Guru Nitya and the Guru Tradition: An ‘Ekalavya’ Perspective

 

Ekalavya is a character from the Indian epic Mahābhārata. Legend says that he approached Drōna, the master archer, with the intention of learning archery from him. The request was summarily rejected on the ground that Ekalavya is a low-born forest dweller. Ekalavya went in to the forest and fashioned a statue of Drōna, as a symbol of accepting Drōna as his guru. Finding guruhood in the statue and adoring it, he began a well disciplined self-study and became an expert archer, excelling even those who learned directly from Drōna.

 

The legend goes further to what happened next and offers multidimensional inferences in its entirety. But, for the metaphorical purpose in the context of this note, Ekalavya’s self-study part is sufficient and it has been quoted to get an answer to the question of whether I am competent to pen about Guru Nitya, as I ‘see’ him, just after attending his discourses several times and a mere one time conversation with him. Ekalavya had set a model, a model to prove that a long term guru-disciple contact in the physical realm is not always necessary for an osmotic exchange between them; the osmosis can happen even from a distance, provided the student has the dedication and open mindedness to receive it. So, this is an ‘Ekalavya Perspective’ of how I see three aspects related to Guru Nitya: the making of the Nitya Chaitanya Yati as he is known today, his unique personality, and what was his dream. Of course, the inspiration is not his statue, it is his own words; not only what is given ‘in’ his words, it is also ‘through’ it.

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Making of a Guru:  The Sculptor and the Sculpture

 

Yātra in Malayalam means ‘travel’ and Guru Nitya gave this title to his travelogue. It is not just a narration of his spatial travel, it takes us to different philosophical terrains too. There are also flashes of recalling, with autobiographical touches. One such remark is related to how his own guru molded disciples. Nataraja Guru’s style of shaping disciples was not like an artist painting a picture. He was like a sculptor, carving a statue from black granite using chisel and hammer. There was no compromise to chip off all projections in the personality of the disciple, which he considered ‘unwanted’ in the final shape of the statue. Naturally, it may be painful and the pain can be directly proportional to the ego of the disciple. But that pain is inevitable for a mass of ‘black granite’ to transform into a beautiful figure hidden in it. Elsewhere Guru Nitya elaborated a ten year process of this making, the culmination of which was “he becoming Nataraja Guru’s and Nataraja Guru becoming his.” The ‘sculpture’ carved by Nataraja Guru is unique, but Guru Nitya also wrote that he did not follow the method of his guru to polish disciples, he is more of a ‘painter’ rather than a ‘sculptor.’

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Personality:  The ‘Manōrenji’

 

One of the biographers of Narayana Guru, Swamy Dharmānandaji, uses the metaphor of a flower to compare the peculiarity of Guru’s life. This flower is Manōrenji ,which, according to the author, is a rare species seen in certain regions of Western Ghats, a mountain range of South India. Its literal meaning is ‘one that unifies with mind or giving joy to mind.’ This flower may be considered as a universally unique one, so much so that all the fragrances of the world are inherent in it! Smell this flower with the fragrance of a particular flower or fruit in mind, we feel the same scent emanating from it! The more diverse the fragrances a person is familiar with, the more s/he can appreciate the flower through different perspectives. Conversely, those who are chummy with a single flower may find the view of another person contradictory.

 

Dharmānandaji’s choice of this metaphor is not a mere wild guess. He had personal contact with Narayana Guru and so he could notice how people assessed the Guru through various perspectives, each limited to their own minimal level of value appreciation. His observation is a metaphorical equivalent of what can be said in plain language as ‘what Narayana Guru is not.’ To a certain extent, this metaphor is applicable to Guru Nitya too. He received thousands of letters seeking solutions to a wide range of issues, from the most mundane to highly subtle philosophical problems. His replies to these letters reveal the manōrenji aspect of his personality—a compassion personified human being, philosopher, psychologist, personal counselor, contemplative ‘scientist’, poet, litterateur, artist, social scientist, political commentator, and so on.

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A not so noticed aspect of his writings is a prophetic prediction of Indian politics. From 2014 onwards the politics of India attained a new turn. We can find a hint in one of his Malayalam articles, matham rāshtreeyam matharāshtreeyam (Religion Politics Communal Politics), to infer that he foresaw this spin decades ago. This foresight is as well a clear proof of how masterfully Guru Nitya applied dialectical methodology, not only in philosophy and psychology but to analyze the flow of history too.

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World Citizens: The Dream

 

Although the letters of Guru Nitya are in public domain after his Samadhi, originally these were purely personal communications, one to one correspondences literally. In these letters he did not hesitate to disclose his ‘inner profile’, without any veil, to many souls dear to him. In one of the letters he wrote:  “Even if I happen to belong to Narayana Gurukulam, if there is a guru in me, that guru should not be in the possession of anybody.” Further, he adds that he is not representing just Narayana Guru and Nataraja Guru alone and clarified that he lived with the responsibility of a guru who considered himself as a representative of the entire guru tradition, from Vyasa to those who are yet to emerge tomorrow. So he was a guru and world citizen, who transcended the boundaries of time and space.

 

Dreaming a one world is the natural manifestation of the life of a universal guru; a world citizen’s dream will be to create more and more world citizens. Dreams can’t materialize in its own way; certain basic institutional structure is inevitable as the vehicle for the transformation. For this purpose, Narayana Guru had a wish for a Universal School to teach unitive wisdom. Giving full attention to this wish of Narayana Guru, Nataraja Guru founded a Brahmavidya Mandir (Institute of Science of the Absolute ). By adding an academic tone to the name, Guru Nitya renamed it as East—West Universe of Brahmavidya. Now, as the centenary of Narayana Gurukula is over and the birth centenary of Guru Nitya has ushered in, it seems that the challenge before us is this great dream of the guru tradition.