What Is The Guru Function? | Mark Whitwell
Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, the man who brought Yoga forth from ancient times to present, would say,
“Anyone who says that they are a guru is not a guru.”
That’s a technical statement, actually.
If you say you are a guru, you are not a guru. The reason being is that the guru is not an identity. You cannot say that I am a guru because it is not a social identity. It is not even a personal identity. It is not something to be. It is a function: a function of mother nature, a function of nurturing, a function of caring. And that function needs to be there.
In the ancient history of humanity, there was such a thing as guru. It is deep in the wisdom traditions. It is only in recent decades that a mess has been created around it and the word has been toxified by people claiming it and using it as a power mechanism and as a way of influencing people. Frankly, most people who become gurus become gurus out of fear, as a way of controlling their social circumstance.
We can purify the guru function and step free of it misuse and abuse. The guru is more than idea. The coconut tree is not an idea. The coconut tree is existing; the guru exists; nurturing exists, and the universal means of spiritual transmissions, healing transmission, or you might say Yoga transmission, is this tangible, actual relationship between two actual people.
Freedom from social limit
In order for people to become free from the social patterning of limit and restriction and presumed separation, this intervention of nurturing, this nurturing function of Mother Nature comes in and a relationship is formed between you and the student.
Within the context of that relationship, you share some practical tools, some practical advice, and you fit a Yoga practice to the needs of that person. Because you have overcome suffering yourself, you understand how to help that person.
When I did this book The Heart of Yoga in 1995 with my teacher Desikachar, we were walking along the beach, and I proposed the title The Art of Yoga. And I thought, I like this title. We continued walking and a few minutes later, he suddenly said
“Ah I know the correct title of the book. It is The Heart of Yoga.”
Then he went onto say that the heart of Yoga is the relationship between the teacher and the student. The actual relationship. It was a wonderful moment.
Ordinary Buddhas
As a Yoga teacher, do not be dissuaded from the guru function because it has has been toxified, especially in America where anybody of public note that stood up and said I am guru or I am swami has been brought to their knees through using that function as a mechanism of structural influence, and money, and sex.
In the modern world, an entire language has developed around the rejection of the guru function. People say, I am my own guru, or that the guru is within. People don’t want to face up with having an actual relationship with somebody. It’s too fiery and too demanding on both sides. We have to really be there for each other and relate, its not a passive customer service role. And nor is it glamourous. The usual idea of guru that’s popularized as some know it all who sits in a robe in some special social status, it’s not that. But it is the most important job in the world, to free somebody.
The guru is not even a perfect person who has no life problems. You can still have problems. You don’t need to be completely resolved and free of difficulties in life. Everybody is working through their life.
But you know what it is to love somebody. And love anybody for that matter. And you yourself are practicing a daily participation in the nurturing force of reality itself. So then anybody who comes to you and says,
“I would like Yoga”
You say, great! You’ve been asked to give Yoga so you give it. You make that intervention.
Right Sexuality
Most of the famous self-proclaimed gurus teach celibacy as some sort of ideal. They do not teach intelligent and honest sexual practice and they hold no sexual wisdom. Many of them have been teaching celibacy while having sex with their students on the side.
Even the idea, the religious idea, that if you are some sort of realized person then you no longer have anything to do with sex or that you’ve gone beyond it is an idea that makes sex vulgar. It diminishes the power and beauty of sexual intimacy as if it’s a lesser condition.
Such a life-denying philosophy and practice is the very problem itself that causes sexual deviance. The Catholic Priests who are pedofiles are victims of that. Sure they are sick and if they’re criminals its got to be acknowledged as criminality and dealt with, there’s no question about that, but if you are a young man who grows up and is in the church and he wants to do good for society, he wants to be a good person, so he joins the church and they take his sex away from him, they get him away from women, the next thing in his forties his sex comes out as an aberration because of what’s been denied. So they’re all victims.
My teacher U.G. called Sex the most demanding force in Mother Nature. It is completely natural and must be made honest and positive through both a Yoga practice and a sexual practice that you commit to within your love relationship with your special partner.
Our Job
This is what we need on planet earth right now. The mutual affection between actual people in ordinary friendship, real friendship, real affection, real caring. No spiritual idealism. No reaching for anything that we are not already in. And being that for others in local community. Helping others become that too. This is our job now.
To let everybody on earth realize that they are living in this abundance, this beauty, that is the quality of life itself. You are the beauty. You are the beauty. The beauty of the sunset over the water, the beauty of the trees, the beauty of the birds, is the same beauty that stands in your own body. It’s the same beauty that is your actual condition. You are that beauty. You don’t have to capture it. Because you are it. You don’t even have to find it. Because you are it.
Your Yoga is only your participation in this fact. You’ll practice this actually, naturally, non-obsessively and you’ll go and teach it in ever widening circles of friends. That’s what we’ve got going on here.
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Read More:
https://markwhitwell.medium.com/pranayama-for-beginners-mark-whitwell-b304764f462e
