Nazis are not funny

“My father was a reformed Jew. In fact he was so reformed he was a Nazi."

--Woody Allen

WHY NAZIS ARE NOT FUNNY

Most of you are probably not old enough to remember this, but there was a TV show back in the 1960s called Hogan’s Heroes. It was the story of American soldiers and French resistance fighters who ran a covert resistance operation out of a prison camp behind German lines.

Sgt. Schultz, Hogan, Colonel Klink

The concentration camp officer was Colonel Klink played by Werner Klemperer, who lampooned the idea of a cultivated German officer. Bob Crane, and ex-DJ was Hogan. Every week a crew of brilliant comedians skewered the foibles of the Germans, especially Col. Klink and his lovable comic sidekick Sgt. Schultz whose big laugh line was “I know nothing! Nothing!”

The show was hilarious. Every week my brothers and I would gather around the TV for a new episode. Even my mother watched the show. It turned out she had a sentimental connection. The stereo typical French guy “LeBeau” was played by a talented French song and dance man, Robert Clary. My mother later confessed that she had dated him back in the 1950s. Robert Clary was a short guy who could do a brilliant Jerry Lewis impression.

Hogan’s heroes was hysterical not because Nazis are funny, but for how it made fun of the Nazis and their “just following orders” mentality. The Nazis are not funny.

My father worked in network TV at the time. He an executive producer on Batman and a lot of other network shows. He never watched Hogan’s Heroes with us.

My father had been in the French Navy, where he saw action at Dunkirk. His show business career started during the war when he made propaganda broadcasts for the BBC after the French Navy had been destroyed by the Germans at Dunkirk.

Evacuation of Dunkirk

Dunkirk was not funny. When the armies of the Nazis swept through the neutral country of Belgium the French Navy was stranded on the beach along with some 300,000 or so English soldiers. My father was not among those saved by the brave fishing schooners of operation Dynamo. He was captured on the beach and held prisoner in a concentration camp.

When the prisoners were allowed a game of football one day my father and his friend Renée ran down the beach chasing the ball into the weeds and barbed wire. With the help of Renée my father jumped the barbed wire. In the chaos of the football game he wasn’t missed. He managed to escape to England on a fishing boat run by the resistance. He never watched Hogan’s heroes with us. For him, the Nazis just weren’t funny.

In a recent competition for the funniest commercial in Europe, one of the judges commented that many of the German commercials were somehow flat. There is a stereotype about the Germans that they’re just not funny, or have no sense of humor. It’s an interesting point.

It may be true. I can’t think of any funny Germans off the top of my head.

The lack of sense of humor may have something to do with the fact that during the second world war all the funny people were either killed, deported, or exiled.

I understand that some people have an ax to grind about the Rothschilds and so on. But I think I could make a pretty good case that the funniest people in the world are Jewish.

The Marx Brothers, arguably the funniest people, were Jewish. Without batting an eye or looking it up on Google, I can tell you that the funniest writers of the 20th century were Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon. All Jewish. They wrote for the Sid Caesar show, Johnny Carson, and later for movies and Broadway plays. Funny people like Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Billy Crystal practically invented stand-up comedy. They were all Jewish.

The Marx Brothers

During the second world war numerous composers artists, musicians, thinkers, scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, and funny people were rounded up for extermination by the Nazis. Based on Hitler’s racial theories, the Nazis had a four point program for Jews: registration, deportation, concentration, and extermination.

They rendered into so the greatest composers and poets of their day. Maybe somewhere along the line, they lost their sense of humor. What they did wasn’t really funny. Maybe if they hadn’t deported and exterminated an entire generation of funny people, the Germans would have a better sense of humor today. But German commercials today are just not funny. They have little sense of humor because they gassed the funny people and made them into bars of soap. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2982639/Bar-soap-fat-Jewish-Holocaust-victims-removed-eBay-Dutch-owner-sale.html

Bar of Soap made from human fat by Nazis

Nazis are not funny. The KKK is not a joke. Guys marching with tiki torches and swastikas screaming racist and anti-Semitic slogans are not funny. It’s time to take them seriously.

Young people today lack the tools to see this point. They have no sense of history. The purpose of television and social media is not to educate, but to make them forget, to lull people into a false sense of security. Hypnotized by the screen in front of them, they forget the past and lose consciousness about the future. The most wonderful thing is not the cell phone in your hand; the most wonderful thing is the fact that everyone is going to die but no one believes he is going to die. After all if we believed that death was imminent, we might change our behavior.

Actions have Consequences

We might consider that compassion is an important value. Violence and racism sin against compassion. The law of karma, of action and reaction, means that our sins will certainly follow us after our death. Hedonism and selfishness are not appropriate values in a civilized society. And yet, hypnotized by handheld screens, and caught up in a web of social networks, young people are easy prey to the consumer society which demands that they forget the past and disregard the future. In a place where only immediate pleasure is valued, it is easy to forget what the Nazis stand for and what the Nazis did.

Those who remember history are naturally nervous about Nazi-ism. They don’t think Nazis are funny. My father was not a Jew. But since the Nazi-led German soldiers branded his arm with the name and number of his prison registration, he didn’t think the Nazis were funny either.

Nazis are clever enough that they don’t begin by calling for the extermination of a race. They began with ridicule. They begin by ridiculing immigrants and people who have different beliefs or different skin colors. In the United States, they begin with the Terrorists. Then they go after the Muslims. After the terrorists and the Muslims it’s the Mexicans. Pretty soon they focus on inner-city crime, the drug war, welfare mothers and juvenile delinquents.

As it turns out, law enforcement for the war on crime tends to focus on people of color and racial discrimination. Organizations formed to protect the rights of minorities are singled out for attack. In the end it becomes clear that the same power structure is going after minority religions, people of color, immigrants, foreigners, and Jews. The erosion of personal liberty and rights are rationalized by the need for national security. Wasn’t that the program of the Nazis?

As a member of a minority religion--I am a Hare Krishna devotee--I am concerned about the tendency towards Nazi ideas and racial theories now sweeping the United States. I think it is time to speak out. I am reminded of Martin Niemöller, a Protestant minister during the 1940s. Niemöller had qualms about the Nazi program, but he didn't speak out until it was too late.

Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It's dangerous to speak out. Speech has consequences. We speak out at our own peril. When I was a kid in school, the Americans were busy napalming children in Vietnam. For those of you unfamiliar with Napalm, it was a solid form of gasoline developed by Dow chemical. The gasoline jelly was dropped along with incendiary devices on military targets in Vietnam as part of the bombing campaign called "Rolling Thunder." When burning gasoline jelly was dropped on your skin, there was no way to put it out. You would run around shocked by the flames that consumed you while your friends tried to put you out. But the jelly would stick to your skin and the gasoline fire resisted water.

Most people didn't speak out against the Vietnam War. Such talk undermined our patriotic effort to spread democracy and save the world. Anyway, it didn't matter if a few children were burned, they were "collateral damage." After all, they were inferior human beings who didn't know what was good for them, or even worse, they were "commies." Anyone who said otherwise was a "commie sympathizer: or worse, a "hippie".

At that time the anti-war people embraced a "commie"poet named Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He wrote a poem about the Nazi atrocities at a place called Babi Yar.

[Translator's note:

Yevgeni Yevtushenko’s poem, written to expose the inhumanity of Babi Yar, and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops, produced a tremendous effect in Russia. I learned this poem by heart when I was very young, without understanding anything except the basic ideas. Recently, I saw a copy of it, and remembered. I still cannot read it without tears.” --Benjamin Okopnik ]

BABI YAR

By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
Translated by Benjamin Okopnik, 10/96

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-“They come!”

-“No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”

-“They break the door!”

-“No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!

Бабий Яр

Над Бабьим Яром памятников нет.

Крутой обрыв, как грубое надгробье.

Мне страшно.

Мне сегодня столько лет,

как самому еврейскому народу.

Мне кажется сейчас -

я иудей.

Вот я бреду по древнему Египту.

А вот я, на кресте распятый, гибну,

и до сих пор на мне - следы гвоздей.

Мне кажется, что Дрейфус -

это я.

Мещанство -

мой доносчик и судья.

Я за решеткой.

Я попал в кольцо.

Затравленный,

оплеванный,

оболганный.

И дамочки с брюссельскими оборками,

визжа, зонтами тычут мне в лицо.

Мне кажется -

я мальчик в Белостоке.

Кровь льется, растекаясь по полам.

Бесчинствуют вожди трактирной стойки

и пахнут водкой с луком пополам.

Я, сапогом отброшенный, бессилен.

Напрасно я погромщиков молю.

Под гогот:

'Бей жидов, спасай Россию!' -

насилует лабазник мать мою.

О, русский мой народ! -

Я знаю -

ты

По сущности интернационален.

Но часто те, чьи руки нечисты,

твоим чистейшим именем бряцали.

Я знаю доброту твоей земли.

Как подло,

что, и жилочкой не дрогнув,

антисемиты пышно нарекли

себя "Союзом русского народа"!

Мне кажется -

я - это Анна Франк,

прозрачная,

как веточка в апреле.

И я люблю.

И мне не надо фраз.

Мне надо,

чтоб друг в друга мы смотрели.

Как мало можно видеть,

обонять!

Нельзя нам листьев

и нельзя нам неба.

Но можно очень много -

это нежно

друг друга в темной комнате обнять.

Сюда идут?

Не бойся - это гулы

самой весны -

она сюда идет.

Иди ко мне.

Дай мне скорее губы.

Ломают дверь?

Нет - это ледоход...

Над Бабьим Яром шелест диких трав.

Деревья смотрят грозно,

по-судейски.

Все молча здесь кричит,

и, шапку сняв,

я чувствую,

как медленно седею.

И сам я,

как сплошной беззвучный крик,

над тысячами тысяч погребенных.

Я -

каждый здесь расстрелянный старик.

Я -

каждый здесь расстрелянный ребенок.

Ничто во мне

про это не забудет!

«Интернационал»

пусть прогремит,

когда навеки похоронен будет

последний на земле антисемит.

Еврейской крови нет в крови моей.

Но ненавистен злобой заскорузлой

я всем антисемитам,

как еврей,

и потому -

я настоящий русский!

1961
Евгений Евтушенко. Мое самое-самое. Москва, Изд-во АО "ХГС" 1995.

Nazi SS Women at Babi Yar

**************************************************

NOTES
—–1 – Alfred Dreyfus was a French officer, unfairly dismissed from service in 1894 due to trumped-up charges prompted by anti- Semitism.

2 – Belostok: the site of the first and most violent pogroms, the Russian version of KristallNacht.

3 – “Internationale”: The Soviet national anthem.

Aprendizaje-Enseñanza

El Coraje para Enseñar

De Enseñanza y Maestros

Por Michael Dolan/ B.V. Mahayogi

traducido por Teresa Loret de Mola, (Tapanandini DD)

Continuando con las ideas expresadas en el último mensaje, hay una paradoja interesante en el acto de enseñar.

Cualquier enseñanza implica ego. Ya que el maestro adopta la posición de saber algo. ¿Y qué si el enseñar es acerca de deshacernos del ego? ¿Cómo enseñar el arte de renunciar al ego?

Tan pronto como alguien dice, “Yo sé cómo enseñar”, y acepta el negocio de ser un guru, está consintiendo una especie de ego, el que en sánscrito es llamado acharya-abhiman. Pero esto es inevitable.

Ego es inevitable en el acto de enseñar

Enseñar es un acto de compasión, o ha de serlo. Enseñar nunca ha de ser acerca de gratificar el ego. Adoptar la pose de “maestro” significa aceptar la relación maestro-estudiante. As´´i que el maestro debe dejar caer el manto de “místico” y usar el “sombrero de maestro”, al menos el tiempo que está “en clase”. Por supuesto, un verdadero acharya siempre está “en clase”, ya que se espera de él que enseñe con su ejemplo. La palabra acharya significa, “Uno que enseña con el ejemplo”. También puede enseñar por preceptos, pero su ejemplo se espera que iguale o incluso que exceda su precepto. Esto carga de una tensión espiritual sobre el maestro espiritual, ya que es forzado a llevar “el sombrero de maestro” 24 horas al día.

Un maestro de escuela ordinario puede ir a casa al final del día y ser un músico o trabajar en escribir su novela. Tal vez puede tener una vida social con amigos o perseguir una vida romántica fuera de la escuela.

Pero de un maestro espiritual se espera que viva el ejemplo 24 horas al día, enseñanza constante. No podrá deshacerse del “sombrero de maestro”  y tomar el manto de místico, puesto que esto no podrá ser entendido por sus estudiantes. Gaura Kishore Das Babaji Maharaja rehusó a los estudiantes por esta misma razón. No estaba interesado en el ego de enseñar. Pero si no hay  místicos acepten el papel de maestros estaremos privados de orientación.

La profunda compasión dicta que un alma realizada alcance a los empobrecidos para darles una mano, incluso a riesgo de hacerse famoso y adquirir una gran gratificación del ego. Así que el acharya enfrenta la difícil tarea de superar el acharya-abhiman incluso cuando acepta el papel de maestro.

Los discípulos o estudiantes, al mismo tiempo, demandan autenticidad. Ellos quieren un místico genuino como guru. Desgraciadamente, por las razones señaladas arriba, los místicos prefieren no enseñar. Algunos estudiantes están completamente determinados a encontrar al místico más retirado y convertirlo en maestro. De este modo, pueden clamar que un guru “Uttama-adhikari” o guru con la “calificación última”, un “genio confirmado”, es su maestro. El desear clamar como  maestro propio al guru con la calificación más elevada, es, por supuesto, otro viaje del ego.

En un sentido, no importa si un genio confirmado del más elevado orden me dice que no me coma las crayolas azules, o si éste es meramente un maestro de kínder. El genio no transmite ningún virtuosismo al demostrar al alumno de violín cómo tocar una escala.

Beethoven era notoriamente un mal maestro de piano, pues carecía de la paciencia básica para lidiar con las torpezas con las teclas de un principiante. El genio loco, en sus últimos días, les gritaría a sus estudiantes y los humillaría. Alguien menos virtuoso puede tal vez carecer del genio de Beethoven, y sin embargo tener la paciencia de trabajar con los niños.

Entonces, en un sentido, no importa si la persona que me conduce en el inicio viene desde la plataforma espiritual más elevada. Puede tal vez ser un maestro adecuado para enseñar que aprendió de un maestro  elevado. Lo importante es que se me muestre la senda. No tenemos que insistir en que el localizador de una ruta sea un cartógrafo famoso. Podremos hacer muchos progresos con un maestro humilde.

La humildad del maestro, sin embargo, no disminuye el respeto que le debemos. El respeto por el maestro es importante para el estudiante, si valora al maestro, valorará la educación. Así es que hacemos todo lo posible para respetar a aquellos quienes tienen la compasión y el coraje de enseñar.  







x

Elementary and Advanced Learning

Teaching and Teachers

Srila Prabhupada, teaching

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

In the early stages of an art we may get help from a number of teachers at the elementary level. For example, in the early days of the Rock band “The Grateful Dead,” Jerry Garcia wanted Phil Lesh, a trumpet player, to join the band. But they didn’t want a trumpet player. They needed a Bass guitarist. Lesh had never played the guitar so he agreed to join on the condition that Garcia would give him some lessons.

In his book, Searching for the Sound, Lesh reports that when he arrived at Jerry Garcia’s house for the lesson, Garcia instructed him as follows. : “See this guitar, man? The bottom four strings on the guitar are tuned the same as the four strings of the bass, so borrow a guitar from somebody and practice scales on it until you can get down here and we’ll start rehearsing.”

Phil Lesh

Lesh comments, “It was almost as if he didn’t want to influence the way that I approached the instrument so that I could come to it with only my own preconceptions as baggage.”

On the basis of that first lesson, Phil Lesh went on to become one of the greatest bass guitarists in the history of Rock.

The point is that we don’t need a virtuosos for entry level instruction. Elementary lessons may be given by anyone more advanced than we are. In fact, at the entry level of any subject, we often lack the capacity to ask the deeper questions that only a true master is capable of. The instruction will be based on our level as well as on our need and urgency. A soldier about to be sent into battle cares more about survival skills than about how to wear his uniform. A captain will be concerned with tactics, a general with strategy and policies.

As we grow and advance we want more specific answers on questions both theoretical and practical. As we become more expert in a subject, we want help from an expert master. In the advanced stages of any art we want an advanced teacher. Even a virtuosos wants a master class, where he may solve technical problems, understand the depth of his art and draw on the expertise and knowledge of a more realized master.

Close touch with a realized master in a master class may not be possible over a prolonged period of time. It may only be a short exposure. But even a limited exposure with a great soul may be enough to release miracles.

Krishna inspiring Brahma

Lord Brahma, the creator of the universe, and the founder of the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya transmits the gayatri mantra after hearing the flute-song of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He does not spend years studying in an ashram.

Brahma inspiring Narada

His protegeé, Narada hears the chatu-shloka Bhagavatam from Brahma in a single conversation. Nārada transmits divine inspiration to Vyāsa, when that great composer of the Mahābharata is lost in meditation. In a few words, Nārada tells Vyāsa that his lack of clarity about the glories of Bhagavan Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the reason for his despondency. In the end he advises that great sage as follows:

तद्-वाग्-विसर्गो जनताघ-विप्लवो यस्मिन् प्रति-श्लोकम् अबद्धवत्य् अपि

नामान्य् अनन्तस्य यशो ऽङ्कितानि यत् शृण्वन्ति गायन्ति गृणन्ति साधवः

tad-vāg-visargo janatāgha-viplavo yasmin prati-ślokam abaddhavaty api nāmāny anantasya yaśo 'ṅkitāni yat śṛṇvanti gāyanti gṛṇanti sādhavaḥ

“On the other hand, that literature which is full of descriptions of the transcendental glories of the name, fame, forms, pastimes, etc., of the unlimited Supreme Lord is a different creation, full of transcendental words directed toward bringing about a revolution in the impious lives of this world's misdirected civilization. Such transcendental literatures, even though imperfectly composed, are heard, sung and accepted by purified men who are thoroughly honest.”

Narada inspiring Vyasa

Nārada explains to Vyāsa that he need not be a perfectionist. Even if his realization is incomplete, his sincerity will shine through. Even if his syntax and grammar are imperfect, his attempt is laudatory.

Vyāsa’s effort is the great treatise of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam which glorifies Krishna in every verse. While he did not sit at the feet of Nārada and study his teachings with the intimate personal association of his gurudeva, he accepted the inner principle of his message and was guided by that substance. For this reason, Vyāsa is considered as the next link in the chain, the appropriate successor in the Bhagavat-parampara, the crooked line of teachers and preceptors that brings that message to us today.

The proper follower of Vyāsa was considered by Chaitanya Mahāprabhu to be Madhva, who defended the personalist conception of Vyāsa’s Bhagavad-Gita. It is for this reason, among others, that He chose to take sannyāsa from Ishvara Puri, since he was a follower of Madhavendra Puri, a great Vaishnava saint in the line of Madhva.

Madhva himself did not study in the ashram of Vyāsa. He is said to have been inspired by a vision of Vyāsa, in much the same way that Vyāsa was inspired by a vision of Nārada, Nārada by a conversation with Brahma and Brahma by hearing the flute-song of Krishna himself. The Bhagavat-parampara is the line of inspiration. Without inspiration, then, there can be no line, however well-conceived the succession appears to be.

Vyasa inspiring Madhva

Finding a real master, one who is defined by his inspiration and dedication, is no small task. And if one is fortunate enough to have such association, one must do his utmost to honor it.

As the poet Coleridge said,

“Weave a circle round him thrice

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Śrīla Prabhupāda did not spend years in an ashram studying with Bhaktisiddhānta Saraswati. He met him on a few occasions and took his teachings seriously. He went on to found an international movement for Krishna consciousness.

Chastity to the guru does not imply clinging to his dhoti and following him everywhere. The idea of chastity means being faithful to the principles he has taught and the message he has lived.

More advanced students understand this principle deeply. We must accept and honor the guru principle whenever and wherever it appears. We must draw inspiration wherever we may find it. Even a virtuoso is humbled and inspired by listening to the morning concert of the songbirds. Even the accomplished dance-master draws inspiration from the sprinting of a gazelle. Chastity to the guru’s message, then, does not mean slavish fanaticism or blind faith in a repeated formula. It implies an even deeper faith and wisdom; the ability to see the teachings of my guru embodied in the words and deeds of others--to see my guru everywhere. Curiously, just as we may accept help from many teachers at the elementary level, we may also profit by studying with many teachers at the advanced level.

This is described in the Eleventh Canto of the Śrīmad-Bhagavatam, chapter seven beginning with 11.7.32. An avadhuta explains as follows.

श्री-ब्राह्मण उवाच

सन्ति मे गुरवो राजन् बहवो बुद्ध्य्-उपश्रिताः यतो बुद्धिम् उपादाय मुक्तो ऽटामीह तान् शृणु

śrī-brāhmaṇa uvāca
santi me guravo rājan bahavo buddhy-upaśritāḥ
yato buddhim upādāya mukto 'ṭāmīha tān śṛṇu

“The avadhuta brāhmaṇa said: My dear King, with my intelligence I have taken shelter of many gurus, many spiritual masters. I have learned something from each of them and so have achieved mukti. Thus I walk the earth. I will tell you now, my king, of all these different gurus.

I have learned from the earth and from the air.

The sky I have taken as my guru.

Water is my guru, as is fire.

I have learned many things from the moon and the sun and the sea.

I have studied with the pigeon and the python.

The moth, the honeybee, the elephant and the honey thief have taught me about temptation and karma, lust, seduction and fate.

I have learned lessons from the deer who is seduced by the flute and the fish drawn to his bait. The prostitute Piṅgalā has taught me the value of patience and hopelessness. I have studied and learned from the birds and children.

In my studies as I wander the earth I have learned lessons from virgins, from arrowsmiths, from snakes and spiders and wasps. By accepting all these as my gurus, I have learned the science of the self.”

In this way, we can understand that wisdom and maturity in accepting the guru’s teachings implies the ability to see his teachings embodied in the words and deeds of others, including even the earth and sky but also especially wise teachers and devotees.

The Courage to Teach

On Teaching and Teachers

by Michael Dolan/ B.V. Mahayogi

Continuing with the ideas expressed in the last post, there is an interesting paradox in the act of teaching.

Any teaching involves ego, since the teacher adopts the position of knowing something.

But what if the teaching is about how to get rid of the ego? How to teach the art of giving up the ego?

As soon as anyone says, “I know how to teach,” and accepts the business of being guru, he is indulging in a kind of ego, what is called in Sanskrit as acharaya-abhiman. But this is unavoidable.

Teaching is an action of compassion, or it should be. Teaching should never be about ego-gratification. Adopting the pose of “teacher” means accepting the teacher-student relationship. So a teacher must drop the mantle of “mystic” and wear the “teacher hat,” at least as long as he is “in class.” Of course, a true acharya is always “in class,” since he is expected to teach by example. The word acharya means, “One who teaches by example.” He may also teach by precept, but his example is expected to match or even exceed his precept. This puts a special strain on the spiritual teacher, since he is forced to wear the “teacher hat” 24 hours a day.

An ordinary school teacher can go home at the end of the day and be a musician or work on writing his novel. He may have a social life with friends or a romantic life which he pursues outside of school.

But a spiritual teacher is expected to live the example 24 hours a day, constantly teaching. He may not discard the “teacher hat” and take up the mantle of mystic, for this will not be understood by his students. Gaura Kishore Das Babaji Maharaja refused students for this very reason. He was not interested in the ego of teaching. But if no mystics accept the role of teachers we will be deprived of guidance.

Deep compassion dictates that a realized soul reaches out to those who are spiritually impoverished to give them a helping hand, even at the risk of becoming famous and acquiring great ego gratification. So the acharya is faced with the daunting task of overcoming acharya-abhiman even while accepting the teaching role.

Disciples or students, at the same time, demand authenticity. They want a true mystic as guru. Unfortunately, because of the reasons outlined above, mystics prefer not to teach. Some students are absolutely determined to find the most retired of mystics and convert him into a teacher. This way, they can claim a true “Uttama-adhikari” or “ultimate-qualified” or “confirmed genius” guru as their master. Wanting to claim the highest-qualified guru as teacher, is, of course, another ego trip.

In a sense, it doesn’t matter if a confirmed genius of the highest order tells me not to eat the blue crayons, or if it is merely a simple kindergarten teacher. The confirmed genius conveys none of his virtuosity when demonstrating to his violin student how to play a scale.

Beethoven was a notoriously bad piano teacher, for he lacked the basic patience to deal with a beginner fumbling on the keys. The mad genius, deaf in his last days, would scream at his students and humiliate them. A lesser virtuouso might lack the genius of a Beethoven, and yet have the patience to work with children.

So, in a sense, it doesn’t matter if the person who first leads me on the path is coming from the highest spiritual platform. He may simply be an adequate teacher who knows about the path from a higher master. The important thing is that I am being shown the path. We need not insist that the path-finder be a famous cartographer. We may make much progress with a humble teacher.

The humility of the master, however, does not diminish the respect we owe him. Respect for the teacher is important for the student; if he values the teacher, he will value the education. So it is that we do our best to respect those who have the compassion and courage to teach.