Guru word is so popular worldwide now that you don’t even have to look it up on Oxford dictionary. Everyone considers themselves to be a guru on one or other thing. Every new beginning starts with us bowing in front of guru and/or chanting the divine mantra of ‘Om Sri Gurubhyo Namaha’. It is a belief that the vibrations that this can bring when practiced with a pious mind is comparable with various other powerful verses and mantras.
A new born baby observes everyone around him/her and learns from all. As he/she grows up, starts acknowledging the parents as a de-facto guru for the role they play in teaching their kids. Most of the religious beliefs across the globe places parents on a pedestal and agree as a guru in many ways. As we keep growing older, we are exposed to a larger world where we learn lot of the things parents don’t want us to learn, from your acquaintances and friends. Most of these friends tend to be older than us in age or exposure to the world. Many of them might have their own elder siblings from whom they would have learned the trade which we adopt as ours. These gurus are often revered by us and we carry their memories to our old age. These are those gurus who teach you how to tread the muddy waters of the world around you. Often disliked by parents, these acquaintances do leave a lasting impression on our lives.
While we are busy learning the tricks and traits of worldly pleasures from our friends, our teachers and professors come into our life often instilling values that are required to build a strong foundation to have a successful life in the society. This is mostly linked to the academics, discipline, ethics, respect and co-existence with other friends and classmates. These gurus who disguise themselves as teachers prepares us for the world ahead. We often talk about them in alumni meets but hardly spend any time meeting them as most of the students replace these sacred houses in their mind with their college professors where once the school teachers lived.
Our Siblings and cousins mentors us a lot. We learn from each other and teach each other whatever we learn from our friends too. How much ever nasty it is, we ensure we are not spoiled alone. These are our gurus in family more than our uncle and aunts who often prides as the lighthouses of the sect. Many of us get exposed to religious teachings and other gurus while we grow up and it leaves a lasting impression on us. Some continue the journey of worship whole life while few others cut the journey short and get into the next bus with another trending guru. We learn a lot about the world from these gurus and the way they relate everything in our life to someone else who had already faced the same situation makes them convincingly tempting.
Books teaches us a lot if written by those intelligent souls who used their brain a tad more than we common men. Their experiences and expectations are well tolerated by most men than their own parents who are the first guru in life as we discussed earlier. At this stage of life we start accepting the wisdom of any men alive but not the ones we know closely. This stage is where most men starts disrespecting and distrusting their earlier gurus and leads a life of a rebel with no remorse. Most people go through this phase and always think they are the only smart ones to question the world and understand that no one is smarter than them.
As in all business, there is a break even point where the real guru enters your life, for some it is in the form of a person and for some it is in the form of a godman and for some others it’s in the form of life experiences and results of their own experiments. Whichever way guru resurfaces, it’s important to recognise it at this point and adopt the learning’s that comes out of it. We learn from our seniors at a workplace whom we salute for their commitment and know-how, but at some point we need higher guru and our respect fades. At this stage, we realise that we all are in search of constant upgrades be it guru or life. Nothing can satisfy our thirst for long no matter whatever that thirst is for. Nobody likes to get same advice from same guru even though we won’t even try their suggestions.
A certain stage in life makes us feel that now we are ready to be the guru and can show torch light on the dark roads others’ are travelling aimlessly. Even though we are still relying on our guru to guide us, we try to act like the guru for other fellow beings. This is often the stage where we expect our initial gurus to start listening to us and give us the same respect. Be it parents, teachers, siblings, cousins, friends, colleagues, we assume the role of the master guru. Life brings the next generation in front of us to make us realize that we still had not learned everything and a lot to learn from the next generation. While we are busy learning that and trying to impose our half baked knowledge on rest of the world, the old age strikes. It is at this point where we want the whole world to listen to us and consider our wisdom as divine and ultimate. Someone once said with age comes wisdom which is the only thing we know. Sometimes I wonder did that someone mean wisdom tooth and not the other wisdom which we relate ourselves to.
The presence of someone who acts as a teacher and guides and mentors us is the best relationship we can get in our life and need to be prized and preserved at all cost. Unfortunately we tend to have differences with our gurus once we learn everything we want from them and it is quite natural. There is also no limitation on the number of gurus we could have at any given point in life. We could also learn and lead our lives by taking the best from all the gurus and respectfully parking the factors that you wouldn’t want to change in your life.
Humans are those pack of animals who doesn’t seemed to need any guru to learn the bad things of this world but need constant rigorous push to acquire basic things that are required to be a good social animal. When we look back we might often understand that there is no specific person who is a guru unless you want to look at it one dimensional as a spiritual track. Everyone around us is our guru, everything around us is are gurus, we are also guru for someone. It’s more about keeping an open heart, clear mind, well sorted brain & fit body which can help us absorb as much from everything and everyone and help us evolve into a better human. Our selection of gurus in our life took us through those routes which we traveled so far and will take us to that utopian world which we deserve to reach before it all ends!
Well said
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