Guru Poornima

Today is Guru Poornima.  As human beings we are not just shallow beings born to eat, live and die.  We have a depth aspect to ourselves.  This depth comes from experience, an experience of an existence beyond mortality.  Beyond mortality we still exist, exist in spirit.  And that one spirit within which everyone finds his home is the Divine spirit, the Lord of the manifest and the unmanifest.  This Divine spirit is pure and free from attributes.  And yet when we try to lock it into the world of words, one word remains insufficient to come anywhere close.  It is only between the words, between the lines that a spark of its presence can be felt.  The human face of this sacred presence is the Guru. 

The Guru is the attractive field emanated by the one Divine Spirit.  If an astronaut who has gone out of the earth’s gravitational field and experienced the lack of traction in a region void of gravity, lands on the earth again, the first thing he will thank is gravity – the force emanated by the earth to embrace those that seek to live within its field.  This choice must be made by every person – to recognise this field and surrender to live within its benevolent embrace.  Only then can we experience some weight, some traction and some semblance of being home.  Otherwise, we will be floaters in space subjected to varied forces.  We can easily lose our trajectory and get lost for a long time. 

Once in a while a sacred presence embodies this field fully.  Historically this fullness has always coincided with the full moon.  Buddha attained enlightenment on a poornima.  While he himself, left the question of God and sought to teach us of all that is not God, all that must be shunned for the sake of a great peace, sometimes he was understood to be establishing a shoonya vaada – an argument for the sake of Nothing. The fact that he was enlightened on a poornima shows us that this establishment of the value of all that drives us as being equal to Nothing, can only come from one who is full by himself.  From him nothing can be taken out to make him less full.  And nothing added will make him more full.  For nothing exists outside of him.  At the lotus feet of that Lord Buddha who through his benevolent compassionate eyes, gave us this experience of fullness through pricing the sensory world as equal to the value of Nothing, I place my head in obeisance.  May His compassionate eyes always make a home within mine.  May His understanding smile and silence always find a home in my form. 

The great sage Vyaasa is remembered on Guru Poornima.  In fact it is also called Vyaasa Poornima.  As opposed to Buddha, Vyaasa was everything – vyaasa means perimeter.  And indeed he travelled the entire width of the human mind to establish the perimeter of the human dialogue.  In every nook and corner that he examined, he established that which takes us towards the periphery and away from our true Guru and highlighted the presence of the Lord who takes us towards the center.  As dwaipaayana, he was born on this island – the island of the duality – the island of the mind – and instantly grew beyond to become Vyaasa.  Knowing this duality of the mind as the source of all of mankind’s strife, he wrote the great epic Mahabharata and eighteen puraanas which highlight the various ways in which a teaching can be imparted that will attract one towards his deepest source. 

All men are equal – but they are at different places and times with respect to their source and substratum.  They cannot all be taught in the same way.  Vyaasa taught through his various works, through the Vishnu Sahasranama, through the Vidura Neeti and indeed even by depicting the fate of those whose choices made them lose their privileges of human life and endeavour.  Vyaasa could hear the animals, the birds, the worms, he knew nature in its every aspect.  And his sacred works guide us in many ways to gain merit and eschew that which erodes our merit.  At the feet of the great sage Vyaasa who is said to be alive even today, I sit with folded palms – my Lord, keep me within your perimeter, keep me within the gravitational force of the Guru.

Within his epics he gives us a glorious account of Lord Krishna who teaches us succinctly through the Bhagavad Geeta, the Anu Geeta and the Uddhava Geeta, as indeed through his every action throughout his life of supreme love, divine consciousness and a magnificent and royal detachment.   His very life is inspirational.  And he calls on us to listen to his words and yet gives us the freedom to do as we please just as he gave his great disciple Arjuna at the beginning of the Kurukshetra war.  This is the way of the Lord.  If we are living here and enjoying this human experience even for a single moment, it is because we exist in His light.  It is upto us to acknowledge this and show our gratitude, awaken to his compassionate gaze and accept to surrender our individual choices into his motherly affection.  And in order to surrender, your mind must reflect his light fully without a blemish of darkness, like the poornima moon that with its effulgent glow of sunlight, is smiling at us today and looks at life on earth with an understanding smile.  At the feet of Lord Krishna who is the Guru of Gurus, may we surrender ourselves so that His divine will may be carried out through us.

The Guru is sometimes compared to the Sun.  After all, we all exist only because of the sun and it is his light that creates a world for us to see, live and experience.  My own Guru used to mention this view of Adi Shankara who was virtually Vyaasa and Buddha combined.  Shankara said that there exists a difference between the sun and the Guru.  You cannot see the sun with your bare eyes.  And if you see it burns.  The benevolent light of the Guru is pleasing to the eyes.  The light from the sun exists only during the day and only in the manifest universe.  But the light from the Guru guides us day and night, and even after we leave our physical form. 

The Guru is also depicted as Brihaspati, the universal cosmic intelligence, a spark of which is our individual intelligence, which being wedded to the mind is constantly led away by the senses.  But we must acknowledge that the true source of our own intelligence is this cosmic intelligence which rules both the living world as well as the inorganic material universe.  Intelligence is embedded within every atom, within the vibrating pulse of this universe.  When we say the Gaayatri mantra, it is this intelligence called dheeh that we seek to realise through the external forms that are pure Being, pure Light and pure Knowing.  While most of us are driven by our minds, we must endeavour to seek the depth of intelligence within it, to tarry a little when driven by the pulls of our thoughts and emotions, and when we are pulled away by our wayward senses.  We must seek to integrate with this intelligence.  And for that we must surrender the desires which arise in our mental emotional field.  It is for this reason that the Buddha said that desire is the root cause of sorrow.  Whenever we pander to our desires too much, we are walking away from intelligence, we are walking away from our Guru. 

As we grow older, we learn to become more patient and calmer.  We learn to accept things that cannot be altered.  We come to learn that some things cannot be changed.  We come to learn to stay away from people and situations that exert a negative gravitational field.  Just as the field of the Guru exerts a positive attraction, the field of the Ego also exerts a gravitational pull in the opposite direction.  The only difference between the positive and the negative is the relative freedom that you feel.  In the positive field, you feel that you are stronger than the situation you are in.  In the negative field, the situation is stronger than your will.  It can carry one away and start taking decisions on one’s behalf to the detriment of one’s health and well being. 

Thus it is well to recognise and respect the Guru that resides within us.  It is well to respect the light that shines in the good amongst men, who serve as beacons of the glorious Lord who is the source and substratum of our experience.  It is then that we can walk with confidence, experience human life to the fullest, be contented, and lead a life of giving and spreading light.  May that guiding light of the Guru bless us all on this sacred day of Guru Poornima and show us the way of the gentle life – a life of pure freedom and pure joy.    

July 22, 2013