Kabir on Guru
Wishing you all a Happy Guru Purnima.
While purnima signifies fullness and completeness (of the moon), a guru for me is an in-between idea. I generally don't consider myself as guru to anyone. I try to be an interpreter, as against an intermediary. An intermediary is required but is only a mechanical movement of goods from one place to another (goods in this case would be ideas and concepts). An interpreter thinks, evaluates, wonders, adds flavour and colour that are unique before the hand over and during that hand over. As teachers, we are interpreters of the world and all that it contains, for our students.
Kabir writes:
Guru Govind donon khade, ka ke laagun paaye?
Balihaari Gurudev ki, jine Govind diyo bataaye
Both Guru and Govind stand before me
Whose feet should I touch first?
I surrender to the Guru
Who showed me the path to Govind.
This path to Govind is perhaps not a simple road to an already existing god. I understand it to be an hermeneutic interpretation. And the one who does the interpretation is even greater than the one interpreted, similar to Borges's idea of the reader being greater than the writer.
"Guru" is an incredibly rich metaphor for Kabir. He is, among others, a kumhaar (potter), a shikaari (hunter), a soorma (warrior), a baniya (trader), a bhediya (secret informer), and a rangrez (dyer). One could write about each, a thousand faces of the guru.
Satguru chadhe shikaar pe, haath main laal kabaan
Moorakh moorakh bach gaye, koi maara sant sujaan.
The guru's out on a hunt
Red bow and arrow in hand
The fools escape unhurt
A real seeker is stuck down!
Ek daal do panchhi baitha, ek guru ek chela
Chela vo jo phal-phool khaave, guru nirantar khela
Two birds perch on a branch
The guru and the disciple
The disciple eats of the fruit
The guru plays ceaselessly.
I would like to hear what you think about the guru who plays while the disciple eats.
And lastly, one must, as a guru and as a human, understand the limits of our strivings and ambitions.
Kabir says,
Ye sab guru hain had ke, behad ke guru naahin
Behad aapo upje, anubhav ke ghar maanhi.
All these are gurus of limitations
Not gurus of the unbound
In the house of experience
The unbounded arises spontaneously.
(All translations by Vipul Rikhi)
