Your favorite guru was what yesterday?

Over the weekend, in a conversation with the friend, I recalled the saying in the old country, "ரிஷி மூலம் நதி மூலம் ஆராயக்கூடாது (do not try to trace the origins of sages and rivers.)  The idea is that in both the cases, the origins can be quite unimpressive.  Or worse in the case of the holy men and gurus who actively peddle their "wisdom"--their past can sometimes be darn ugly.

In the contemporary world, with the Indian diaspora far away from the old country, there are quite a few gurus who sell their merchandise to those of Indian and other origins and--this is where the old saying came in to the conversation--many of them might have quite some blemishes in their past.  Like with this cult leader guru, for instance.

A day later came this email from the friend after re-reading Paul Theroux's "Africa's Aid Mess" in which he quotes Thoreau:

A rich white doctor in black Africa is a study in high contrast that puts one in the mind of the gallery of role models: Tarzan, Mr. Kurtz, King Leoplold, Cecil Rhodes... The overlords, the opportunists, the exploiters, the visionaries, the hunters, the care-givers, the baptizers, the saviors... Seeking a kingdom of their own, if not an empire. Henry David Thoreau believed that all such outgoing people had something discreditable in their past that through giving they wished to expiate.

I loved that phrasing: "something discreditable in their past that through giving they wished to expiate."

I am so thankful that I do not blindly chase after false gurus.  In fact, I joke that I have enough materials within me to market them to the gullible and live the life of money, sex, and drugs--like how that notorious guy from India lived in Oregon.  But then I am a dull, boring person and I merely blog! ;)

There is a huge difference between appreciating profound ideas, understanding them, and applying them to our lives versus appreciating, adoring and worshiping the messenger of those ideas.  The messenger rarely is faultless and clean, and even then to celebrate them when they are alive is a huge risk--we mortals err, and for all we know the human we adore today could be tomorrow's axe murderer.

Take the case of Khalil Gibran--a figure that I have quoted often, like here.  As much as I like his mystical thoughts, well, I knew enough not to worship him.  Because, like most mystical thinkers, Gibran, too, was a fraud in his personal life.

Most of Gibran’s life, as it emerges from these biographies, seems to have been spent in tête-à-têtes in stifling Boston drawing-rooms, or at not very successful New York private views, where the talk was usually of the Higher Life of the Mind and the special responsibilities of the Poet. In time, books like The Prophet made Gibran a wealthy man (Waterfield notes that his early contempt for money softened somewhat in later life). In his last years he took to drinking heavily and he died of cirrhosis of the liver.

"something discreditable in their past that through giving they wished to expiate."  Lovely phrasing Thoreau's is, right?

From the New Yorker