Meeting The True Guru

"What and who is the true Guru?", that's the question which is often raised by many spiritual seekers. It is not easy to answer it. To put it simply, for ordinary people who are not enlightened yet, the true teacher is outside. To the one who newly enlightened, the true Master is inside. But for the spiritual seekers who have experienced perfect enlightenment, the true Guru is beyond outside and inside.

In the straightforward language of the West, the true Guru is often defined as the unobscured suchness. In other words, the innocence which shines bright. A true teacher in this framework is far from having a judgmental mind. Their mind is always plain and they view everything as they are. And from such an innocent mind, then shines the beautiful light of loving-kindness and compassion.

The Seeds of Light

In our age, It is hard to deny that children are one of the important symbolical Gurus. Especially because your kids do not give you an other choices except to take good care of them. If you are not in line with your spouse, there's the choice of getting divorce. If you are not matched with your boss, you can move to another workplace. But if you have problems with the kids, you have no choice of running away.

And if you are skillful enough, your life calling to take good care of the children can be transformed into a deep spiritual journey. For that reason, do not see your children as a burden of life. Learn to see children as fishermen see the ocean, or like farmers taking good care of their fields.

Small Is Beautiful

One day the venerable Mogalana (one of the close disciples of Lord Buddha) visited the hell realms. How surprised he was, in the hell realms there were a number of spiritual teachers. Some of them even leave messages to his disciples on earth, not to continue the teachings that they have always taught. Especially because the harder their students practice the teachings here on earth, the more the masters suffers in the hell realms.

In an age when there was Buddha and Avatar, there were a number of spiritual teachers who experienced spiritual down fall by reincarnating in the hell realm. It is unimaginable, what happened in the other time and the other place. And after learning from the experience of spiritual groups in the West which collapsed, there are some critical points that make spiritual families collapse.

In line with the spiritual growth of a teacher, many students usually come and pay some respect. Some of them even kiss the feet, praise the teacher, some others are donating goods and money. Without deep practice of mindfulness, these various forms of respect can easily increase the ego of the master significantly. And that's the important seed of spiritual down fall.

Home of Light

A friend who recently returned from visiting close relatives shared a touching story with me. In the mind of most people, when old age arrives, it is the children who should take good care of the parents. But what happened to this family is the reverse, the parents who grew old, they even have problems taking good care of themselves, but touchingly they must also take care of their daughter who is suffering from mental illness.

If the parent can grow in such a difficult life, in a sincere and genuine way, this suffering can be transformed into a deep spiritual journey. But what happened to the above mentioned parent, they experience anger everyday towards the daughter. They keep thinking and yelling that the daughter has brought a heavy burden in their old age.

Smile As Intelligence

One day a little boy was digging sands on the beach using his small hands. When he was asked what he was doing, with an innocence smile the little boy replied: "I want to put all water of ocean into my small well".

The same thing happen to many people in this age. Life and God are as wide as the ocean. But the human mind is similar to the small well. Sadly, the advancement of education in particular make some people arrogantly believe that they can understand everything by using mind alone. The result is predictable, there are countless alienated  souls everywhere. People feel uncomfortable in their own bodies.

A friend who spent his life for decades as a consultant to various large companies, as well as deeply understand the inner secrets of many corporate organizations shared a story, there are many people whose minds are very strong cause dangerous mistakes. They do not just make the organizations suffer, but also make a nation suffer.

The Art of Resting

Whenever animals in the forest are injured, they heal themselves simply by taking a deep rest. Surprisingly, many animals in the forest recover as a result of perfectly resting in the solitude and in the silence of the forest. That is one of the important symbolical message that often appears in the silence of the forest.

After meeting thousands of friends who have serious life problems in meditation sessions, the above symbolical message appears to be very true. Whenever meeting friends with very frightening diseases like cancer, souls who are deeply wounded by trauma of childhood, some have even tried to commit suicide many times, it is clear that their eyes need to open to the secret of taking a rest.

Even in the moment of sleep they are still disturbed by insomnia and nightmares that make them full of anger toward life. Some even said that they could not sleep at all for years. Again and again, it reminds us the importance of rest in daily life. Without the skill of taking a rest, any soul will certainly collapse.

The Inner Tree

A western psychologist interviewed a lot of people who have experience listening to other peoples problems. The result was very touching. Eighty percent of respondents said that they did not care. Twenty percent of them said they were happy to know that the other people have worse problems than themselves.

As we all know, the West knew civilization much earlier, they are much richer materially as well, but if in such an environment people do not care about each other, what  happens in developing countries where they know no school, where people are still fighting hard to feed themselves? As widely known in Eastern philosophy, there are always two sides of the same coin, we call life.

The touching tendency of civilization like this, on the one hand of course it makes us sad. But on the other hand it provides an invitation to start planting the inner trees. Without the perseverance to plant the inner trees, over a matter of time, life will have no shelter at all. Old age will be full of problems and disasters.