The Teacher (Guru)
The realized guide who hands on the truth — for many traditions, indispensable to the path.
The guru is the spiritual teacher — the one who has realized the truth and can transmit it, guide the disciple past pitfalls, and in many traditions confer initiation. Hindu thought holds the living teacher to be all but indispensable: the scriptures are terse and easily misread, and the path needs a guide who has walked it. In the more devotional and tantric streams the guru is revered as a window onto, or even an embodiment of, the divine itself.
How it traveled
- VivekacūḍāmaṇiŚṛṅgeri (Sringeri) · 1400applies
Key passages(20)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)