| |
Enlightenment: The Guru's Trap
Andrew Paterson—09/2002 |
| |
Any teacher who declares his or her enlightenment,
using it to attract a following, is greatly harmful
to spiritual progress. |
| |
 PIRITUALITY, for many people, has become a quest for that elusive
state called enlightenment, when the confines of the
ego are permanently burst, leaving a state of everlasting
bliss, inner emptiness and unity with All That Is.
This enlightening process is usually believed to be
gradual, taking many lifetimes of rebirth and effort
to complete before the individual is able to strip
away all the layers of ignorance and illusion to reveal
the open heart of truth. With its roots in Buddhism
and Hinduism, this system of spiritual development
has gained huge popularity in the West (especially
in New Age circles) because it is so much more sophisticated
than the fairy stories of heaven and hell after a single
lifetime preached by the Semitic religions — Christianity,
Judaism and Islam. |
| |
| As Hinduism is the religion of the caste system in
India, it mixes the elitism of strict hierarchy and
a multitude of gods with this gradual awakening of
the individual, which is often influenced by divine
intervention. This can make it quite confusing to Westerners,
for much of its practice is in ceremonies to different
deities and the devotion to a particular spiritual
master or guru. Buddhism, on the other hand, is essentially
Hinduism stripped of its gods, superstitions and hierarchical
structure, with the emphasis on the perfection of the
individual through his or her own actions (under the
guidance of a master who is not a god or divine, just
someone like ourselves who is more experienced on this
path to liberation). In fact, Buddhism is more a system
of psychology than a religion, for you don't have to
believe in this or that god to develop spiritually.
This is why it is so attractive to the agnostic (and
atheistic) Western mind. |
| |
| Most of us know the story about the Buddha and how
he cut through the illusions and suffering of this
world to find a state that was real — the state
of enlightenment. If you have ever seen the film Little
Buddha you will see the wonderful depiction of this
process: Gautama sits under the Bodhi tree and fearlessly
faced the armies of Mara — the Lord of Desire and
Death — and he defeats Mara to become a Buddha — an
Awakened One. When he reached this state, that was
it… he was home; he had reached his destination.
There was no more spiritual work to do because there
were no more layers of illusion for him to strip away
(although this was just the start of his teaching work,
showing others this path to liberation). |
 |
| Many of us love this story because it depicts an
ordinary human, like you and me, struggling against
all odds to heroically reach the ultimate goal of unity
with All That Is. We can identify with the Buddha's
suffering on realizing that death and separation will
be experienced by all of us at some stage, which is
why suffering is recognized by Buddhism as an integral
part of life. But instead of avoiding the issue, as
many of us do, the Buddha faced it head on and found
within himself that which was immortal. It wasn't his
body; it wasn't his mind; it wasn't even his spirit;
it was his basic consciousness. And by identifying
only with that which is immortal, he broke the cycle
of death and reached a state of absolute truth. He
became enlightened. |
| |
| What the Buddha did to reach this state, and what
countless masters before and after him have done too,
can also be done by us. This was the Buddha's message:
all of us can awaken from this illusion because he
awoke, and he was just an ordinary human being. However,
the delusion is so strong that we usually need the
guidance of a master in order to work our way to realization.
(This is similar to the film Matrix, in which Keanu
Reeves lives in a world of delusion without realizing
it until he is liberated by those outside the illusion.)
Those guides are called masters, gurus or simply teachers. |
| |
| Throughout history, there have been many fine and
upstanding gurus who have taught the path to enlightenment
and have demonstrated a great kindness and love for
humanity. Usually (but not always), they have been
from Eastern cultures which has a culture and a mythology
which encourages such development. These cultures are
also deep enough to prevent any particular guru from
hijacking ancient wisdom and using it to his or her
own end, although they have, of course, produced some
charlatans — individuals who have feigned enlightenment
for individual glory, attention and through expectation.
Fortunately, the damage of their masquerade is somewhat
limited by a system that pretty much defines a guru's
general behaviour, and offers many alternatives teachers. |
|
| Problems arose when gurus started moving out of their
original cultural context and set up ashrams and spiritual
centres in Western societies. Suddenly, he found himself
(and it usually was a he) in a situation far different
from that which he was used to, one which challenged
his "enlightenment" in ways that it had never
been challenged before. Most coped with the challenge
admirably, seeding Western spirituality with genuine
paths to awakening. However, a string of shameful abuses
(sex, alcohol, drugs, power and general excess) were
perpetrated by a few high profile gurus, despite their
brilliance as teachers. Many of their students, who
had opened their hearts and minds (and wallets) to
these "masters", were used and abused. (Tibetan
Buddhism — with the exception of a few brilliant
rogues like Trungpa — tends to be the least abusive
because the training a monk goes through is institutionalized
in universities of spiritual learning and involves
many different teachers. This system is therefore far
less open to abuse than one operated by a single despotic
guru lineage.) |
| |
| Discipline plays a prominent role in the training
of most Eastern spiritual teachers, and so such abuses
were and are fortunately uncommon. The real problems
arose when Westerners, who had spent time with Easter
gurus and learned to model their enlightened behaviour,
set themselves up as enlightened masters without having
done the necessary work. Many have had genuine spiritual
awakenings, but without the realization that the path
to true awakening is littered with many minor and major
awakenings before one could even suggest full enlightenment.
So these Westerners have publicly proclaimed their
enlightenment and collected together their own band
of disciples on the strength of that proclamation (in
the East by contrast there is a whole tradition to
recognizing whether somebody is enlightened… and
it is usually third party). |
| |
| Lacking genuine wisdom and the understanding of the
subtle complexity of the inner realms and the way that
we are entangled in illusion, these teachers tend to
be more direct and simplistic, presenting their own
enlightenment as the solution to others' spiritual
quest, in the hope that their realization will rub
off on their students. Of course, techniques of meditation
and spiritual contemplation are taught, but not usually
with much skill or experience. The message is primarily
one of "worship me and feel free". Enlightenment
becomes a gift in return for worship. And in the material
West we just love the idea of spirituality being reduced
to a thing which can not only be bought in the spiritual
market place, but one which can never be taken away
from us! |
|
| This is not to say that Western masters are all fakes.
Most are highly developed individuals with the wisdom
never to present themselves as enlightened masters.
But the ones who do present themselves in that way
set themselves and their students up for disaster.
And there is little point us reasoning that they must
be enlightened because we feel enlightened around them
because we all underestimate the immense power of projection
and expectation that is innate to human psychology.
We pride ourselves on our ability to "feel someone
out" when in fact we are relying on subtle micro-cues
that are starting to be identified in psychology and
which can be mimicked by the less scrupulous and conscious. |
| |
| Most false teachers are probably not even aware that
they are not what they think they are. When we try
to awake from a dream, it is all too easy to dream
that we are awake. The illusion is insidious. Human
beings are masters at deluding themselves and others
for which there are a myriad of psychological reasons — most
of them unconscious. Often groups of people will get
together in a shared deception, like individuals acting
in a play which seems real. One plays the enlightened
master whilst the others play his disciples. But illusions
can be psychologically and spiritually painful when
the curtain eventually falls and the actors rediscover
their unbearably ordinary lives. |
| |
| The context in which we meet a guru also determines
our reaction to them. Unfortunately, we invariably
meet a guru or teacher on their own turf, where they
are king. We find ourselves right in the middle of
the reverence with which the followers hold the master
and in that context it is naturally very easy for us
to project our concept of an enlightened master onto
the individual. (If, on the other hand, we met them
in the street wearing normal clothes, not knowing who
they are and without seeing their followers, we would
be a lot less likely to feel that buzz.) |
|
| Deciding whether a person is a realized master is
both a leap of faith and a waste of time. There is
a misconception that only an enlightened master is
useful to us. If that were the case, there wouldn't
be many teachers or students! A teacher can be a fantastic
guide without being enlightened. He or she only has
to be a little further down the path from us, and to
interact with us personally for us to receive great
benefit. Seeing imperfection in that teacher is actually
a benefit for in doing so we are less likely to put
them on a pedestal and give away our own power and
responsibility. This is the origin of the saying: "If
you meet the Buddha along the road, kill him!" We
must use our spiritual fire to find the Buddha within,
not to worship him without. (When a Buddhist bows in
front of a statue of the Buddha or in front of a living
master, she is not worshiping a god; instead, she is
bowing to the representation or embodiment of the Buddha
inside herself. She is honouring her own potential
to awaken.) |
| |
| Central to the process of awakening is detaching
ourselves from the illusion that we are a special individual
and that we deserve or need this or that. As it is
our desires that attract us to this illusion — the
desire to be special, the desire to make money, the
desire to have sex, the desire to be spiritual — central
to spiritual progress must be the detachment from desire.
This is done through a formal process called meditation
which is an exercise of sitting still and practicing
observing what is going on in our heads without being
pulled into our thoughts, feelings and fantasies. |
| |
| Many people mistakenly believe that in meditation
we are trying to empty our minds. Whilst, with years
of practice, this will eventually happen, trying to
do this in any way is completely counterproductive.
Meditation is like a mini journey to awakening: we
learn to see what is in front of us and accept it 100%
without becoming attached to it; we do not try to control
the process because control is just another form of
attachment (to a certain outcome). In the same way,
if we hold any attachment or desire for enlightenment,
it will elude us. That is the paradox of spiritual
development, and is why true spiritual masters are
extremely unlikely to announce their state of enlightenment:
it is unhelpful to both themselves and to their students
or followers, and is used primarily by unscrupulous
characters to attract followers. (The Buddha claimed
he was awake 2.5 thousand years ago, but that was at
a time when the concept of enlightenment was in its
infancy and as yet untainted by expectation.) |
| |
But as in meditation, reaching that state of emptiness
in no way guarantees that we are there for good. The
state of awakeness is not an identity, but mindfulness
consciously maintained in each and every moment. There
are many examples of awakened teachers who, for one
reason or another, slipped back into delusion. As Suzuki
Roshi said, "…there are no enlightened people,
there is only enlightened activity." If we hold
this in mind, we are far less likely to be duped by
false teachers trying to hook us with their exalted
context-dependent identities. It is unfortunately second
nature for human beings to view others as things (un-divide-uals)
and not simply a process of consciousness. If we could
change our perception of what a person is, we would
be a lot closer to realization ourselves. That can
only be done by introspection — going inside and
seeing the process of consciousness and identity in
ourselves. We ask, "Who am I?", and we learn
for ourselves the the ephemeral nature of identity.
Only then are we free from being manipulated by "who" or "what" somebody
claims to "be"; we are free from the Guru's
trap. |
| |
| |
|
|
| If you meet the
Buddha along the road, kill him! |
| Buddhist saying |
| |
| |
| |
| Andrew Paterson is an independent writer currently living in London. He has no affiliation to any religious or political organisation. To contact him, please email . |
|
