Gurus and Disciplic Traditions
What is the system for learning the practices and teachings of Hinduism?
In Hinduism the spiritual teachings from the Vedas are handed down in a continuous line from spiritual master to disciple. These spiritual lineages or traditions are called sampradayas (For further information on spiritual lineages or sampradayas see here) . Every practicing Hindu will have a teacher, called a guru. Gurus are not the same as a priest or an ecclesiastical position that someone is appointed to. A guru is considered to be a guru based on their consciousness or level of spiritual realization, not their ecclesiastical position in a religious organization or church.
A practitioner of Hinduism is encouraged to seek out a qualified guru and take instruction from him/her. In Hinduism there is not just one guru but there can be many gurus at any given time. The numerous qualifications of a guru are listed in the Vedas, but one of the most important is that he himself must be a disciple of a bona fide guru. One is discouraged from blindly accepting an unqualified person as their guru, but rather should prayerfully turn to the Lord within their own heart and yoga scripture in order to determine whether they can actually trust a particular person as a guru or representative of God.
There is a common misconception that a person simply declares their allegiance to a guru and then they’re saved. This is a mistake. Guru is a teacher, and he gives the teachings or the practices that the individual students must then apply to their lives, and that individual is basically then responsible for his own spiritual well-being. Other people make the mistake of thinking that a guru somehow becomes the director of a disciple. A bona fide guru impresses upon the disciple that he, the individual, must be the one making the decisions in his life and take complete personal responsibility. The guru doesn’t do the walking for you; he can only point the way. A spiritually lazy person doesn’t get to just declare his allegiance to a guru and bow down to him and by that alone become spiritually advanced or “saved.” He or she has to apply the Vedic practices of meditation and so forth and engage in his own spiritual work.
No one should blindly follow any particular guru. They have scripture to check what’s being said and so it’s not a situation where a guru can just create their own truth. A teacher has to teach within the framework of Vedic scripture. In that sense you don’t have the kind of situation you have with someone like Jim Jones or others who create their own truth and people follow it because of the charisma of the teacher.
Out of ignorance, many Westerners want to draw parallels between the ancient Hindu tradition of guru and disciple and the proliferation of messianic and doomsday cults prevalent as perversions/offshoots of Judeo-Christian religions. There is no similarity between Hinduism and these distortions of the Judeo-Christian religions, and attempting to draw this parallel is highly offensive to the nearly one billion Hindus worldwide.
In Hinduism the spiritual teachings from the Vedas are handed down in a continuous line from spiritual master to disciple. These spiritual lineages or traditions are called sampradayas (For further information on spiritual lineages or sampradayas see here) . Every practicing Hindu will have a teacher, called a guru. Gurus are not the same as a priest or an ecclesiastical position that someone is appointed to. A guru is considered to be a guru based on their consciousness or level of spiritual realization, not their ecclesiastical position in a religious organization or church.
A practitioner of Hinduism is encouraged to seek out a qualified guru and take instruction from him/her. In Hinduism there is not just one guru but there can be many gurus at any given time. The numerous qualifications of a guru are listed in the Vedas, but one of the most important is that he himself must be a disciple of a bona fide guru. One is discouraged from blindly accepting an unqualified person as their guru, but rather should prayerfully turn to the Lord within their own heart and yoga scripture in order to determine whether they can actually trust a particular person as a guru or representative of God.
There is a common misconception that a person simply declares their allegiance to a guru and then they’re saved. This is a mistake. Guru is a teacher, and he gives the teachings or the practices that the individual students must then apply to their lives, and that individual is basically then responsible for his own spiritual well-being. Other people make the mistake of thinking that a guru somehow becomes the director of a disciple. A bona fide guru impresses upon the disciple that he, the individual, must be the one making the decisions in his life and take complete personal responsibility. The guru doesn’t do the walking for you; he can only point the way. A spiritually lazy person doesn’t get to just declare his allegiance to a guru and bow down to him and by that alone become spiritually advanced or “saved.” He or she has to apply the Vedic practices of meditation and so forth and engage in his own spiritual work.
No one should blindly follow any particular guru. They have scripture to check what’s being said and so it’s not a situation where a guru can just create their own truth. A teacher has to teach within the framework of Vedic scripture. In that sense you don’t have the kind of situation you have with someone like Jim Jones or others who create their own truth and people follow it because of the charisma of the teacher.
Out of ignorance, many Westerners want to draw parallels between the ancient Hindu tradition of guru and disciple and the proliferation of messianic and doomsday cults prevalent as perversions/offshoots of Judeo-Christian religions. There is no similarity between Hinduism and these distortions of the Judeo-Christian religions, and attempting to draw this parallel is highly offensive to the nearly one billion Hindus worldwide.