THERE IS NO STORY OF A GURU

There is no story of a Guru
-Anant Sri

Stories are a journey of the ego to establish that one’s life is special. Life is life, events happen but the ego identifies with them and treats them as something special for one person and insignificant for another. The followers of a Master try to make their Guru extraordinary and create stories of extraordinariness and miracles around a Guru to show them as special and this is the doing of ego.

It is true that there can be extraordinary and mysterious things happening around a Guru but they are just ordinary happenings at that level of consciousness. An enlightened Master knows this and therefore there is no effort from his side to make a story out of it and publicize it. A Guru is a happening of the totality and so whatever happens there is actually the story of the entire humanity. He is not isolated and fragmented; he is absolute which includes all and so happenings in his presence represent the entire creation. Moreover, everything is not only ordinary but a happening of the existence and in the case of a Guru there is no personal doer and no personal identification, so there are no personal stories. However stories of Enlightened Masters are shared and biographies are written for their lives become a teaching in itself. Furthermore, their presence becomes a great hope for the common man that if it is possible for one ordinary person, then it is possible for the others too.

When one does not know one’s real nature that one is one with all existence, then anything happening in life becomes personal due to the individual’s identification with it and that becomes an individual story. And once such a story is there in an individual’s life then there is ambition to make it known to others that how exceptional one’s life is. All this is the story of the ego. Not only that there is just one story in somebody’s life, there are numerous stories and stories are limitations so they bring about pain and unhappiness.

Autobiographies and biographies are written and hold great attraction to humans for to be special is the desire of the ego. Ups and downs come in everyone’s life and there is nothing special about it. Why should anyone have any interest in somebody’s life? The basic thread in all stories is more or less the same. Though each happening is unique and in that sense everyone is unique but that one is superior and another inferior is not the case. All are unique and all have a place.

Once, someone asked Bhagwan Buddha about his life. He answered that my life is like white clouds in the sky, it will go where the winds take it, it will remain as long as it has to stay and it will be destroyed when it has to go. On the day of his realization, nothing special happened, just one ordinary happening and he was enlightened. Though prior to that many mysterious and extraordinary things happened in his life but on the day of realization it was just a simple happening that resulted in his enlightenment.

He saw a ray of sunlight fall on a leaf and he realized that this leaf is not alone, the sunlight, the leaf, and he himself were all connected, and they were all one happening. And this one happening, an everyday and common occurrence was enough to establish him into wisdom.

And as no one thing is special, the wise in Bharat have given a wide variety of seeking techniques right from Tantra to Yoga as here they have understood the human nature perfectly and that there is a way for everyone. A possibility for all, everyone can begin from wherever they are. There is no one technique that is better than the other; all techniques are equally powerful, just that one has to find the one best suited to his nature. From all divisibility and individuality, one has to glide into oneness and absoluteness and that is all Sadhna is about.

Another thing that you may find interesting is that everything in nature is so mysteriously interconnected that even the most insignificant thing could be supporting the most significant thing in the world. You remove one and the other is also gone. You cannot remove anything.  Zen Gurus give their favorite example of a tree and a grass, the grass exists in all its glory and the tree in its, there is nothing as big or small, important or trivial, everything coexists and everything supports everything. All have a place and all are equally significant.

A true story can only be of the evolution of humanity all the rest are merely a journey of the ego.