Fire That Guru!

File under: Gurubusting

A kind reader turned us on to this essay by Tijn Touber in The Huffington Post that was originally published in Ode Magazine:

So we don’t really lose our “Buddha nature” because of what we don’t know, but because of what we are convinced we know because others have told us so—by clinging to borrowed, unshakable “truths.” As soon as we establish something as fact or pass judgment on it (“This is the way it is”), we lose contact with reality, with the greater whole. We reduce the truth—inasmuch as it exists—to a word, a document or a method and close ourselves to learning and growing.

We like to call these occluding ideas about self-realization, our numero uno bugaboo and the primary reason all these hapless devotees will never come to their own self-realization in this life. It's all because they've stuffed their heads full of the bullshit their guru is using as a ladder to climb up on that pedestal in their mind. It destroys the whole reason they're supposed to have a guru in the first place, but unfortunately, it's also a really good business practice for someone counting on being God in the eyes of a paying client.

Please read the whole article. It reminds us a bit of the piece Gp friend Doug Rushkoff wrote a few years back, but one that delves a bit further into the socio-cultural implications (and the unavoidable, inherent problems) of gurudom in the West.