Guru Danger

It seems to me that there are real dangers in following a teacher who is dead. It seems to me that there are real dangers in following a teacher (guru) who is alive. The mitigating factor in either scenario must be a sound moral compass. That has to be the deal.

The case against dead teachers is self evident. A follower can go way off the track and there is no one to bring her back to center. The words handed down can be mistranslated or badly distorted or actually lied about or manipulated by self serving followers. I shouldn't insult your intelligence with familiar examples, but I will. I recently heard a preacher on a Jesus radio station extorting his flock to get revenge about something. He said, "In the holy words of Jesus Christ himself, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' Shit ya. People are following this follower and there is no Jesus Christ around to say, "Wait a minute, fellow".

And you see followers on incredibly strict religious diets drinking Coka Cola because Coke wasn't invented when the rules were written. These are dumb examples, but you can expand them to the big stuff like The Inquisition, the massacres of infidels that are still going on in the name of peace. This is going to happen to MLK and Mandela, just watch. Either their radical revolutionary ideas are going to be watered down to pap or their words are going to be twisted. That is one reason the death of someone like Mandela is so deep. Whether he was active or not in the past few years, his very presence on this earth kept some people on the strait and narrow.

The great masters who walked this earth had unbending moral compasses. They didn't say, Thou Shall Not Kill unless someone is trying to steal your toaster oven. They didn't say Love Your Neighbor As Yourself  unless she is wearing a head scarf. The teachers (masters, gurus) of non-violence didn't say Use non-violence, but it is OK to whack your wife around. Sometimes we need live teachers.

On the other hand... We read often enough of live teachers who have done dastardly things to their followers. James Jones comes to mind, of course. People have been led to criminal acts by leaders who seem very evolved, or very appealing or very enlightened. Too many examples to count. My conclusion is that honing our personal moral compass and following only when it passes every inner test you can come up with, can we put ourselves at the feet of a teacher.

There is so much we have to learn. Let's go out and learn, but let us not lose our balance in the process.