Compassion vs Attachment

This is so tough! As a teacher, you're expected to be compassionate. But it's so easy to also get attached to your students. It starts off with "I really need to see this person do well". Fair enough. And then slowly the sense that the student depends on you to do well. "I'm the only one who can save him/her from failure" Ah! the ego!

After that, the stage where you take the students' success/failure personally. By then you're trapped - you start heaping your expectations on the student. So even if the student is happy getting a 'B' you're all worked up! and the result is that the student also loses his/her peace of mind. You've anyway lost yours a long time back.

So the solution?

Well, one way is the route that the Bhakti Yoga and the Christian tradition maintain - probably easiest practised. To remember that one is just an instrument of God. The teacher has to try her/his best without 'owning' the students. So, since God is compassion, is She not worried about Her children? Will she not guide them? Of course, She will. Even if Her children are unaware of her compassion. Even if She is not thanked and prayed to. So as a teacher one is just God's tool as a conduit for compassion which, of course, shouldn't make one proud. Need to be thankful and pray that one get's more opportunites of being God's instrument.

The other route is the Karma Yoga route. Selfless action. Nishkama Karma as propunded in the Bhagvad Gita. Action for action's sake without attachment to results. Doesn't mean not foing work without drive.

Lastly, the Jnana Yoga route - the path of intellectual discrimination. Attachment to whom? Who is the attached? What is attachment? Figments of mental creation without any absolute reality.

Of course, in practice, all three paths can (and probably should) be practiced together.