The teaching process becomes most interesting for spiritual seekers once they've managed to hit the lower samadhis. However at that point many seekers become very egotistical.
The Buddha taught three cycles of teachings. His first cycle of teachings cover the basics, the prerequisites. This would include the Dharmapada.
His second cycle of teachings discusses the cosmology of the universes. But in his later years, he wrote the tantric texts.
The deeper inner teachings are presented to very few because few would understand them. The exoteric teachings are presented to many.
The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically.
The teaching of the ten thousand states of mind, particularly as one advances further, is done through transmission. This is where we differ from teaching algebra or calculus.
It's necessary to respect all other ways and other teachings on the subject because even though they may not make a lot of sense to us, they might to someone else. Who are we to say?
Can you control your anger, lust, frustrations, and jealousies? Those are the only people worthy of the higher teachings. By worthy, I mean that they are the only ones capable of it.
In the esoteric teachings, a transference process takes place between teacher and student where knowledge is actually transmitted from one to the other. This requires that the student be receptive.
I don't think there is a right approach to teaching self discovery. Every situation is unique.
A teacher will alter the balance of power by actually lifting a person into other states of mind. In those states of mind the teaching will take place in non-verbal ways through direct experience.
When we talk, answer questions, I'm addressing your tonal. I'm teaching you a way or a series of ways of dealing with the world.
A child is imprinted not by simply teaching. But their attention is like soft clay. The attention field of adults is stratified. They are like hard clay and we push them on each side of the child's attention field.
The teaching that we receive is not necessarily very accurate. The value systems that our cultures have developed are not every open. They are very restrictive. We live in an age that is not enlightened.
Lao Tsu doesn't seem to hold to much stock for words or phrases or teachings.
