Yet more reflections on Guru Tattva (III)
There is something about being chained to your guru. When you sell yourself to your guru, then you are bound to be brought back to him, even if in some cases you try to renege. The prodigal son who returns is twice as dear.
I wanted to use the example of runaway slaves, but that is unfortunately a little incorrect politically, triggers the wrong kinds of response. But bhakti, dāsya, is voluntary slavery to the will of God.
The will of God is primarily mediated through Guru-tattva. Guru-tattva is that aspect of God that occupies itself with the education of humanity. Guru-tattva is the manifestation of intelligence, individually and cosmically..
You can find a discussion of this verse here (towards the end):
sei bhakta dhanya, ye nā chāḍe prabhura caraṇa
sei prabhu dhanya, ye nā chāḍe nija-jana
“Glorious is that devotee who does not give up the shelter of his Lord, and glorious is that Lord who does not abandon His servant."
durdaive sevaka yadi yāya anya sthāne
sei ṭhākura dhanya tāre cule dhari’ āne
“If by chance a servant falls down and goes somewhere else, glorious is that master who captures him and brings him back by the hair." (CC 3.4.46-47)
Thus the samaṣṭi-guru is a form of Krishna. He manifests inwardly as intelligence, and externally as the human teacher. The dīkṣā guru is the direct manifestation of Divine Grace, because he shapes the direction of one's spiritual culture, he is the one who gives the clearest sense of divine identity.
Therefore the dīkṣā guru, especially after he leaves his body, becomes the personification of the samaṣṭi-guru in the mind of the disciple. But one prays to the symbol in order to invoke the reality.
The dīkṣā guru becomes the concrete form the archetype of wisdom takes in the conscious mind, and through sādhana, into the unconscious mind also. When the raw unformed and usually deformed archetype in the unconscious is transformed into the form of the dīkṣā guru, it may be said that one has reached siddhi of buddhi-yoga.
In my experience, the true or full apotheosis of the Guru image in the heart comes as one gradually integrates other experiences of wisdom into the samaṣṭi-guru, or archetype of Wisdom, which includes not just the dīkṣā guru, but refined by the experience of śikṣā gurus also.
The śikṣā gurus are those who shed light on the meaning of the mantra given by the dīkṣā guru. The mantra is the path and the meaning of the mantra is the destination.
Very often dīkṣā gurus are eclipsed by an effulgent manifestation of a śikṣā guru. This is not really a problem, as long as one keeps to the same general direction. The mantra that is given by the dīkṣā guru is the path and its meaning is the goal. It is unlikely that you will enter into the meaning of the mantra without the illumination of many śikṣā gurus.
If a guru loses a disciple, who has a different or changed level of adhikāra, then what is the problem? As long as he continues in the same general direction, i.e., the direction determined by the mantra given by the dīkṣā guru.
On the other hand, a disciple whose image of the samaṣṭi-guru is so overwhelmed by the vyaṣṭi-guru as to overwhelm it, I believe this is a characteristic of a beginning devotee, but one that can have great power for change. It is the cult dynamic with the charismatic leader.
This is why I embraced the following verse:
na hy ekasmād guror jñānam
susthiram syad apuṣkalam
brahmaikam advitīyaṁ vai
gīyate bahudharṣibhiḥ
An understanding that is entirely dependable and clear cannot come from any single teacher. The Supreme Truth is truly “One Without a Second,” but is glorified in many different ways by the divine seers. (SB 11.9.31)
There are other verses that Bhaktivinoda takes from the Bhāgavatam to illustrate the cultivation of intelligence that is characteristic of the sāragrāhī.
sarvataḥ sāram ādatte yathā madhu-karo budhaḥ
The intelligent person takes the essence from all things like a bee. (SB 4.18.2)
aṇubhyaś ca bṛhadbhyaś ca śāstrebhyaḥ kuśalo naraḥ |
sarvato sāram ādadyāt puṣpebhya iva ṣaṭpadaḥ ||
The clever person should extract the essence from all scriptures, great or small, like a bee extracts honey from flowers. (SB 11.8.10)
God has granted us intelligence to make decisions about the kinds of guidance and inspiration we should take. As long as you are in the conditioned state, you should not apply the same principles as in the realm of pure bhakti. It is quite normal to make mistakes and to be misled.
To remain committed to someone who is not responsive is a very elevated vow that is too much to ask of a conditioned soul. However, there is a point where faith itself finds the divine dimension of even the most materialistic phenomena.
One should not make the decision to take a guru lightly. The market for gurus and disciples is very competitive and many gurus try to lay their claim on a prospect very quickly by giving initation without testing, as the scriptures teach.
So, like Bhaktivinoda Thakur, we should become learned in the ways of Vaishnava behavior and teaching so that we can recognize the pure Vaishnava. The pure Vaishnava is very rare, so to recognize him or her is difficult to do.
kabe mui baiṣṇaba ciniba hari hari /
baiṣṇaba caraṇa kalẏāṇera khani / mātiba hṛdaẏe dhari
O Lord! When will I be able to recognize a Vaishnava? The Vaishnava’s lotus feet are the storehouse of all auspiciousness. When will I hold them to mẏ heart with joẏ?
baiṣṇaba ṭhākura aprākṛta sadā / nirdoṣa ānanda maẏa
kṛṣṇa nāme prīta jaḍe udāsīna / jībete daẏārdra haẏa
The revered Vaishnavas are alwaẏs transcendental. Theẏ are faultless and full of divine bliss. Theẏ love Krishna’s holẏ names and are indifferent to the material world, but still merciful to all the conditioned souls.
ati māna hīna bhajane pravīna / viṣaẏete anāsakta
antara bāhire niṣkapaṭa sadā / nitẏa līlā anurakta
The Vaishnavas are without pride, they are expert in bhajan, theẏ are unattached to material sense objects. Within and without, theẏ are devoid of duplicitẏ. Theẏ are alwaẏs attached to the Lord’s eternal pastimes.
kaniṣṭha madhẏama uttama prabhede / baiṣṇaba trividha gaṇi
kaniṣṭha ādara madhyame praṇati / uttame śuśrūṣā śuni
There are three kinds of Vaishnavas: the beginners, the advanced and the perfected. I have heard one should show affection to the beginners, bow down with respect to the more advanced, and serve the perfected with all my heart.
ye yena baiṣṇaba ciniẏā laiẏā / ādara kariba yabe
baiṣṇabera kṛpā yāhe sarba siddhi / abaśya pāiba tabe
By recognizing each Vaishnava according to his position and respecting him accordingly, I will be sure to get their blessings, which lead to all perfections.
baiṣṇaba caritra sarbadā pabitra / yei ninde hiṁsā kari
bhakatibinoda nā sambhāṣe tāre / thāke sadā mauna dhari
The character of the Vaishnava is always pure and holy. Bhaktivinoda promises that he will never speak to one who criticizes such a Vaishnava out of envy, but will remain silent whenever near him.
There are three characteristics of desirable sādhu-saṅga: the goals should be the same (this usually means of the same school), As one progresses in spiritual life, it is quite unsurprising that one changes adhikāra. We don't expect someone to stay at the same level. The dīkṣā guru does not necessarily have the capacity to teach the disciple at all levels of his advancement, but he remains fixed because he is the merciful helmsman who guides you across the ocean of material life. This is why there are both a dīkṣā guru and multiple śikṣā gurus.
The dīkṣā guru can be a bit more distant as he serves a symbolic purpose as well as a practical one. The śikṣā guru is more what we would put in the category of sādhu-saṅga, whereas the dīkṣā guru performs a ritual function as the object of worship. Other Vaishnavas are naturally venerated, but one cannot expect to worship them regularly and so on. That is why I said that the dīkṣā guru is identified symbolically with the samaṣṭi-guru.
It is for this reason that the dīkṣā guru is often elevated to an unreachable position. This is of some psychological significance. People naturally gravitate towards a successful guru because he has been "product-tested." Charisma is also a part of this. But it is natural that a beginner be influenced in this way, so for most people, the dīkṣā guru primarily serves the purpose of defining (through the mantra) the sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana tattvas. But the beginner cannot be expected to know all these in detail and so there is (usually) a need for many śikṣā gurus. That is even more apparent in the current situation for Vaishnavas in the world.
The second characteristic of ideal sadhu-saṅga is snigdha or affectionate. Even within the Vaishnava world there are clashes of personality. These can be dangerous for a beginning practitioner, because he so easily ends up engaged in faultfinding and backbiting, politics instead of Hari-katha in the purest sense of hearing and chanting about Gauranga-Nityananda and Radha Krishna.
But snigdha also means the capacity to forgive. As a beginner, you are naturally committing Vaishnava aparadh all the time, and others are also, wittingly or unwittingly, offending you in various ways, small and great. You have to have affection on a personal level to be able to forgive.
[I am saying this because there are three levels of Vaishnava, as Bhaktivinoda Thakur's song indicates. So generally, people give uttama-adhikārī answers to madhyama-adhikārī problems. Of course one should always strive for the uttama position, but talk about sādhana is the realm of lower adhikāras. Talk about the siddha state is uttama.]
The dīkṣā and śikṣā gurus are one in principle, but think of it in the following way.
(1) samaṣṭi-guru (the divine principle of teaching each individual his way to the Divine Truth). Also known as caittya guru. It is a function of the antaryāmī or Supersoul. The Conscience, the Superego -- these are all features of this Tattva.
(2) dīkṣā guru. is the primary connection or mediator between this world and the samaṣṭi-guru. He serves both a practical and symbolic function. By symbolic I mean that he becomes the representation, the "face" of the samaṣṭi-guru. He is worshiped ritually as the samaṣṭi-guru. He is the giver of the seed, the mantra, in which sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana are fully present in seed form.This seed grows into the plant of bhakti, which has flowers of bhāva and fruits of prema. The dīkṣā guru gives the seed, but you must water it with sādhu-saṅga. And the bhakti-latā, the creeper of devotion, needs constant care and gardening tips.
For the lower level devotee, the form of the dīkṣā guru is all-in-all. On the second level, the dīkṣā guru has been internalized as the samaṣṭi-guru. In the third level, the result of actual practical intelligence is attained. This goal of practical intelligence should never be forgotten and that is why we have (3) śikṣā gurus to help us clarify and individualize our personal bhajan.
If thinking of the person who is nominally your guru creates negative emotions that disrupt rather than inspire is detrimental to your spiritual progress. But what is detrimental on one level is usually an indication of work that needs to be done on the level of personal purification. To be in such a conflictual situation is not good where the dīkṣā guru is concerned.
The dīkṣā guru must be stable figure in the mind of the disciple, in terms of sajātīya, snigdha and svato-vara.
Distance from the dīkṣā guru actually promotes the conversion of the guru from a person into a symbol. It is almost certain that people turn a blind eye to the specific peccadilloes of a guru who has successfully transcended individuality in the eyes of his disciples and become a pure symbol.
But most of that transpires on a basic level of spirituality. The dīkṣā guru remains the dīkṣā guru forever in the heart of the disciple, but the form of the samaṣṭi-guru becomes clearer as one's intelligence becomes clearer through the association of śikṣā gurus of various kinds, according to the individual need of the personality in cultivating bhajan.
I wanted to use the example of runaway slaves, but that is unfortunately a little incorrect politically, triggers the wrong kinds of response. But bhakti, dāsya, is voluntary slavery to the will of God.
The will of God is primarily mediated through Guru-tattva. Guru-tattva is that aspect of God that occupies itself with the education of humanity. Guru-tattva is the manifestation of intelligence, individually and cosmically..
You can find a discussion of this verse here (towards the end):
sei prabhu dhanya, ye nā chāḍe nija-jana
“Glorious is that devotee who does not give up the shelter of his Lord, and glorious is that Lord who does not abandon His servant."
sei ṭhākura dhanya tāre cule dhari’ āne
“If by chance a servant falls down and goes somewhere else, glorious is that master who captures him and brings him back by the hair." (CC 3.4.46-47)
Thus the samaṣṭi-guru is a form of Krishna. He manifests inwardly as intelligence, and externally as the human teacher. The dīkṣā guru is the direct manifestation of Divine Grace, because he shapes the direction of one's spiritual culture, he is the one who gives the clearest sense of divine identity.
Therefore the dīkṣā guru, especially after he leaves his body, becomes the personification of the samaṣṭi-guru in the mind of the disciple. But one prays to the symbol in order to invoke the reality.
The dīkṣā guru becomes the concrete form the archetype of wisdom takes in the conscious mind, and through sādhana, into the unconscious mind also. When the raw unformed and usually deformed archetype in the unconscious is transformed into the form of the dīkṣā guru, it may be said that one has reached siddhi of buddhi-yoga.
In my experience, the true or full apotheosis of the Guru image in the heart comes as one gradually integrates other experiences of wisdom into the samaṣṭi-guru, or archetype of Wisdom, which includes not just the dīkṣā guru, but refined by the experience of śikṣā gurus also.
The śikṣā gurus are those who shed light on the meaning of the mantra given by the dīkṣā guru. The mantra is the path and the meaning of the mantra is the destination.
Very often dīkṣā gurus are eclipsed by an effulgent manifestation of a śikṣā guru. This is not really a problem, as long as one keeps to the same general direction. The mantra that is given by the dīkṣā guru is the path and its meaning is the goal. It is unlikely that you will enter into the meaning of the mantra without the illumination of many śikṣā gurus.
If a guru loses a disciple, who has a different or changed level of adhikāra, then what is the problem? As long as he continues in the same general direction, i.e., the direction determined by the mantra given by the dīkṣā guru.
On the other hand, a disciple whose image of the samaṣṭi-guru is so overwhelmed by the vyaṣṭi-guru as to overwhelm it, I believe this is a characteristic of a beginning devotee, but one that can have great power for change. It is the cult dynamic with the charismatic leader.
This is why I embraced the following verse:
susthiram syad apuṣkalam
brahmaikam advitīyaṁ vai
gīyate bahudharṣibhiḥ
An understanding that is entirely dependable and clear cannot come from any single teacher. The Supreme Truth is truly “One Without a Second,” but is glorified in many different ways by the divine seers. (SB 11.9.31)
There are other verses that Bhaktivinoda takes from the Bhāgavatam to illustrate the cultivation of intelligence that is characteristic of the sāragrāhī.
The intelligent person takes the essence from all things like a bee. (SB 4.18.2)
sarvato sāram ādadyāt puṣpebhya iva ṣaṭpadaḥ ||
The clever person should extract the essence from all scriptures, great or small, like a bee extracts honey from flowers. (SB 11.8.10)
God has granted us intelligence to make decisions about the kinds of guidance and inspiration we should take. As long as you are in the conditioned state, you should not apply the same principles as in the realm of pure bhakti. It is quite normal to make mistakes and to be misled.
To remain committed to someone who is not responsive is a very elevated vow that is too much to ask of a conditioned soul. However, there is a point where faith itself finds the divine dimension of even the most materialistic phenomena.
One should not make the decision to take a guru lightly. The market for gurus and disciples is very competitive and many gurus try to lay their claim on a prospect very quickly by giving initation without testing, as the scriptures teach.
So, like Bhaktivinoda Thakur, we should become learned in the ways of Vaishnava behavior and teaching so that we can recognize the pure Vaishnava. The pure Vaishnava is very rare, so to recognize him or her is difficult to do.
baiṣṇaba caraṇa kalẏāṇera khani / mātiba hṛdaẏe dhari
O Lord! When will I be able to recognize a Vaishnava? The Vaishnava’s lotus feet are the storehouse of all auspiciousness. When will I hold them to mẏ heart with joẏ?
kṛṣṇa nāme prīta jaḍe udāsīna / jībete daẏārdra haẏa
The revered Vaishnavas are alwaẏs transcendental. Theẏ are faultless and full of divine bliss. Theẏ love Krishna’s holẏ names and are indifferent to the material world, but still merciful to all the conditioned souls.
antara bāhire niṣkapaṭa sadā / nitẏa līlā anurakta
The Vaishnavas are without pride, they are expert in bhajan, theẏ are unattached to material sense objects. Within and without, theẏ are devoid of duplicitẏ. Theẏ are alwaẏs attached to the Lord’s eternal pastimes.
kaniṣṭha ādara madhyame praṇati / uttame śuśrūṣā śuni
There are three kinds of Vaishnavas: the beginners, the advanced and the perfected. I have heard one should show affection to the beginners, bow down with respect to the more advanced, and serve the perfected with all my heart.
baiṣṇabera kṛpā yāhe sarba siddhi / abaśya pāiba tabe
By recognizing each Vaishnava according to his position and respecting him accordingly, I will be sure to get their blessings, which lead to all perfections.
bhakatibinoda nā sambhāṣe tāre / thāke sadā mauna dhari
The character of the Vaishnava is always pure and holy. Bhaktivinoda promises that he will never speak to one who criticizes such a Vaishnava out of envy, but will remain silent whenever near him.
There are three characteristics of desirable sādhu-saṅga: the goals should be the same (this usually means of the same school), As one progresses in spiritual life, it is quite unsurprising that one changes adhikāra. We don't expect someone to stay at the same level. The dīkṣā guru does not necessarily have the capacity to teach the disciple at all levels of his advancement, but he remains fixed because he is the merciful helmsman who guides you across the ocean of material life. This is why there are both a dīkṣā guru and multiple śikṣā gurus.
The dīkṣā guru can be a bit more distant as he serves a symbolic purpose as well as a practical one. The śikṣā guru is more what we would put in the category of sādhu-saṅga, whereas the dīkṣā guru performs a ritual function as the object of worship. Other Vaishnavas are naturally venerated, but one cannot expect to worship them regularly and so on. That is why I said that the dīkṣā guru is identified symbolically with the samaṣṭi-guru.
It is for this reason that the dīkṣā guru is often elevated to an unreachable position. This is of some psychological significance. People naturally gravitate towards a successful guru because he has been "product-tested." Charisma is also a part of this. But it is natural that a beginner be influenced in this way, so for most people, the dīkṣā guru primarily serves the purpose of defining (through the mantra) the sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana tattvas. But the beginner cannot be expected to know all these in detail and so there is (usually) a need for many śikṣā gurus. That is even more apparent in the current situation for Vaishnavas in the world.
The second characteristic of ideal sadhu-saṅga is snigdha or affectionate. Even within the Vaishnava world there are clashes of personality. These can be dangerous for a beginning practitioner, because he so easily ends up engaged in faultfinding and backbiting, politics instead of Hari-katha in the purest sense of hearing and chanting about Gauranga-Nityananda and Radha Krishna.
But snigdha also means the capacity to forgive. As a beginner, you are naturally committing Vaishnava aparadh all the time, and others are also, wittingly or unwittingly, offending you in various ways, small and great. You have to have affection on a personal level to be able to forgive.
[I am saying this because there are three levels of Vaishnava, as Bhaktivinoda Thakur's song indicates. So generally, people give uttama-adhikārī answers to madhyama-adhikārī problems. Of course one should always strive for the uttama position, but talk about sādhana is the realm of lower adhikāras. Talk about the siddha state is uttama.]
The dīkṣā and śikṣā gurus are one in principle, but think of it in the following way.
(1) samaṣṭi-guru (the divine principle of teaching each individual his way to the Divine Truth). Also known as caittya guru. It is a function of the antaryāmī or Supersoul. The Conscience, the Superego -- these are all features of this Tattva.
(2) dīkṣā guru. is the primary connection or mediator between this world and the samaṣṭi-guru. He serves both a practical and symbolic function. By symbolic I mean that he becomes the representation, the "face" of the samaṣṭi-guru. He is worshiped ritually as the samaṣṭi-guru. He is the giver of the seed, the mantra, in which sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana are fully present in seed form.This seed grows into the plant of bhakti, which has flowers of bhāva and fruits of prema. The dīkṣā guru gives the seed, but you must water it with sādhu-saṅga. And the bhakti-latā, the creeper of devotion, needs constant care and gardening tips.
For the lower level devotee, the form of the dīkṣā guru is all-in-all. On the second level, the dīkṣā guru has been internalized as the samaṣṭi-guru. In the third level, the result of actual practical intelligence is attained. This goal of practical intelligence should never be forgotten and that is why we have (3) śikṣā gurus to help us clarify and individualize our personal bhajan.
If thinking of the person who is nominally your guru creates negative emotions that disrupt rather than inspire is detrimental to your spiritual progress. But what is detrimental on one level is usually an indication of work that needs to be done on the level of personal purification. To be in such a conflictual situation is not good where the dīkṣā guru is concerned.
The dīkṣā guru must be stable figure in the mind of the disciple, in terms of sajātīya, snigdha and svato-vara.
Distance from the dīkṣā guru actually promotes the conversion of the guru from a person into a symbol. It is almost certain that people turn a blind eye to the specific peccadilloes of a guru who has successfully transcended individuality in the eyes of his disciples and become a pure symbol.
But most of that transpires on a basic level of spirituality. The dīkṣā guru remains the dīkṣā guru forever in the heart of the disciple, but the form of the samaṣṭi-guru becomes clearer as one's intelligence becomes clearer through the association of śikṣā gurus of various kinds, according to the individual need of the personality in cultivating bhajan.
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