Common Ground: The Guru is Dead. Long Live the Guru.

October 2007 | Features

The Guru is Dead. Long Live the Guru.

Are spiritual teachers still valid in the modern age?

by John Kain

There is a scene in the recent documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple in which one of the few surviving members recounts a story of a woman commanded to strip naked and stand in front of Jim Jones and the board as punishment for doing something out of turn. The tale is chilling enough on its own, but made even more so in light of the horror (built upon the sordid accumulation of such abuses) to come — the massacre of 913 people on a warm Guyanese Saturday in November of 1978. Looking back at Jonestown over the span of nearly 30 years, the same questions arise: How could it happen? How could such a large number of people subjugate themselves so totally to one “spiritual” leader? Why were most blind to the obvious abuses? And finally, how could they give up their lives (and in many cases the lives of their children) for such a madman?

The mentor-student relationship is, in many ways, the cornerstone of every spiritual discipline. But in a time of Jim Jones and David Koresh, Ted Haggard and the Catholic Church scandals, with hard science and psychology continually unlocking the secrets of the universe and our inner selves, it’s easy to wonder if spiritual tutelage is possible, desirable or even necessary.

After significant study of the relationship between spiritual seeker and guide, I have come to believe that genuine teachers are still essential. As Thomas Merton — that most eloquent and literary Trappist monk — wrote, “We’ve become marvelous at self-delusion.” His words ring as true today. In fact, judging from the present state of the world, we appear to have perfected a most magnanimous relationship with self-deceit. Those of us who desire to “dither among the dark roots of existence” (as one poet described the spiritual quest), are often better served by finding a guide who has long traveled the path — who speaks the local language and can navigate the ups, downs and bumps in the road.

For the past two years, I have interviewed scores of spiritual teachers and their students in an effort to find what works, what doesn’t and how we can appreciate, within this subtle exchange of knowledge and power, the difference between the two. The relationship between teacher and student is a dynamic, complex and delicate union requiring from both parties a healthy combination of ethical vigilance, transparency, trust and the ability (or courage) to accept one’s own personality flaws. Jonestown is, most obviously, an extreme example of a guru-disciple relationship gone bad, but many of the themes of abuse — suppression of individual personalities, systematic humiliation, threats and isolation from the mainstream, to name a few — exist in lesser degrees in many current factions (spiritual and otherwise) at work in the world today.

But at its best, the spiritual mentor-student relationship teaches us how to get along with each other, ourselves and (perhaps most importantly) the natural world. Because of the recent breakdowns in institutionalized religion and the interest in fresh approaches to spirituality — with its melding of psychology, science, social action, feminism and the like — there is perhaps no better time than the present to explore a relationship with a spiritual guide. And with the future of our species increasingly dependent on ethical considerations over any other, true spiritual guidance may be the key to our very survival.

The Spiritual Traveler’s Guide to Finding a Guru
How do we know a healthy relationship when we see one? When I asked Sharron Allen — longtime disciple of and aid to Sufi master Murat Yagan — what she expected from her teacher and her spiritual practice in general, she told me, “I don’t trust a teaching that makes me feel good inside. I want to be broken down and built up again.” In the context of Jonestown, this statement might seem eerily horrifying, yet Sharron’s relationship with her teacher, Murat — as well as her interchange with her spiritual community — is one of the most nourishing and healthy I have seen.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is no one template of protection that we can cast over these relationships to ensure a safe, healthy, successful union. As Joan Chittister, the compassionately articulate and insightful Benedictine sister, told me, “People don’t fit into molds. Make your molds if it will make you feel better, but just about nobody is going to go there.” Ultimately the spiritual teacher-student exchange is about breaking molds — not creating them. Still there are guidelines to hold in mind as we negotiate this process.

Encouragingly the “old-style” guru-disciple model has given way — in many disciplines — to a new paradigm that gives the student much more responsibility and the teacher much less unchecked authority. Under the new model the spiritual teacher “no longer has power of attorney over the soul,” as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi described it to me. Reb Zalman, as he is fondly known, is the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement and a skilled synthesizer of spiritual and cultural patterns.

Before being absorbed into pop culture and attached to words like “fitness,” “software,” and “investment,” the word “guru” (Sanskrit for “weighty one” or “the destroyer of darkness”) originally referred to a teacher in the Hindu Yoga tradition. The guru-disciple relationship is characterized by an intense bond and is thought, in its traditional form, to extend beyond this lifetime. Though there are many permutations of the spiritual teacher-student exchange, we often believe the guru-disciple union to be the quintessential example of such a relationship. And because it is inherently devotional, it has, over time, often been a showcase for the best and the worst that the spiritual quest has to offer. This is nothing new, however. The Kula-Arnava-Tantra, a medieval text, warns the wary spiritual traveler, “Many are the gurus who rob the disciple of his wealth, but rare is the guru who removes the disciple’s afflictions.” And so it goes.

Here’s the rub: we often assume that a spiritual teacher is somehow more of a complete human than we are. As the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the insightful Tibetan teacher said, “When you hear of someone that possesses remarkable qualities, you regard them as significant beings and yourself as insignificant.” This is the paradox of the spiritual teacher-student relationship. Our perceived inadequacy or our burden of suffering — that feeling that often got us looking for a teacher in the first place — is reinforced when we look upon someone or something as “more advanced,” “wiser,” “more enlightened,” “pain free,” etc. We want what we think they “have.” This is why it is so important to find — if we are even interested in doing so — a gifted teacher, one who recognizes the traps where students get stuck and the heights from which teachers fall.

The wise and world-tested Tibetan lama Gehlek Rimpoche plainly told me, “When someone advertises this guru is great and did this and that or some organization says ‘this is our fantastic teacher, blah, blah, blah’ — personally, I think that is not so good.” It’s dangerous when a teacher believes that their personality is the essence that must be worshipped. As my teacher, Zen Master John Daido Loori, points out, “There is only one person who can grant spiritual authority, new or old, and that is the student. Most students, when they begin to study with a teacher, don’t realize they’re granting spiritual authority. But it is critically important to know when you are extending such authority.”

By being the party with the ability to grant authority, it is the student, not the teacher, who is in the power position in a mentor-disciple relationship. Yet often students, against good common sense, gladly hand over their power to a teacher. Or while working through a large dose of transference (playing out unmet needs from childhood) they fashion the teacher into a mother or father, or a god. Genuine teachers will not accept a student’s power and will have the skills to negotiate the messiness of psychological baggage and scores of other pitfalls.

I asked Reverend Mother Sudha Puri (teacher in the renowned Hindu lineage of Ramikrishna, of the Bhakti Yoga sect, which is very devotional) how she handled her student’s intense emotions. “I find I have to reduce a student’s devotional attitude so they are not dependent on me in that way,” she told me. “The teachings state that God-Guru-Vedas (the scriptures) are all one, but for a student to have me as their ishta (ideal) is, I think, awful for them and for me too. So I try to be very honest and clear with them, to accept their love and their gifts and their appreciation. But the fact of the matter is that if they get caught up in personality, it’s very damaging for them. I really don’t encourage that kind of devotion.”

Adyashanti, the dynamic Advaita Vedanta teacher, explained a similar method. “I tell people I’m not in a babysitting program. I’m not here to crush your ego. I don’t do that. Life’s going to do it for you. I’m not here to correct you. I can understand the value of it for some people at some time and why teachers play that role and all that, but I’m just not interested,” he told me. Sister Joan Chittister writes, “The role of the spiritual leader… is not to make martinets out of people; it is to lead them to spiritual adulthood where they themselves make the kind of choices that give life depth and quality.” Amen!

Spiritual seekers in the West have weathered many storms and scandals in the last several decades within both traditional and “new” religions. We have learned, through much pain and catastrophe, that spiritual teachers are human and not a little fallible. If we have not drowned in our own disillusionment (which can be, in manageable doses, a valuable “cleanser” for the spiritual journey) we might find a healthy maturity in this new vision of the religious landscape. We are now less likely (one hopes) to accept spiritual hierarchy without question, to bow in subjugation, and more likely to shrug off spiritual hypocrisy or patriarchy or cultural bigotry. This new model — where the spiritual teacher is less of a demigod and more human — evokes the student to be more responsible for their spiritual growth and to trust themselves more fully.
“It always comes back to my own mistrust of myself. This gets me into traps or trusting someone else more than I trust in myself,” Lisa Talesnick, disciple of Murat Yagan, told me when I asked about how she worked with her teacher. “Like my trust in Murat; when I have a deep trust in my true essence he meets me there.”

A true teacher guides us to self-trust, that’s the foundation of spiritual practice. This doesn’t mean we have to be completely clear; we can trust ourselves even though we are “marvelous at self-delusion.” Self-trust means not turning a blind eye to our own personal quagmire and acknowledging at the same time that there is often more to us than we perceive. When Sharron told me she wanted to be “broken down and built up again” by the teachings, she was saying it with a sure confidence in her own ability to be vulnerable without losing her sense of self. This is the difference between subjugation and freedom.

Twenty years ago Jack Engler, the psychotherapist and Buddhist practitioner, wrote, “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” He was referring to the idea that we need a strong and healthy sense of self as we journey deeper into spirituality. As students, we need to do our own work; we need to dig into our dark spots, accept our frailties and faults and get to know ourselves psychologically as well as spiritually. This is the best way of insuring a healthy relationship with a spiritual guide, and this is where the real work gets done.

Be aware that the spiritual journey can be serious business. “People think that spirituality is safe — that it’s warm and cuddly. It does have that side, but it’s also dangerous, and there are casualties along the way like anything else in life,” cautions Adyashanti. But for every one teacher gone astray there are ten good ones and even a few great ones — so, seeker, take heart.

John Kain (johnkain.net) has written for numerous publications including the Shambhla Sun, Spirituality and Health and Yoga Journal. He is a former associate publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. His book, A Rare and Precious Thing: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Studying with a Spiritual Teacher, was recently published by Bell Tower/Random House.

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