What does the guru teach?

Transcendental Epistemology II

One may discover the inner meaning of the guru’s teachings by following his instructions. I am not particularly qualified to write; and yet it was my guru’s instruction that I do so. When His Divine Grace Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar dev Goswami looked at the first edition of The Search for Sri Krishna, he approved. He asked me to continue the work I was doing under the auspices of Bhakti Sudhir Goswami. I took that message to heart. 

Since 1982 we produced a number of titles at Guardian of Devotion Press in San Jose California: Search for Shri Krishna, Shri Guru and His Grace, Golden Volcano of Divine Love, The Loving Search for the Lost Servant, and Subjective Evolution of Consciousness. I also produced a translation of Gaudiya Kanthahara which is included in this blog, and The Lives of the Saints, available online.

It’s been 41 years since I was formally initiated as a harinam disciple of Srila Prabhupada. 



After his passing I took shelter of Shrila Shridhar who initiated me both in gayatri and sannyasa mantra. I passed 7 years formally in the sannyasa ashram at a time when we faced intense opposition. In the end, I was unable to maintain such a high standard; but I have done my best to continue doing the work we started at Guardian of Devotion Press, newly inspired by Bhakti Bimal Avadhuta Maharaja who has encouraged me and given me much inspiration.

I have continued to write in this space over the last four years and am nearing one thousand blog posts with about 210,000 page-views. 

My preaching tours and lectures have taken me all over the world. I have lectured and taught on Krishna consciousness and the Bhagavad-Gita in India, where Govinda Maharaja praised me both for my singing of Bengali bhajans and for my argument. In Australia I preached under the auspices of Govinda Maharaja, back in 1987 when the mission there was still young. I toured Europe and preached in East Berlin, back when it was necessary to cross the Berlin wall and Checkpoint Charlie. I say this not in the interest of self-aggrandizement, but to demonstrate my bonafides.

I distributed books for Prabhupada in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, London England, and Johannesburg, South Africa. I danced and chanted harinam sankirtan with ecstatic Hare Krishna people in the streets of Bogotá, Colombia, in Stockholm, Sweden, and on the Dnieper river in Kyiv, Ukraine. We were the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. We knew no racism or international divides. 


I have taken  prasadam, broken bread, and danced and chanted the holy name of Krishna with the Aztecs of Mexico, with the Aborigines of New Zealand, with blacks in South Africa, with whites in Russia, with Hungarian Gypsies in Budapest, with the Chinese and Thai peoples in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

I distributed Back to Godhead Magazine with Hindus in Calcutta and New Delhi, with cowboys in Denver Colorado, and with the friends of George Harrison and the Beatles in London, England. My preaching travels have taken me from the home of Krishna in Vrindavan, India to the tomb of Lenin and the snows of Moscow. I have spent some time trying to follow the orders of my guru.

Of course, I have failed miserably. I have fallen short of the mark.

Paul the Apostle writes on self-deception and pride in his letters to Corinthians:

“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”

I have made some attempt to follow the orders of our guru. I received harinam initiation from Shrila Prabhupada. I did my best to follow his instructions as I understood them with the help of my godbrothers. But when my godbrothers became tyrannical I sought shelter with Shrila Shridhar Maharaja who is my heart-to-heart guru. I took help from those who understood his message and did my best to follow his orders. I know I have failed him in many ways and I lament this failure. And yet, his order was to continue to write and publish his message. And in writing this I am doing my best to fulfill his mission. But I am flawed.

The Six Goswamis were eminently qualified to write on divine love.

The great acharyas are well-worth studying. The Six Goswamis were eminently qualified to write on divine love. I am not at all qualified to write on bhakti. But when I expressed this dismay to a close friend, he told me that we are all flawed vessels. But even if we can communicate a drop of this immortal nectar to others, ek bindhu jagat dubai...a single drop of divine mercy is also infinite and can slake the thirst of the entire universe. He told me to continue doing my work as best I can, flawed as I may be. I may be flawed, but as a thinker and teacher I have spent a lifetime reflecting on my guru’s message. If my own flawed, contemporary voice adds something worthwhile to the discussion, then I have done my job. We have discussed the idea of transcendental epistemology. But, what is it that guru teaches?

What Does Guru Teach?

It’s a bit of a trick question. If I could tell you exactly what it is that guru teaches, then I would be guru. If you could understand what the guru teaches in a simple reading, then you would be guru. The message is only part of what guru teaches, for he gives both theory and practice.

Guru teaches by example, not only by precept. His example is his samadhi or total absorption in higher consciousness. His teachings are often arcane and esoteric. Even if I list here what was taught or learned from example and precept, I would fall far short. Guru helps one realize higher consciouness through both example and precept, he gives us light and teaches us develop the transcendental epistemology through which divine love is discovered. He teaches where we go after death and how to arrive there with visa and passport in order.

Guru gives us the transcendental vibration of the holy name as the best “yoga” for making spiritual progress in kali-yuga. He imparts spiritual principles: in ordinary life one should practice ethical behavior as far as possible. One should follow the principles of compassion and nonviolence, simple living and high thinking. One should be honest. One should be generous. One should follow the principles of chastity. Without a controlled mind it is impossible to develop higher consciousness. Guru teaches us practical, spiritual discipline in eating, working, and social intercourse. He teaches not only self-love, but divine love. He teaches us to educate ourselves both through scriptural and practical knowledge as well as self-knowledge and ultimately divine knowledge. He teaches kindness to animals and even to other human beings. How can we love God without loving our neighbors? Just as Christ taught us to love God above all, but to love our neighbors as well, so Guru preaches compassion and divine love.

Devotional Communities

Guru teaches us to participate in a friendly, spiritual community and disciplines the community personally so that the above principles are followed with tolerance in a nonjudgmental ambience. Spiritual communities face a strange dichotomy: on the one side they are formed by those who are intensely interested in leading a saintly life through God consciousness. On the other side, they are troubled by the quotidian problems of daily living found in any society. God consciousness and society consciousness are always coming in clash. Guru does his best to harmonize these conflicts, showing the path to a higher light to his students. Religion means “proper adjustment.” Any religious community must struggle to strike the proper balance between society consciousness and God consciousness. If a true saint comes in conflict with the greater society, however, sometimes the differences are irreconcilable.

When the relative comes in conflict with the absolute, the relative consideration should be left aside. While saints normally avoid defying social convention, such saints as Saint Francis and Saint Claire or in modern parlance Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati or Bhaktivedanta Swami may even discard social convention. This is true since, ultimately, in any religious community, God consciousness is valued more highly than social consciousness.

Modern Saints: Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati

 

Modern Saints: Bhakti Sundar Govinda Maharaja

Vyasadev was tormented by this conflict between social consciousness and God consciousness. He understood the tension between the rules governing ethical society and the ecstasies of divine love that open the doors to the highest kingdom. Vyasa wrote the Mahabharata to forward ethical or dharmic principles for the regulation of society and for general spiritual upliftment: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, or duty, economics, family life, and “spiritual life.” The Mahabharata is a great compendium of rules and regulations to further these ends accompanied by epic tales to illustrate the moral points and the laws of karma. But Vyasa was unsatisfied by penning mere commandments for social life without going deeper. His chagrin led him to the forest where he took shelter of his guru, Narada.

Narada ordained him in the science of divine love. He explained that Vyasa’s despondence was based on the fact that he had concentrated on society consciousness to the exclusion of God consciousness and divine love. Finally, to demonstrate the superiority of divine love, Vyasa concentrated all his effort in writing the Srimad-Bhagavatam, the summum bonum of all scriptures, which advances the principle of divine love: Krishna consciousness.

Philosophy contemplates not only ontology, or the study of being, along with epistemology, or who we know what we know. As we resolve metaphysics with physics, philosophy itself must find its practical application in ethics. If Mahabharata expresses a complete ethical system for the practice of social dharma, the Srimad-Bhagavatam provides us with a framework for higher consciousness. Where the self communes with the higher self, the principle of divine love must be taken into consideration: This is the purport of the Bhagavatam.

Traditions and conventions like marriage, labor contracts, and societal status may promote the materialistic ethics that serve as the glue of society. They promote order. But where ordinary human life should be governed by ethical principles, the ecstasy of divine love leads us into a higher realm which may even transcend mundane ethics. Such norms as caste-law and social divisions may fall by the way-side in the face of divine enlightenment. The ecstasy of divine love felt and promulgated by the saints may transcend the norms of ordinary traditions and conventions.

Guru stands at the crux of this dichotomy between moral conventions and divine religious ecstasy. He may at times take an ethical stand in the interest of educating his disciples. Or he may defy convention as did Christ when he drove the money-changers from the temple. Guru must strive to bring harmony to the divide between ethical behavior and mysticism. But in any case, he is neither tyrant nor despot. He does not teach in isolation.

The guru's teachings are commensurate with those of the other great teachers in the school. Teachers, saints and scriptures are congruent. A lack of congruence between teachers, saints, and scriptures is unacceptable to the guru. He finds true harmony in the perennial wisdom and nurtures healthy spiritual discussion, respect for others and honest, ethical behavior to promote the goals of his own guru’s mission. The Vaishnava guru’s goal is to further cultivate faith and devotion and divine love, called as bhakti to Krishna, the Personal Godhead celebrated in Bhagavad-Gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

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