I think it was Nisgardatta that said "To know yourself as nothing is wisdom, but to know yourself as everything is true love". Thre are many teachers giving satsangs, writing e-books and touring these days. I am not saying that this is right or this is wrong,(I realize that they are not the doers) I am making an observation that perhaps some of these teachers that give satsang are operating from the level of the ego even when they are convinced otherwise, as a result seekers rush out to the marketplace and continue on the treadmill of seeking. If a teacher is not very clear, it can lead to a tremendous amount of confusion and suffering. We are in the information age where it is very easy to set up a video camera and give satsangs, I think it is hugely beneficial to interview the mature, seasoned teachers whose words ring with clairity as opposed to the ones that muddy the waters so to speak.
Its unfortunate that the example you pick of a "teacher" who points to the illusion of concepts is as far as I can make out the most conceptual teacher to have appeared on NNH. the core of his version of nonduality, is a rather rudimentary metaphysics concerning light and sound, which I initially felt was OK as long as it was a mere metaphorical pointer. But apparently people who are dazzled by him take this metaphysics quite literally and therein lies the problem.
This all goes to show the importance of silence as a teacher and this point has been stressed by MANY of the teachers on the NNH website.
I am inclined to say that "the tao that can be spoken is not the true tao" is one of the greatest pointers and it seems to me that it would only be someone with no ability to ever understand this message would make it into a belief
Ultimately, the teacher HAS to say something and yes this will mean words predominantly although the buddha held up a flower apparently and that worked too. So the teacher's motto should be "I can't say it, i must say, I will say it"
But the danger in noduality circles is to take concepts such as "There is no-one so there is no-one who suffers and who could get enlightened" without the experiential insights gained from self enquiry on which these are based on.
The biggest danger obviously therefore is for nonduality to become just sophisticated talk and no more.
With regards to the "I am" being illusionary, its well understood by almost all the teachers on NNH who refer to it that this is the primeval thought (even Descartes recognised this clearly), yes its the primary form of ignorance but its ignorance with a unique characteristic- it emanates from beingness and so its pragmatically useful to start with this in the enquiry.
Why would the absolute try to know itself? My understanding is that the absolute is consciousness and therefore its nature is pure knowingness. But again we are into semantics since no doubt Shankar would mean by consciousness the mind. i would prefer to use the word thought for the mind which entails conceptuality and yes thought ultimately cannot know anything, it would be like eating the menu rather than the meal.