The myth of the Guru || Acharya Prashant (2017)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  Video Information: Shabdyog Session, 07.02.2017, Ramana Kendra, Delhi, India   Context:  Who is Guru? What are the Good traits of a disciple? Why is the need for a Guru? What happens if someone has no guru? Why do we consider a guru as a bodily being?  Music Credits: Milind Date ~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00When we say somebody didn't have a Guru, it's the same as saying that the fellow did not

00:24exist.

00:29The Guru is what you are.

00:34You cannot be and not have a Guru.

00:38You may accept that you are a disciple or you may not accept that you are a disciple.

00:49You may think of yourself as this or that.

00:52You may come, you may go.

00:56Your being, your presence may be under doubt but the Guru is never in any kind of doubt.

01:08You are the Guru.

01:12The contradiction the mind faces is that because we consider ourselves to be bodily beings,

01:24so we conceptualize the Guru too as a body.

01:31Not only do we see ourselves as bodily beings, we are so short of memory that we remember

01:41only the last few years of this life.

01:46So we know nothing of our evolutionary process.

01:51We know nothing of all the forces that we came in contact with over the millions of

01:59years.

02:00In fact, we do not remember anything even about our own birth.

02:09Does anybody remember his or her birth?

02:13That is the kind of memory that we have.

02:18So these two things combine together.

02:21First, you expect that the Guru would come only in a physical form.

02:25Second, you expect that you will remember when the Guru comes to you.

02:31These two things combined sometimes gives you the impression that somebody did not have

02:37a Guru.

02:38The fact is it is impossible to exist without being the Guru.

02:45Remember, I am not saying without having a Guru because you cannot have a Guru.

02:51Having is a choice.

02:53Having is like containing.

02:59You have your wallet.

03:02You have your shoes and clothes.

03:05In that sense, you cannot have a Guru.

03:08It is not a choice.

03:11Guru is more like your breath.

03:12If you are, then the Guru is.

03:15You may forget that you are breathing.

03:16That is alright.

03:18You may ignore that you are breathing.

03:20That is alright.

03:22But you cannot be without the breath.

03:24You cannot be without the heartbeat.

03:26The Guru is like the heartbeat.

03:28You may forget him, but he will always be with you.

03:35Even heartbeat is such a weak example.

03:41With the body, the heartbeat will go away.

03:45The Guru won't go away even then.

03:49In the afternoon session, I was saying that the Guru is really sticky, but you will understand

03:58these things only if you can get rid of the notions that you have about the Guru.

04:08The notions that you have about the Guru are in fact the notions that you have about yourself.

04:16What we expect from ourselves, we expect from the Guru.

04:20And that is the reason why we pre-decide what the Guru must look like.

04:27And that, you now understand, is the reason why you keep missing the Guru.

04:34Because you have pre-decided that he would come to you only in such specific shapes and forms.

04:42He is too big, too free to be driven by your wishes.

04:50And when he comes in his innumerable forms, in his unpredictable ways, then we miss him

04:58because we were expecting something else.

05:04Because God is seen by us in different names, forms, depending on our moods and whims.

05:23Did God come to name himself as God?

05:29When God seems to help you, you call him the one who takes you from darkness to light.

05:41Then in that particular mood of gratitude, you call him the Guru.

05:48When God seems to create, give birth, you call him the one who is creating, father, created.

06:11When God seems to dissolve, destroy, take away, then you call him Shiva.

06:24Sometimes you call his action as Prabhavo, sometimes you call it as Prale.

06:31God does not abide by any of the names you give to him.

06:38But because we are limited, we see only one side of God at one time.

06:44We cannot see his totality.

06:47So depending on which side we see, we give some name.

06:53When we look at him as a teacher, as the one who is holding our hands,

06:59as the one who is gently nudging us, pushing us, beckoning us,

07:05then we call him the Guru.

07:08When we feel a certain seductive pull, then we call him the beloved.

07:15Those who have known, have sometimes even called God as a butcher,

07:22because he mercilessly destroys.

07:26There is no name that has not been ascribed to God, mother, father,

07:41even brother, mirror, all, none.

07:50This, that, who, shun, you, me, it depends totally on you.

08:21Yes and no.

08:23Even if the Guru is to come to you as a person,

08:28he will still not come to you as a person decided by you.

08:36You will never be able to have a Guru, choose a Guru, or decide upon a Guru.

08:43And the person who is coming to your life as a Guru

08:47will not teach according to the ways you expect.

08:53The moment you utter the word Guru,

08:55the image of a sober, realized master sitting and teaching his students comes to your mind.

09:07The Guru can teach you in a thousand ways.

09:11The Guru can appear in front of you even as a competitor.

09:16The Guru can appear to you in form of somebody who repulses you,

09:25somebody with whom you have a conflict.

09:29Even as a tempting person of the opposite gender.

09:37So even if the Guru is to come to you as a man or a woman,

09:42do not try to predict his ways.

09:45You will meet him in the most unexpected of places

09:49and in the most unthinkable ways.

09:52You will meet him in the most unexpected of places

09:55and in the most unthinkable ways.

09:58In fact, if you ever come across a Guru in a very planned and structured way,

10:08then rest assured that Guru is not a Guru.

10:15The ways of divinity are unfathomable.

10:20It is another matter that the ego likes to be in control.

10:24It likes to decide on its own.

10:27It says, alright, there are these five Gurus in circulation these days.

10:31Their market is quite strong.

10:33They are getting all the TRP.

10:36So let me choose from these five.

10:39Which of these five speaks the sweetest?

10:43Which of these five appeals a lot to me?

10:47And then I will decide.

10:49This is just like choosing your favorite shirt or saree.

10:53You will only choose as per your taste.

10:57And what you choose as per your taste can never benefit you.

11:01It can never be larger than you.

11:04It can never take you beyond yourself.

11:07There has to be a difference between choosing a Guru and choosing a Gulab Jamun.

11:14But we pick them up the same way.

11:18It must be sweet and hot, if possible.

11:44We are not one.

11:47We are nobody.

11:50But that is the limit we like to keep.

11:55Alright, if you are saying that all this diversity is an illusion,

12:03then let us at least say that all this diversity is one.

12:07But we feel very threatened.

12:10But we feel very threatened if it comes to the total dissolution.

12:16It is not even one. It is zero.

12:19And that you cannot come to on your own.

12:25Because till the time you are there, how can it be zero?

12:29Till the time you are there, you can maybe reduce 100 to 10.

12:35Maybe you can reduce 10 to 1.

12:37But the final one will remain as it has remained in your question.

12:41What would be that final one?

12:44You, the one who is reducing.

12:46You, the agent.

12:47You, the thinker.

12:48You, the one who is concluding.

12:51That one will remain.

12:54To remove that one is like committing suicide.

12:58And the ego wants to continue.

13:01The ego does not want to go away.

13:03The ego is not suicidal.

13:07So that is the reason why this whole argument about doing it on my own,

13:15finding it on my own is such a lame argument, as all arguments are.

13:24You see, if you will find something,

13:28it will have the same quality as your other finds.

13:32What have you found so far in life?

13:37The different choices that one makes are all together as the different beads of a necklace.

13:55Just as you choose your life partner, just as you choose your job,

13:59just as you choose your car, your house, just as you go to the mall and choose the goods.

14:07Similarly, you will choose truth also.

14:09In the similar fashion, you will pursue truth.

14:15But we like to console ourselves otherwise.

14:19It is nice.

14:21It is nice.

14:24But it is the cause of so much of suffering.

14:28I would like to say that my all other choices have only been a cause of lament for me.

14:42Deep within, there is no choice ever made by me that I do not want to correct or improve.

14:48Given another chance, there is nothing that I would not redo in a different way.

14:55Even small things in life, I could not do properly.

15:00But I want to claim that I will get hold of infinity properly.

15:07If I have to go to market to get a little bit of good,

15:18I am in doubt, I am in suspicion.

15:20I negotiate 10 times.

15:22Ultimately, even after I have made the purchase, I am not very sure if this is the optimum deal.

15:29But God, I will get on my own.

15:33Even to purchase good, I have to refer to Wikipedia and Google.

15:38But God, I will get on my own.

15:41Don't you see what we are trying to do?

15:49We are just trying to protect ourselves when we do this.

15:53And it is a very common tendency of mankind and understandable.

15:59One has to be kind of sympathetic to this tendency.

16:03It is our own tendency.

16:07Sympathetic, but not approving.

16:11You cannot side with this tendency.

16:18What is the difference between a mentor and a guru?

16:22No difference really.

16:24There is no difference really between a mentor, a friend, a lover, a guru.

16:29Anybody who wishes you well.

16:32It's all the same.

16:34There is no need to attach any special significance to this word.

16:39Whosoever helps you clear your mind

16:46is the only one good for you.

16:49And he or she or that book or that situation or that group or that object or that animal is the guru.

16:56Guru is a continuity taking different forms at different times.

17:01That is why it is said that guru is always present.

17:05That is another way of saying that the present is always present.

17:11And the present comes to you in changing forms.

17:15It comes to you in form of a bus, in form of a road, in form of a tree, in form of a man, in form of a wall, in form of a shrine.

17:22It takes countless forms.

17:25And each form is potentially a teacher.

17:30If you can be attentive to it, if you can be attentive to it,

17:35existence at all times has something to teach to you.

17:39But you will not listen to it.

17:43You will not be open to it.

17:45If you declare that guru must take only a specific form.

17:55No specific form is guru.

17:58And at the same time, all forms are the guru.

18:02Is it something like that's why you have found gurus in everything?

18:11That every year one can learn something from somebody?

18:15Yes, yes, yes.

18:17But remember, you will not learn.

18:20Otherwise, you will only learn what you will want to learn.

18:23Though it is a nice thing to hear that one must learn something from somebody.

18:30But in our life, it usually translates to meaning that I will learn from a lot of people that I like.

18:43A lot of people that I have been told are respectable.

18:52A lot of people who belong to my community.

18:57A lot of people who are admired as role models.

19:05And also remember that even though the guru appears in countless forms,

19:21yet at one moment he appears only in one form.

19:26Let the countless forms not be a distraction from the present guru.

19:33If you are sitting in front of one entity,

19:40you could not be thinking of the hundred other forms,

19:47the hundred other entities that have previously occurred to you.

19:53And that is another trap of the ego.

19:57The guru can be anything.

20:01It can take a hundred shapes and sizes.

20:03So why must I listen to one person?

20:06At one moment, one person is everything.

20:10At one moment, one person is the absolute.

20:14The moment changes, the person may change.

20:19But the moment is too small to think of other things.

20:25The moment is too unforgiving to wander here and there.

20:30The moment demands your complete presence.

20:44Is that opening up a little?

20:47Is that opening up a little?

20:56Only the learner is a person.

20:59Never make this mistake of thinking of the guru as a person.

21:05Never.

21:07The guru may appear as a person,

21:10but the person is never the guru.

21:13Kindly understand this subtle difference.

21:18To think of the guru as a man or a woman

21:23is to rob yourself of the chance of surrendering.

21:28Because a person can never surrender to a person,

21:31even if he tries to.

21:34And if a person surrenders to a person,

21:37it is not surrender, it is slavery.

21:41And if you think of the guru as a person,

21:45then you will only be interested in the guru's personality.

21:50And you will miss the essence.

21:56You are anyway looking at everything as material.

22:01Do you want to look at the self, the truth, too, as material?

22:08Then why must you talk of guru as having a name, shape, form, body?

22:15And this difference, I am repeating, is important to be understood.

22:21A guru can appear as a multitude of bodies,

22:27but never think that a body is the guru.

22:37The beloved can send you hundreds of letters,

22:45but no letter is the beloved.

22:49The letter carries a fragrance of the beloved.

22:53The letter carries a message of the beloved,

22:56the touch of the beloved.

22:59But do not get attached to the letters.

23:04You will miss the beloved.

23:16You have to unlearn from the guru.

23:19You have so many places from where you keep learning.

23:24Even one's birth is because of learning.

23:31You know what takes birth? All your learning takes birth.

23:37A couple of rabbits took birth recently at my place.

23:44And they are such learned rabbits.

23:48They knew, right, after birth,

23:57how to crawl, how to hide, how to suckle.

24:04They would be very comfortable with each other.

24:08They would be cuddled together.

24:11But when somebody else would try to touch,

24:15they would recoil a little.

24:19All this is knowledge. From where did they come?

24:22From where did they get this?

24:26It is learning that is born.

24:29And it is learning that is thereafter acquired all your life.

24:35Guru is there to help you unlearn.

24:42Guru is there to help you forget everything that you know.

24:47All this that you know is your burden.

24:50All this that you know only gives you doubts.

24:56Only makes you feel heavy and suffocated.

25:01The guru helps you see that this that you call as knowledge,

25:06this that you call as erudition, this you call as your cleverness.

25:12In fact, this is what is chaining you since so long.

25:26If you take something from the guru,

25:34then you have totally missed the point.

25:40You do not come to take something.

25:42You come to get robbed.

25:48You come to drop.

25:55We may have this, that, lot of knowledge, experiences, conditioning,

26:02the whole baggage from past.

26:06But still, we know one thing.

26:12We do not like a heavy mind.

26:15Do we?

26:16Irrespective of what makes the mind heavy, nobody likes a heavy mind.

26:21Irrespective of the object that sits upon the mind,

26:24nobody likes objects sitting on the mind.

26:28In other words, nobody likes to suffer.

26:32So we may not know in a positive sense, in a sense of discrimination,

26:40who the right guru is.

26:43But in a sense of suffering, in a negative sense,

26:47we all know that we are in pain.

26:52We may not know what joy is, but we know what suffering is.

26:57What if that suffering goes down a little?

27:05What if there is a little bit of relief from that suffering?

27:10A little bit of relief from suffering is surely not health yet,

27:16but is an auspicious omen.

27:19It is telling you that something right is happening.

27:26So the guru for you will be the one in whose presence

27:33you at least temporarily forget your suffering, your load, your baggage.

27:39The guru will be the one sitting in front of whom time stops for you.

27:46You feel a certain peace.

27:50Your suffering comes to at least a temporary cessation.

27:58You get at least a flavor of the beyond.

28:05Right?

28:07And this experience is totally your own.

28:13You are not judging the guru because you cannot judge him.

28:18You don't have the faculties, the capacity to do that,

28:21and that must never even be tried.

28:27But though you cannot judge the one in front of you,

28:33yet you know your own experience at least.

28:37You know that you came with a headache.

28:41You know that you came with a rock inside you,

28:47and now the rock is just beginning to melt.

28:52The first drops are there,

28:55and that will help you be certain that you are at the right place.

29:02Hmm?

29:11Yes, that's what I want to say, but I am saying that with a caveat.

29:15Though I am saying that surely the guru is imminent,

29:21that the guru manifests in all forms, shapes, and sizes,

29:25but you must also know which form will be beneficial for you.

29:33You are talking about learning from a tree.

29:38Tell me, how many times do you really observe a tree?

29:44When you are walking down a road, all your attention is taken by people.

29:50When a man calls out to you, even that you sometimes miss.

29:56Your name might be Narendra, and somebody says,

29:59Hello Narendra, you miss even that.

30:02Does that not happen?

30:04We are so lost in our thoughts.

30:07How will you understand when a tree talks to you?

30:11Only those must claim to learn from a tree.

30:17Those who are as silent as the tree.

30:20A normal individual must not live in the delusion

30:25that he will learn from the sky, the stars, or the tree.

30:29When you cannot even listen to that which a man says to you,

30:36how will you understand that which a bird says to you?

30:40But what we are saying is, I do not need to learn from a man.

30:46I would rather learn from the grass.

30:49The same grass that you contemptuously crush under your feet.

30:55Yes, the grass is a guru.

30:58But the grass is a guru only for those who can kneel down to the grass.

31:06Are we the ones who can kneel down to the grass

31:09and see the omnipresent in a blade of grass?

31:15But it can be a good means of escaping the guru in the form of a man.

31:21Sir, I will not listen to you.

31:24Why?

31:25Because I can learn from the blades of grass.

31:28Now surely, the blades of grass are going to be incomprehensible to you.

31:35But by talking about the blades of grass,

31:39you have successfully escaped

31:42what could have come to you from the man.

31:46So be a little alert about these things.

31:57So to know what is actually very true for you,

32:01you have to be as still as the grass.

32:04Wonderful.

32:06It is only then that you realize what joy grassness is.

32:14Yes, and then the grass is a guru.

32:19Only then. Remember, only then.

32:22Not before.

32:26Just be aware in any atmosphere.

32:29Just be aware. That's all.

32:31And not have any judgment or anything.

32:35Then only focusing on just being aware of the surroundings

32:40that we can learn from something.

32:42Not quite.

32:43Because when you are in an atmosphere,

32:47the atmosphere will be of your own choosing, your own making.

32:52Are you ever there in any atmosphere? No.

32:56You decide which mall to visit, which movie to watch,

32:59which man to marry, where to take your kids,

33:02which school, which swimming pool, which country, which hills.

33:08So the question of any atmosphere does not arise.

33:11First thing is this.

33:13You choose your friend circle, don't you?

33:15You have chosen the contact list in your phone.

33:19And those are the people you are going to talk to.

33:23Second thing is when you say just be focused.

33:28Spirituality is about getting rid of the doer.

33:34In any environment, if you do anything,

33:38then you are but maintaining yourself.

33:44So it is far beyond just being aware.

33:48You cannot be aware.

33:49You know what awareness is?

33:51Awareness is that which remains after you are not there.

33:55How can you ever be aware?

33:58In fact, you must be very cautious of those

34:01who claim that they are aware or that they understand.

34:07Very dangerous people.

34:18When we say that in any environment,

34:22we only need to be attentive and aware.

34:26You know what we are doing.

34:28We are giving ourselves the license to be in any environment.

34:32We are saying after all, the environment does not matter.

34:35So wherever I am, if I am attentive,

34:40then I'm alright, I'm spiritual, I'm moving towards enlightenment.

34:44So it means I do not need to drop my environment.

34:47It means I can continue with my environment.

34:51It means that even if I work in a suffocating place

34:55because of greed, then I can continue to work there.

34:58It means even if I am in a bad relationship,

35:01the very sight of that person takes me down and depresses.

35:07Still, I can continue to be with that person.

35:11Because any environment is alright.

35:13No, any environment is not alright.

35:17When you change, your environment surely changes.

35:21If you do not let your environment change,

35:23then you cannot change.

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