As human beings we are always students and teachers of life, whether we take on the social titles of “student” or “teacher.” 

One of the biggest lessons in life that I’ve been “involuntarily” enrolled in just by being alive is the learning of how to relate with people. A major component of this continuous life lesson is the mastering of being my own true self within the pressures of collectivity in order to contribute as my own best self for the collective.

I want to believe that we, human beings, are all of an equal essence—of magnificence and potentiality.

This belief is necessary as a flourishing individual. How else can I be my best self otherwise? How else could I see the potential in others? But if everyone is equal, what then becomes the role of the educator who teaches other people?

My research on how poignant landscapes can influence an ethics of flourishing has helped me form a philosophy. At the start of my studies, I believed that my research would result in some sort of guidebook that could instruct landscape architects on how to design poignant landscapes, or at least explain to them how poignant landscapes could help landscape architecture. But eventually, I learned that what is considered poignant is dependent on each person’s view of the world.

If I see the world as poignant, I can invite others into this way of seeing, but people have the choice to take this path or not. Accordingly, I cannot determine what constitutes good landscape design for a profession. I can only open up a new potentiality for seeing landscapes in more meaningful ways.

To translate this understanding into education, I turn to the metaphor of cultivating soil. 

Spiritually responsible teachers are not responsible for disseminating a particular kind of knowledge, for that would be like growing a monoculture, which we know is not environmentally healthy. Because everyone is equally unique and has the potential to bloom in the greatest of ways, the teacher provides the soil for students to grow. What comes out of this metaphorical garden is the collective result of each student’s self-flourishing.

Just as each student holds their own seed of potentiality, it makes sense to me that each teacher teaches what is most aligned to their unique gift in the world. Otherwise, we could just use robots to deliver course material over and over again (or alternatively, we could just become robots). So, I ask myself, what is unique to me?

For me, the value of learning is less so about the information detained in the mind but more about how experiences have changed me.

As a student that “grew” out of studio-based learning (in architecture and landscape architecture) my foundation to higher-education has been experiential. Despite remembering how my undergraduate classmates had dubbed the conditions of architecture school as “archi-torture,” my fondest memories of university education are the ones that stressed me out the most at the time: the time-limited charrette exercises which professors had warned as having high-failure rates (although I passed them all).

The reason I so appreciated this experience was because we were engaged with what we were doing, allowed to be creative, and put into a position to believe in ourselves even for only several hours. Information-based courses, the kind that I was exposed to when I returned to graduate school as a student and teaching assistant (in the liberal arts) was foreign to me.

When I looked into the eyes of my peers and students, I was reminded of eco-philosopher David Abram’s assertation in his book The Spell of the Sensuous (1997) that language could either “speak to the world” or “deaden that life” we have been given. So much is spoken in higher education, but how much of it speaks to life and how much has deadened life? Because of this contrast between my experiences in educational systems, I understand the potentialities of how life-affirming education can be.

I want to see the twinkle in people’s eyes!

To affirm life, we need to be in the world fully engaged and we need to feel connected to each other.

While my research explored human belongingness, particularly, belonging that can be felt in landscape experiences, learning to relate with people as a social being is also about learning to belong despite social narratives that say otherwise. Therefore, the essence of being a spiritual teacher is to learn belongingness and to showcase this life lesson to students.

Together, student and teacher, through whatever common interests we share about the world, learn to relate to the world in mutual and reciprocal ways. Together, through the exchange of teaching and learning, student and teacher emerge out into the world with a greater sense of security to be ourselves, as we contribute to society, to nature, and to life in general.

At the core of my interests is a commitment to hold space for the world’s beauty and pain as a process of collective healing. My teaching and learning medium is our personal relationships with landscapes found in various forms: archetypal, experiential, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. This relationship transcends the boundaries of institutionalized disciplines and departments.

So, despite any apprehension people may have about what purpose they must take on, I believe that those committed as students of life will be inspired to join me in this endeavour.