Since ancient times, Guru Purnima has been celebrated in honour of the great sage Maharshi Veda Vyasa, who is believed not only to have been born on that day but also to have begun writing the Brahma Sutras. Vyasa also edited the four Vedas and wrote the 18 Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Srimad Bhagavatam. Hence, this 13th of July, on the auspicious day of Guru Purnima, there are great festivities among all disciples at the Ashrams throughout India, paying respects to their Gurus who bestowed them with real knowledge. I too participated in the celebrations for three days at my Guruji’s Ashram this year, taking leave from my professional duties with prior notice to all my clients.
The letter ‘Gu’ in Sanskrit means ‘darkness’ and ‘ru’ means the one who dispels such darkness by illuminating the disciple with real knowledge. The word ‘parampara’ means ‘succession’ or ‘tradition’. The Guru Parampara illustrates the ancient Indian tradition of passing the real knowledge from a Guru (teacher) to his Sishya (disciple). The guru-sishya legacy had originated from time immemorial but unfortunately, it manifests scarcely in the present era. The transcendence to wisdom is not an easy achievement, for it has to be passed on only by a Guru or from the scriptures of the ancient Gurus who had existed centuries ago, for such real knowledge was acquired and documented by them, impeccably, for the well-being of the later generations.
Prince Rama was nurtured and groomed by great sages such as Vasishta and Vishwamitra, Krishna who gave the world ‘Bhagavatgita’ was a disciple of Guru Sandipani and Jadatguru Adi Shankara, the greatest Indian Vedic scholar and teacher who doctrined the ‘Advita’ philosophy, was a disciple of Govinda Bhagavatpada. Shankara, the one and only next to Veda Vyasa, was a ‘destined one’ who interpreted and harmonized all the sastras, liberating knowledge of the self at its core, synthesizing the Advaita Vedanta teachings which enlightened the world that the Creator is only ‘one’ and that there was no second. When Bhishma was on his deathbed of arrows in the Kurukshetra, Krishna advised Yuddhistara, the crowned Pandava King after the Mahabharata war, to acquire the priceless knowledge of pious administration from Bhishma, who was also his grandfather, guardian and teacher.
The classroom teacher is the one who guides us to acquire academic knowledge, as per the syllabi, to accomplish our graduation for gainful employment that could take care of our well-being. But if acquiring such academic qualifications could generate sumptuous economic independence, then why is it that the more successful and rich are experiencing unhappiness in excess to those who have lesser means? Well-being cannot be guaranteed with academic accomplishments or by material wealth because it is the ‘real’ knowledge about existence and creation that can give permanent happiness that has to be passed on only by a Guru to the restless pupil. In the present electronic world, the succession of acquiring knowledge has been breached and that’s the reason for all misery.
The only truth we are all aware about is the existence of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ and, in between, we are in a visual trap of the false world we experience both in awareness and in deep sleep. We assume that reality is what we see in front of us that has been scripted only by us while pursuing unending happiness, but we always experience only tentative pleasures that are nothing but fruits that do not have a long shelf-life, hence they too perish. The path to achieving permanent happiness is totally a different curriculum that can only be bestowed by a Guru to a deserving pupil. In the modern world, importance has shifted from the past tradition of seeking happiness through imperishable knowledge that was passed on by the Guru to the belief that happiness depends totally on material things — money, car, home, food, ornaments, luxurious living, dear ones, power — all of which change with time and circumstances. It is only when they fail to make us happy that we realise that they are not the medium to provide us permanent happiness. Hence, in the beginning, we assumed that all such material tools would bring permanent happiness but ended in sorrow with the passage of time. The tangible and intangible also perish with the passage of time, including the fruits of our efforts. If our success is real, it should never perish, but we still pursue more success and material prosperity, believing that it results in permanent happiness. What never comes to our understanding is that with perseverance we achieve happiness, but it arrives, bringing its cousin, the sorrow, as an ‘add on’.
Writing scripts, articulately convincing otherwise, is good to read but that cannot be considered as real knowledge. The real beauty of the creation is being distracted by the false world as if it gives us pleasure and permanent happiness. The world has great psychologists, philosophers, fictional readers, bloggers and so on, but the real knowledge is not within their narrative. Everyone has an agenda to divide humanity into religions, castes, regions and so on, but applying the simple yardstick of the Vedas, one can realise that all humans are part of the Creator. If there were different creators as per each one’s religion, there would have been chaos prior to creation itself, for all those different Gods would have settled the scores between them first even before being the cause of life on Earth.
Wisdom does not flower at an early age because the senses rule the young. Wisdom does not germinate on its own unless you are ‘chosen one’ (born for a purpose), like Ramana Maharshi who attained enlightenment at an early age of 15 even without a Guru — that’s the reason he was called not only in India but around the world as Bhagawan Ramana Maharshi. Wisdom blossoms only with experience, sacrifice and hardship, after facing at least one death situation, if not many. The route to permanent happiness is only when we have the knowledge of ‘reality’ and it is possible only through a Guru, for the teacher had, in turn, acquired real knowledge of existence from his Guru, and so the tradition continued.
Ironically, in the last half-century, the younger generation has become judgemental about their elders, their teachers, against society, with the pride that they have the complete knowledge of all aspects of life, all without having acquired real knowledge. I am ashamed to state that I too was one among them. Subsequently, after facing a couple of death-situations, I have attained some wisdom only after my 50s. In my legal practice, most of the resolutions materialise by consultation even prior to litigation, with my notices, and the tough cases only fall into litigation. I did not practice under any Senior Counsel, hence my methods are self-driven or evolved. The reason is that it was only because I had experienced the pain of litigation and the ordeal of firefighting, so I never allowed a single case to slip into litigation without trying the first two methods. Apart from it, to agitate in a court of law one has to be clean and confident while exercising a true right.I am paid substantial money for my strategies and I have earned a reputation of being successful in achieving the required reliefs to my clients. My prowess extends to counselling the client without playing with the emotions of the aggrieved. Similarly, the real Guru does not provide formulae or counsel practices of blind-beliefs for reliefs, he passes on true knowledge that ‘unless you break all bondages of both passion and prejudice’ you cannot achieve permanent happiness.
I am thankful to my Guruji for having showered upon me true knowledge. I have understood that like the world we live in, the human is also a part of the creation, but we assume that we are an entity by ourselves and that our body and our possessions are our own, hence we develop bondage with them. In the process of losing our dear ones and our possessions, we drown in despair. My Guru, while rendering the discourse of ‘Mundaka Upanishad’, explained with vivid clarity that, “When we call this universe as creation, it means that there was a Creator in the first place who knew the technology or the power to create the heavenly bodies and living things. Just as a carpenter who has prior knowledge to carve out furniture and just as a car manufacturer who has the awareness to produce a car, the Creator is behind the origin of the universe and we are part of such creation. That’s the reason the Creator is called the Omniscient, meaning that he is the one who has infinite knowledge.”
My Guru explained with vivid clarity that unlike the carpenter and the car manufacturer, the Creator of the Universe does not require any material alien to Himself to create, hence the universe emanates from Himself only. In fact, there is nothing other than Him. Hence, the Creator is the efficient cause and his creation is a flawless marvel of engineering and every living thing is made of the five elements that only emanated from Him. The air in our breath, the water in our blood, the earth in our muscles and bones, the fire in us which keeps us alive with 98.6 Fahrenheit, the sky or space in our lungs and stomach, are the 5 elements that the entire creation is made up of. My Guru blessed us with the awareness that when we are all part of the Creator, there is nothing else other than the Creator and such knowledge itself gives the disciple the redemption from all miseries paving the way the transcendental state of mind, it is only thereafter that we get released from bondage of love (raga) and hate (dwesha).
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