Salutation to Guru, A Spiritual Master

Guru devotion is not cooking, cleaning, washing and giving money to the Gurus. Guru devotion is not just about crying, feeling sad or getting emotional when you talk about your Guru. Those are small, small parts of it, an extension of Guru devotion.

When you think about your Guru, you think about a person who is extraordinary. Therefore, you cry because you have never met such a person who has had such an impact on you. You cry because you are connected to him as a disciple, and therefore you should push yourself towards your commitments.

Real Guru devotion is about developing and keeping your spiritual qualities. You do not let go of your commitments, you develop the qualities that you see your Guru embodies, that make you cry. Guru devotion is about keeping your promises and doing your sadhanas at all cost. Guru devotion is about not harming another person, being very kind to others and becoming better and better. Real Guru devotion is about destroying the self-cherishing mind. All that is Guru devotion because that devotion leads to your inner Guru, your natural state of mind - kindness, commitment and clarity.

People think that when they submit themselves to the Guru, they become a slave. No way! If you were an indentured servant in the olden days, you may have been made into a slave. But this is not the olden days! And you have to ask yourself who you are "indenturing" yourself to. A wealthy land owner? Some noble who owns 500 acres and makes you work in the fields every day? Or are you "indenturing" yourself to a spiritual person who is training you like a spiritual athlete, to put you in the ultimate competition so you do not lose out at the time of death?

We thought that going to school every day was a prison but we gained freedom from that - we gained education so we can do what we want now. Submitting to a qualified Guru or a Guru who cares about us, who is sincere and who has love, is like everything else in life - by submitting and listening to someone who can give us knowledge and show us the methods to benefit and develop ourselves, we will advance in anything we want to do.

If we need to be told the same thing again and again, it reflects our selfishness. If the Guru gives us instructions to do something and we say no, then we have not submitted. If we show anger to our teachers, we fight back, we ignore our teachers; if we always turn around the instructions they give us, forget, and have to be reminded, won't that be the same with everything else that we do in our lives?

If these people choose to be purely selfish, and they come up against a Guru who challenges that selfishness, they either submit or they run. Some students are smart and they do a little at a time. It starts off as little but they push themselves to do it all the way eventually. There is no student who comes in and is immediately perfect in all his actions but his aspiration, and working towards it, makes a very big difference.