DharmaCatLamp
Member
Skepticism of Gurus
I am personally rather skeptical of gurus in general. I think that gurus can often have useful insights or have useful personal stories but are over glorified among many religions. In a lot of cases one is expected to hand over their reasoning faculties and just go along with it because gurus and teachers are said to have some sort of deeper connection than you.
While I think teachers can be helpful it seems to me that a much better approach is to examine what teachers say from multiple traditions and to even take what your favorite guru might say with a grain of salt. These people are still ultimately fallible and creatures which come with their own baggage and experiences. These experiences might differ so drastically from yours that anything they say to you either means something entirely different to them or is bound up to be misinterpreted once you come to hear it.
That is before you ever begin to take on the bias that comes with being a human being and living on this earth. Enlightened beings are few and far between and I am unsure if an enlightened being is even clear of all of their previous bias or simply has some greater insight into deep mystical truths.
As I have been exploring Hinduism more recently I have found a wealth of great wisdom. There are plenty of jewels in ancient teachers and their teachings that can help us even today but it also seems like some people are willing to throw away their minds and not question anything an “enlightened” teacher has to say.
In the Kalama Sutta the Buddha says “ 4. "It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them.”
What I am saying is that I think having a teacher is great but simply accepting everything they say uncritically is not the way to further our understanding. I think the best course of action even if we have a teacher is to consider multiple sources and to do our own practices of contemplation and meditation to try and get to the bottom of things.
I think more than once we have seen the abuses that can happen when people simply trust their gurus.
All of this being said I am curious as to what you guys think about all of this? How much faith do you put into your teachers?
Kalama Sutta: The Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry (accesstoinsight.org) Here is a link to the sutta I quoted btw.
I am personally rather skeptical of gurus in general. I think that gurus can often have useful insights or have useful personal stories but are over glorified among many religions. In a lot of cases one is expected to hand over their reasoning faculties and just go along with it because gurus and teachers are said to have some sort of deeper connection than you.
While I think teachers can be helpful it seems to me that a much better approach is to examine what teachers say from multiple traditions and to even take what your favorite guru might say with a grain of salt. These people are still ultimately fallible and creatures which come with their own baggage and experiences. These experiences might differ so drastically from yours that anything they say to you either means something entirely different to them or is bound up to be misinterpreted once you come to hear it.
That is before you ever begin to take on the bias that comes with being a human being and living on this earth. Enlightened beings are few and far between and I am unsure if an enlightened being is even clear of all of their previous bias or simply has some greater insight into deep mystical truths.
As I have been exploring Hinduism more recently I have found a wealth of great wisdom. There are plenty of jewels in ancient teachers and their teachings that can help us even today but it also seems like some people are willing to throw away their minds and not question anything an “enlightened” teacher has to say.
In the Kalama Sutta the Buddha says “ 4. "It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them.”
What I am saying is that I think having a teacher is great but simply accepting everything they say uncritically is not the way to further our understanding. I think the best course of action even if we have a teacher is to consider multiple sources and to do our own practices of contemplation and meditation to try and get to the bottom of things.
I think more than once we have seen the abuses that can happen when people simply trust their gurus.
All of this being said I am curious as to what you guys think about all of this? How much faith do you put into your teachers?
Kalama Sutta: The Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry (accesstoinsight.org) Here is a link to the sutta I quoted btw.
