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Foreword: Education as an Enlightenment Project
Heesoon Bai
There sits Avraham, morning after morning, perhaps in the middle of the night, too, in a light-drenched, large, windowed nook in the living room of our small apartment, overlooking the busy city scene below and the ocean and mountains in the distance. As a companion sitter, I hear him sometimes intoning deep throaty sounds that resemble, to my ears, Tibetan chants. This is a potent and unusual portrait of an educator: someone who is greatly respected in his institution as a peerless teacher of counseling graduate students. He is also a trusted and respected professional in the field of psychotherapy as a practitioner and scholar. What does this sitter’s—meditator’s—portrait have to do with the field of education? What does a person’s contemplative practice have to do with teaching and educating?