GURU

     Sri Paramahamsa YOgAnanda, in his ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ glorifies in the very first sentence, about the GURU-DISCIPLE relationship. He records thus:- ‘The characteristic features of Indian culture have long been a search for the ultimate verities and the concomitant disciple – Guru relationship.’

     To get at the frame of mind of Sri YogAnandaji, we have to try to understand the dimension of the meaning of the wonderfully adorable relationship. Not only the relationship is adorable, but the terms themselves have their individual deep and shining dimensions. The topic that swAmiji is presenting is none other than our Indian culture. None of us bharathians chose the country of our birth. It was the creator who allots the country of one’s birth. We bhArathians must be proud of our mother land. We must understand our culture, and it is the bounden duty of each one, to be proud of their motherland and her culture. Even at the Global level it is true. If only we rightly understand our culture, that itself is the foundation to be proud and for it’s glorification. No doubt about it.

       Now we will try to understand the deeper dimensions of the 2 terms, guru and sishya or disciple.

We easily understand the pair of terms like father – son, mother-child, etc. But guru, this word is loosely used in an equated manner with the term teacher. Teacher is the torch bearer at the L.K.G. level as well as Ph.D. level, no doubt about it. We will go into the.details of how guru VasishtA was functioning as the Guru of the king DasarathA.  All matters of administration, and other functions of the king take place as advised by Vasishta. VasishtA’s responsibility is to establish the 100% welfare of the king, administration, all the subjects, and must make everything function totally adhering to the dharma or codes of righteousness. There cannot be and there won’t be any complaint from any subject; even the peoples’ thoughts and actions are reinforced by the fortress of dharma. Vasishta will not hesitate to point out any transgression of dharma in the kingdom by the king or subjects.

        In our ordinary life, the teachers’ responsibility starts and ends with teaching the subject, help the student to go to the next higher level in education. But a guru’s responsibility towards his disciples, spreads over cleanliness, food requirements, health education, good manners, excellence in studies, living dhArmic way of life and unfailingly workout the welfare of the soul of the disciple/disciples. By welfare of the soul, it is meant up to the disciples’ inner choice to pursue the search for Brahman or enter ‘grahasthAshrama’-way of life as prescribed by the codes of dharma. All these are the underlying currents of protection of society, individual, country and people at large. So much of responsibility is  handled and executed by the guru-disciple unit, which was the very pillar of the social structure for unknown ages in the human evolution. Even right from ages along the cycle of the wheel of ‘Time’, this pillar of guru-disciple contributed and maintained human welfare.

        Without having an iota of understanding about reinforcement power of social welfare and even the pivot of human life this worthy limb of Guru-disciple unit,if some play drama or film or story book purely exploits for easy benefit of attraction, name and fame byproducts, misuse those terms guru-sishya, will it not pain many, many honest sincere souls for the scant respect being exhibited by pitiable social limbs? More over it also trumpets the very poor understanding of the roots of our cultural base, which  is by itself the very first crime. Next comes the crime of misuse of a highly laudable field- specific, spiritual life-oriented terms, occurring in our age old epics, purANas, Upanishads and spiritual literature. It is just a streamline of thought to help all of us to educate ourselves as to how to give respect to the spiritual lore which were followed with complete dedication by our own great grandparents, till 8 generations before. Our own great grandparents will surely  guide us and lead us towards the a golden period.