When my teacher, my Appa, Dr. Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy,
invited me to live with his family in India he took risks I didn’t
fully understand at the time. I
was but twenty years old, an eager student, devoted to learning, and to him. He had placed his trust in me and, no
matter what might happen, I meant to earn that trust each day. But that was the simplest of
matters. Appa wore his dignity, his
intellect and courage with such poise and decency that one always felt welcome, safe, and respected---even those who might not
have earned such privileged shelter.
He spoke so softly one had often to lean in to hear him. Yet this gentle voice was equally
resolute to invite every question. Nothing was beyond the pale. No matter how contrarian or probing the
query, he encouraged the all of it, it was a duty to ask, to doubt, to push
beyond the merely comfortable or consoling. With an
intention to empower critical awareness, it was Appa’s belief that belief itself
was far too often an obstacle to change, to serious learning, to engaging
knowledge as process rather than end. We don’t just have beliefs, we want to believe in beliefs. This is as much a liability as it is
ever an advantage.
“How can we learn if we are
unwilling to question? Our
questions include all that is discomforting, difficult, awkward, even painful. How can we expect to learn if we do not
risk error or challenge even our most cherished beliefs? We are here to have that
conversation.”
The invitation to live in his home might well have
jeopardized his standing in the Brahmin community or brought family members an
unwelcome or unnecessary exposure.
After all, the youngest of the children, nieces, and nephews were still
at home. Who exactly was this
young foreigner he had so wholly taken in? It was no obligation on his part. It was trust and no small compassion. It was risk and a clear sense of what
he deemed worth the risk.
“I was taken in by a family of
Diksitar priests at Chidambaram when just a child, when my mother was a widow,
penniless, homeless, and illiterate, when there wasn’t even enough in the
priest’s house to feed his family. But what did he do? He opened his heart
and he understood we were grateful.”
Appa’s home was rooted in tradition and orthopraxy, his
mother wore the blouse-less saffron widow’s sari from the time of his father's passing at just nine months of age, his brother-in-law a professional priest skilled in smarta and Vedic ritual brought a cast of colleagues and patrons
almost daily visiting the house.
But Appa was as revolutionary as he was committed to the value of his
ancient heritage. He had been born
into worlds he meant to change while embracing the occasions of greatness. And while his invitation might well
discomfort conservative elements in the community not as determined as he to
subvert their privileges of caste and sexism, Appa was unwavering in his commitment to create
what had been offered to him: a chance, an opportunity to make something honest
and enduring. This wasn’t just
about me. This was about everyone around him he could help, his
family and now the thousands of children who have over these many years passed
through the matriculation school he founded in Madurai. I still don’t fully understand how he made himself into such a person ---born into
abject poverty in a remote village in south India in the 1930s, with so very little
but his wits, a loving, strong mother, and just the splinter of a chance.
Whatever we might think about karma and consequences, sometimes we’re
just plain lucky. I knew that was my life when we met.
“Grace just comes: you don’t earn
it, you don’t deserve it, and you can’t pay it back. It’s lila, the
play that comes, as Krsna puts it in the Bhagavadgita,
‘by rare chance.’ You can say ‘thank you’ and you can offer your gifts. The best gift, of course, is yourself.”
Indian traditions praise the guru to supernatural ends. Such persons are not only regarded as
the indispensible sources of liberative wisdom, they are its embodied form. This is said so often, in so many scriptural
sources, that the normative claim is
tradition. With that too come
magic wands and holy ashes appearing out of nowhere, implicit claims of
implacable authority, and license to act beyond the reach of our ordinary human
accountability, beyond the boundaries of individual conscience, with indifference to
others and to society’s claims.
And Appa would have none of it.
“Guruji…” I said, wanting so badly to
say it that I might hear it for myself so he would know how I felt
about him. And how I wanted him to
be that guru. Up went his hand in abhaya mudra as he smiled and averred
his glance, at once to welcome fearlessness and to create a place safe for
fear.
“If you call me ‘guru’ we will tumble into a chasm of tradition
that implies submission when we could only mean respect and suggest deference. Everything we learn we learn from
traditions of learning. But these
traditions must seek ‘truth’ by discovering ways to revise themselves rather
than confirm their dogmas; to create new understandings that always challenge
and subvert their most cherished beliefs; we must be relentless to learn more and to change our minds. If we submit to gurus, to ultimates, to
absolutes, then at what cost to our conversation, what chance do we have? We must keep asking
the discomforting questions. And this
is where Indian traditions of the guru, especially Tantric traditions, have so
often been corrupted. They tell
you time and again to surrender all! But you must never abandon your power, your gifts, your own critical abilities. Nothing is more dangerous than certainty. Perfection is a claim that ends conversation because it
admits no change. Better we learn with our imperfections and from our mistakes. We become only less human when we believe the guru or the god or any such ‘realized
being’ is beyond the conditions of mortality and humanity. Let others find consolations where they
may, perhaps in such authority with claims to religious salvation. But I choose another path, a different path. Every tradition’s orthodoxy is another’s
heresy. Perhaps I am too happy to
be an apostate to tradition. But you
don’t think I invited you to live here because I wanted you to receive magical
initiation or because your ‘guru’ is perfect, do you? Your ‘guru’ is flawed like every human being and that is the truth we learn from, from each other, and from the
lessons of life. Our imperfection is
not the problem we are here to solve.
A conscious welcoming of ignorance is our gift: to be human is to
learn. That commitment we make to bind ourselves to what we understand is
valuable, that too is a teaching.”
Appa spoke often of his conflicted feelings about modern
gurus. How can we not admire their
efforts to build hospitals and open schools? And yet how can we overlook the abuse that invariably
follows when traditions endorse disciples to grant them spiritual immunity,
transcendental authority, and place them beyond the reach of human
accountability? From historical
texts in Sanskrit we get little sense of the social impact that gurus are meant
to create beyond their duty to educate.
“Teacher” is indeed the most
endearing and empowering sense of the word. Drenched instead in the theological language of immutable
knowledge, non-dualist or divine consciousness identity, and unconditional
recognition that is beyond critique, we are encouraged to profound acquiescence,
offered an aspiration to wonder while treated to claims of supreme experience
that are, at best, remote or unattainable in our current human birth. What is usually reserved for The
Almighty amongst theists, so many yogins confer upon their gurus. But Appa would have none of it.
You mean then there is no salvation from this human
condition?
“What I understand is this: there
is such a thing as good conversation.
Bring all of your thoughts,
your feelings, your values, your questions and doubts, bring yourself. Become the company you mean to keep and make that a gift to
others.”
Happy Guru Purnima.
Douglas Brooks
Bristol, New York
July 12, 2014
