Questioning the Guru

[Aupmanyav]

I generally like your post above.

 

[Islington]

From what you all say, it looks like everyone needs a guru. And each of your descriptions is beautiful.
But, just for the sake of asking: What of people who don't see the need to follow a guru then? Are they... just ignoring or not knowing the need? Or truly not everyone need one?

 

[Vinayaka]

From what you all say, it looks like everyone needs a guru. And each of your descriptions is beautiful.
But, just for the sake of asking: What of people who don't see the need to follow a guru then? Are they... just ignoring or not knowing the need? Or truly not everyone need one?

Thank you for the polite insightful response.

Good question, and a few thoughts. I personally believe that everyone will need a Guru ... eventually, but not that everyone needs one right now. Of course by eventually, I'm speaking from within the dharma paradigm, which means I'm referring to the soul not the individual personality of this lifetime. So it may be several lifetimes away, or soon, but eventually everyone would benefit from the guidance of a Guru. The dharmic paradigm is a patient paradigm.

There are also karmas to be worked through that you need to go alone, without help, because that's the nature of karma, and the soul's evolution. Just as we need physical bodies for certain karmas, like feeling pain, pleasure, etc. we need that down time, where we're alone on the path. This may indeed be at several different occasions on the long sojourn to the Self. Certainly at the very end you're alone. The Guru can't do it for you. He can lead you, teach you, implore you, encourage you, etc., but its you that needs to do it. (Kind of lonely at the top.)

There are other less encouraging reasons for why someone feels they don't need a Guru, and that's usually to do with ego. For whatever reason (usually its actually insecurity, but that's a psychological interpretation) they just think they're the smartest, wisest thing to ever occur on this planet, and nobody whatsoever has anything whatsoever to teach them. (Of course no Guru in their right mind would take this type of person on as a sishya)

There are also several levels of bond between Guru and sishya. For example, in my case, The Guru also has both lay members and monastic members to work with. The monastic sishya are the close close devotees, and they work together inwardly, in meditation of the deepest types, with only one goal ... to realise the Self God within.

But out here, for people like me, the Guru's advice in that inner way would just fall on deaf ears, so he has to work with people from the point where they actually are, which could be something as simple as doing sadhana daily, or performing seva at a local temple.

So the Guru-sishya relationship is unique to each sishya. It's like a hundred or so simultaneous tutorials, not one class of a 100 people,

 

[Aupmanyav]

Though I belong to the 'Be your own guru' view, but it is not that I have not learnt from others. I have learnt from Upanishads, BhagawadGita, Bhagawat Purana, Ram Charit Manas, from Buddha, Sankara and from my supervisor in the accounts department of the Fulbright Commission, New Delhi. The gentleman taught me 'Anasakti Yoga' (detachment) that even a war has to be fought without hate and anger. I do not think I need a guru now. I do not like doting on the guru as many people do. I reserve my right to question and differ from the guru (I do not know if I have made my view understandable).

 

[Nyingjé Tso]

Vanakkam,

Everything and everyone around us can be Guru. The question then is not about légitimity of a guru, but how listening the shishya is to his/her surroundings.

Mahadev is all and in all, we are all the potential of Sadashiv, each hindered in our own bondages.
Going through the ego successfully is not about opening up to listen one spark, but to opening up to listen all the potentiality that is around us without care for status or anything like that.

It is, however, just my experience and not absolute truth. I think ultimately we should find what suits us the most and go with it.

Aum Namah Shivaya

 

[Kirran]

Guru always used to say I'm not really your Guru, the real Guru is there inside, as God enshrined within your heart. God is the Guru, ultimately.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Atheist advaitist here. But yes, my conscience is there to guide me and what I have learnt from book and people.

 

[Sw. Vandana Jyothi]

Vanakkam,

Everything and everyone around us can be Guru. The question then is not about légitimity of a guru, but how listening the shishya is to his/her surroundings.

Mahadev is all and in all, we are all the potential of Sadashiv, each hindered in our own bondages.
Going through the ego successfully is not about opening up to listen one spark, but to opening up to listen all the potentiality that is around us without care for status or anything like that.

It is, however, just my experience and not absolute truth. I think ultimately we should find what suits us the most and go with it.

Aum Namah Shivaya

Namaste, Jayamaa
I respectfully disagree with your first sentence as being too broad a generalization regarding Guru. I believe it's important to distinguish between Guru with a capital "G" (which represents God the Guru, Brahman, the One, your Mahadev) from the guru the OP was asking about. I would opine that your first sentence for clarity should read, "Everything and everyone around us IS Guru."

But I think Fireside was asking about guru with a small "g," which represents that agency who is the conduit which transmits the Light of Big G Guru during a shishya's initiation. It's not merely a semantic difference. It's a conceptual one between "vishwa darpana," your "everything and everyone" statement which reflects the truth of "the Universe as mirror of God" and "guru darpana," which is to literally see God in the mirror of guru (an event which requires the opening of one's third eye, if even briefly). That vision experience (darshan) is not seen via reflected light, which is what we see here with ordinary sensory perception. Guru revealing Itself as one's guru literally appears as glorious as God--as it should, since it is ) a shining Light from what appears in the vision as a diaphanous body (of the guru); it is Self-effulgent.

 

[Nyingjé Tso]

Namaste, Jayamaa
I respectfully disagree with your first sentence as being too broad a generalization regarding Guru. I believe it's important to distinguish between Guru with a capital "G" (which represents God the Guru, Brahman, the One, your Mahadev) from the guru the OP was asking about. I would opine that your first sentence for clarity should read, "Everything and everyone around us IS Guru.".

Vanakkam Ji,

I agree it is a better way to word it, thanks you !

Aum Namah Shivaya

 

[Vinayaka]

I do not like doting on the guru as many people do.

Neither do I, and I don't. But I hear you too, in some cases.