I’m not sure how one goes about finding a good meditation instructor in person. That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
I hear that if you go to a retreat center or monastery run by someone who endorses the methods I’ve described, they approach and teach meditation in a very serious way. (You might ask something like “are these teachings in the style of Mahasi Sayadaw’s methods?”, though I have no idea whether that’s a gross faux pas or not.) I believe there are a number of Burmese monks who run organizations in various parts of the world who could help you (no idea what their geographical distribution is). And this assumes you want a method similar to what I’ve described, and that you want to deal with monks at all.
Outside of Burmese Theravada, there are lots of traditions with their own beliefs, methods, dogma, etc. and evaluating whether they can do anything to help you is much harder. They are highly unlikely to frame meditation or enlightenment in the ways I have, for better or worse.
I would suggest that a good way to tell whether an instructor is likely to be helpful as a meditation teacher is not much different from how you would tell whether they would be helpful as teachers of any other hands-on skill. Do their explanations make sense to you? Can you ask questions? Do they give feedback? Have other people successfully learned from them what you want to learn? I imagine these are especially important if you’re looking at a tradition that you have minimal information about.
I’m not sure how one goes about finding a good meditation instructor in person. That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
I hear that if you go to a retreat center or monastery run by someone who endorses the methods I’ve described, they approach and teach meditation in a very serious way. (You might ask something like “are these teachings in the style of Mahasi Sayadaw’s methods?”, though I have no idea whether that’s a gross faux pas or not.) I believe there are a number of Burmese monks who run organizations in various parts of the world who could help you (no idea what their geographical distribution is). And this assumes you want a method similar to what I’ve described, and that you want to deal with monks at all.
Outside of Burmese Theravada, there are lots of traditions with their own beliefs, methods, dogma, etc. and evaluating whether they can do anything to help you is much harder. They are highly unlikely to frame meditation or enlightenment in the ways I have, for better or worse.
I would suggest that a good way to tell whether an instructor is likely to be helpful as a meditation teacher is not much different from how you would tell whether they would be helpful as teachers of any other hands-on skill. Do their explanations make sense to you? Can you ask questions? Do they give feedback? Have other people successfully learned from them what you want to learn? I imagine these are especially important if you’re looking at a tradition that you have minimal information about.