For the past couple of years I have been giving free meditation courses [1] in Dublin along with my friends in the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre. I have only been giving them for a couple of years, and there are many more gifted at it than I, but I've definitely learnt my share of lessons along the way. Here are just a couple of them:
1. Dont act like an 'expert'
Anyone who does meditation should have first and foremost have the attitude of a beginner. When we feel we know everything, we developed a very closed attutude and somehow communicate that to the people we are teaching meditation to. Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, the Soto Zen Master who helped bring Zen to the West, used to say "In beginner's mind we have many possibilities, but in expert mind there is not much possibility." Outwardly meditation is a very simple subject, requiring very little instruction, but inwardly there is no end to how far you can go in your meditation, and there is always something you can learn. My own teacher, Sri Chinmoy, calls himself an 'eternal beginner', even though he has been meditating for almost 65 years.
If you act you are on some lofty plateau of spiritual height, you run the danger of creating a gap between you and the people who are coming to the class. Many of the people who are coming to the classes might only be hearing about meditation and spirituality for the first time; they may feel that meditation and spirituality are too high for them to obtain and become discouraged. Remember what you were like when you came to meditation for the first time, and the slow steady process that got you where you are now.
2. Meditate even before the class begins.
For example, my teacher Sri Chinmoy would advise his students to meditate for at least twenty minutes. This achieves a number of purposes: it means the that from beginning to end of the class there is a meditative atmosphere. More importantly, this meditation allows you to connect with some deeper intuition about how to give the class and be of service to the people who are coming. Quite a few times it has happened I had an idea of what I was going to say in a class, but then after meditation I get some inner feeling that I should say another thing.
3. Show a good example
Make sure you are practising what you are talking about in your daily life. "If you are giving talks on spirituality, you cannot separate your teaching life from your day to day existence.", writes Sri Chinmoy. If you are a spiritual person, you cannot be one person in the class and then afterwards enter into the life of vital enjoyment....It is not enough to give; you also have to become. If you give without becoming, then you can never succeed." If people see a wide gap between the high ideals you talk about and your actual behaviour outside meditation, they will feel that spirituality is nothing but hypocrisy.
Similarly, when doing the meditation exercises, try to have a nice meditation experience yourself. If people see the peace and joy radiating from your face after a good meditation, this will tell them more about the effectiveness of meditation than anything you say.
4. No expectations.
Holding meditation classes is an act of giving, and should be done without any expectation of an end result, like getting more people to join your meditation group. Your aim is to be of service to the souls who walk through that door, and no more. Many people will find that they are not ready to incorporate meditation into their life, others will find that they get more joy from another meditation group. Whatever happens, you have played your role in inspiring them and helping them to look at the infinite possibilities meditation can bring.
(The photo is of Snehashila Nichols giving meditation classes in Moscow. She is now 82 years of age, but she still gives meditation classes very regularly in many different countries with tremendous enthusiasm and love for what she is doing)