Saturday, July 28, 2007

Guru Purnima


What is Guru Purnima?
Just as the moon shines by reflecting the light of the sun, and glorifies it, all disciples can dazzle like the moon by gaining from their Gurus, their masters and their teachers. The history of this day is that it is sacred to the memory of the great sage Vyasa who edited the four Vedas, wrote the 18 Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Srimad Bhagavata. Vyasa even taught Dattatreya, who is regarded as the Guru of Gurus.

What is a Guru? The sanskrit root"Gu" means darkness or ignorance. "Ru" denotes the remover of that darkness, therefore one who removes darkness of our ignorance is a Guru. This is a day to give thanks to all our teachers and those who have enlightened us whoever they may be.

"Often what is universal is not personal and what is personal does not belong to everyone. What is "mine" and what is "universal" is completely opposite. This is the cause of fear, greed, jealousy and lack of contentment. On this Guru Purnima wake up and realise that the Lord of the Universe is very personal to you. Your personal guru is the guru of the whole world. The guru is your very Self and your Self is the very life in every being. Make the universal personal, it makes you richer, wiser, stronger. Make the personal universal; you will find freedom, compassion and love".
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ~ Guru Purnima ~ 1997 Tahoe City

2 comments:

rads said...

very nice. Thanks. I was quite clueless thought I kenw it was Guru Pournima over the weekend. :)

I have immense respect and awe for teachers. It's hard to imagine a discipline in life without them..

Wellingtonbala said...

Thanks Rads. Yes, Gurus are needed to have discipline and focus towards the goals.