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<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve just come in from working in the garden, cleaning the perimeter and pruning the roses. I notice a change from when I first moved here. For the first three years, the early work in the garden was a quiet, blissful experience. Not so much this year. Now it is more subtle enjoyment.<\/span><\/p>\n Tonight what was coming up for me in the work was the discussion on one of the Zen teacher listserves about the recent article in the New York Times Magazine about Lou Nordstrom<\/span><\/a>, who was told by his teacher to \u201ckill the watcher\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t have any human emotions.\u201d Barry Magid describes the long-term emotional consequences for someone in a dependent relationship hearing these instructions:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe whole aspect of having to trust such a person, to have your life in their hands, to <\/span>have to submit to their teaching as the price of a whole way of life for which he gave away everything, of his eventual potential as a teacher in his own right being dependent on the judgment of such a teacher \u2013 all this adds up to a severely masochistic master-student relationship \u2013 one in which one\u2019s own feelings about oneself, one\u2019s teacher and the choices one has made must be buried or denied in the name of practice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n