Advantage of Guru: Getting Inspired By Spiritual Masters  

By Rajiv Mehrotra  

Advantage of Guru: Getting Inspired By Spiritual Masters  

Within the realms of the 'sacred' itself, the idea of the guru and the nature of the relationship with the student vary.

For an aspirant, it can range from total surrender of one's self for lifetimes of teachings, to a weekend's course in a technique promising anything from a regression to past lives to a vision of God. The guru may feel deeply connected to the aspirant as if over several lifetimes and assume the responsibility for his spiritual evolution, to the extent of taking on additional karma; for others the relationship could become a mere commercial contract.

In Buddhism, the striving is to awaken insight within oneself, through one's own efforts. A guru is then someone who embodies a possibility, our own potential. He offers the inspiration one can realistically aspire to and in time lifts the veils of ignorance over one's true enlightened nature. The guru teaches and demonstrates the path. The onus remains on us to make the effort, with the guru's help, to acquire the skilful means to make the journey.

If there is a common strand from the teachings of masters, it is in the need for right effort and the striving to become a happier, more complete human being, possible primarily through rigorous sadhana, the bedrock of which is the practice of altruism and the cultivation of compassion. These help accumulate good karma that through the principle of causality ultimately ripen to eradicate our delusions and consequently, our suffering.

In human form, the guru remains inherently and potentially fallible. Our own common sense and judgment needs to circumscribe the teaching. We can respect and learn from many teachers and traditions. Even so, we usually develop an instinctual affinity and relationship with a single teacher, often described as the 'root guru'. With him we transcend the mere imparting of knowledge into a more subtle transmission of energies, of motivations and insights, a connectedness that seems to extend into the ineffable.

To many, it seems to happen in a rush of overwhelming emotion, a spontaneous flash of knowing and feeling connected. To others, it is a gradual process where the teacher and the aspirant test each other.

The teacher evaluates the student's qualities and resolve, the student waits to develop emotional empathy and confidence before he can totally surrender to the guru. This idea of the guru is closer to the theistic traditions, indicative of someone who has direct communication with God, and is perceived as being able to change the course of people's lives.

I have known far too many stories of 'miracles' by men and women of God from people whose intelligence and credibility I respect to completely reject these. I have had my own moments of amazing serendipity, coincidences if you like, which have seemed to defy empirical logic to merely dismiss them as such, because I cannot explain them, yet. Even as I might extol the need for reason and logic to be at the forefront of a spiritual quest and the relationship with a guru, I know that the truly decisive commitments in one's life are rarely arrived at through the power of logic.

While the basis of the relationship to the guru must be founded in mindfulness and reason, as the journey together traverses the subtle, transcending the intellec- tually apparent, when our resolve is truly challenged and seems to require an act of faith, we are vulnerable to 'copping out' with the misguided assumption that it is the guru, not we, who has feet of clay. The quest is not a passive indoctrination; its realisations endure when it is an active, intelligent engaging of the heart and the mind.

(Excerpted from 'The Mind of the Guru')

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See also: Advantage of Guru, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)