Damstig,
I feel it is important to have a web site devoted to the role of student/teacher relationships and the problem some persons are having with the relationship itself. Although I am in no way qualified to speak of such a relationship, for I am not yet in such a relationship. I can only offer up a view that may resonate with some readers.
A friend and I have recently talked briefly about the way Buddhism will enter into the conscious mind of the "American people" and whether or not the seed of Dharma is/will be planted in firm soil.
It seems that as socialized Americans we have a collective desire to reject authority, because the malevolent forces of control are plainly evident everywhere. This rejection of conformity and control may manifest positive results in certain contextual situations, as in the case of questioning societal imperatives, norms, customs, etc., and in cases where the "individual" is coerced into a position of standing with his/her back to the wall. But within the context of the relationship between guru and student, the relationship is based, from the students perspective, on surrender: a voluntary surrender.
As Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche pointed out, the student, in order to learn, must surrender his or her self. How else could the bureaucracy of ego be seen through. And how else could the actual process of learning take place? To learn anything, one must be open.
The Situationists, an avant-garde movement in France in the sixties, presented an eloquent picture of modern society, if taken one step further they might have been able to explode the illusion of ego, but the movement remained mostly political. They suggested that societal structures, especially within "modern" capitalist countries, have become mere spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle), this spectacular bureaucracy absorbs anything it wishes, even seemingly radical thought, into its monolithic structure (sounds a bit like ego...) All forms of subversion or radical critique can be made palatable and easily digested.
Why Buddhism interests most of us is because we are dissatisfied in one way or another with cyclic existence, we have intense yearning to be free and free others from the rounds of pain. We may look everywhere, politics, sex, consumerism, and in some way we karmically stumble upon the Dharma, which organically manifests within each of us the potential to be free and to truly free others.
Buddhist Dharma also vibrates in us because of its intensity and direct confrontation with reality itself, something we as Americans, especially, have always been taught to avoid doing. (Samsaric mind wishes us to be comfortable with the fact that we perceive the world incorrectly)
If we "democratize" Buddhism, we are egotistically appropriating the teachings and thus they have become anti-Dharma, mere spectacle. If we water down the method of supreme vehicle and the intense relationship with the Varja Master, to the "wisdom of the collective sangha, etc." we will lose to the neurosis of pacification, homogenization and ultimately to the cycle of consumerism: a blind, rabid beast that eats anything in its way.
If we are to help plant these teachings on firm soil, we must do so with complete respect for the honored teachers who, from the kindness of their hearts, opened up the way for us.
Thank you for making me aware of some the "uglier" manifestations of Dharma practice in the West.
Jason G.