A Quote by Huston Smith
Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
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In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity.
Teaching a practice can also be a hindrance if it becomes one's identity. To be a spiritual teacher is a temporary function. I'm a spiritual teacher when somebody comes to me and some teaching happens, but the moment they leave I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. If I carry the identity of spiritual teacher, it will cause suffering.
"Spiritual teacher" of course is not an identity. "Spiritual teacher" is a function. Somebody comes, the teaching happens. Somebody leaves, there's no spiritual teacher left.
At a certain point I left my spiritual teacher because I began to see the limitations of my teacher, who was a very powerful occultist, but who I thought was, to some extent, limiting others in their spiritual growth.
One could say that everybody in this world has a spiritual teacher. For most people, their losses and disasters represent the teacher; their suffering is the teacher.
It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.
If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.
In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?...His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker.
I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher.
I believe that the Hindu faith has developed the spiritual in its devotees at the expense of the material, and I think that in the Western world the contrary is true. By uniting the materialism of the West with the spiritualism of the East I believe much can be accomplished. It may be that in the attempt the Hindu faith will lose much of its individuality.
I said Revolver is my favorite The Beatles album, but only because it came to my head and it's a brilliant one. But they're all pretty brilliant. There's variations, but they're all brilliant, and it just depends on if they're very brilliant, or just a bit brilliant. It changes.
What is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the spirit in you, since that is already enlightened, and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher.
Did Buddha teach that the many was real and the ego unreal, while orthodox Hinduism regards the One as the real, and the many as unreal?" the Swami was asked. "Yes", answered the Swami. "And what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and I have added to this is, that the Many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the same mind at different times and in different attitudes.
That is the challenge of a spiritual teacher: not to take on board the projections of specialness people have. This is especially dangerous for spiritual teachers who only have contact with disciples or followers, who may live in an ashram.
If a spiritual teacher says something that doesn't make sense to you, you should always listen to yourself and not the teacher. A little common sense would end all cults.
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