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Tonight is Guru Purnima, the annual celebration of the lineage of gurus in the Vedic tradition.
The word guru means, literally, 'the teacher who removes the shadow of ignorance.' Purnima means 'full moon.' This is the night of the full moon of the Vedic month of Ashadh, the traditional time set aside for this celebration. (There are different months in the Vedic calendar because it is lunar-based, rather than solar-based, as is our Western calendar.) So this is the once-yearly celebration of the lineage of the gurus, the teaching of the gurus and originally of one guru in particular. (More on that to come.)
Sometimes we will see the idea of guru, the 'remover of the shadow of ignorance' expressed as 'bringer of light.' They would seem to be the same thing, for indeed, a shadow is removed by the bringing of light to that place that had been shadowed. However, to look at it a bit more closely, the idea of a shadow implies that the light already is there and merely is being occluded. The light is being blocked. This of course is the teaching of the Veda. Light is what is. Consciousness is what is. All that is. And this consciousness is shared by and available to all of us. So the guru, rather than bringing light to the student, is helping the student to remove that which stands in the way of his own light. A fine distinction, but an important one.
Now, what is it that must be removed? Ignorance. This word, too, is very telling. Ignorance is not the quality of not-knowing. To be ignorant of something means that we are ignoring that something; and in order to ignore anything, we first must know that thing. So the teacher helps the student to remove his habit of ignoring what he already knows. On the one hand, this idea puts an appropriate amount of responsibility on the student, rather than a too-strong dependence on the teacher; and there is the clear and distinct implication that the teacher is in no way the thing itself. The teacher is someone who sees more clearly than the student what needs to be removed, and is able to guide the student until the student can begin guiding him (or her) self.
As my own teacher put it to me, "He is no guru who does not bring the student to self-sufficiency." A true teacher looks forward to that time the student surpasses him.
So this celebration is really a celebration of consciousness and of all those in our individual journey who have helped us and continue to help us in this process of removing the clouds of ignorance from the skies of our consciousness.
For all of these teachers and all those to come, we gratefully say, "Jai Guru Deva!"
Tonight I will walk in the light of the full moon, soaking in the pure soma of consciousness, grateful for all the growth that has come and for all that is yet to come.
Swami-ji, Parmarth Niketan Ashram, Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh, India
All material copyright Jeff Kober
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