Bhagavatam-daily 156 – 11.09.31 – Take responsibilty of internalizing the guru’s teachings from different perspectives

The supreme meaning thank you so the brahmana is completing his instruction here and he says nahi certainly not from one guru if we try to acquire knowledge one will not be able to get it that knowledge will not be very steadily situated in us or it and it will not become complete will not realize it fully is the absolute truth there is one without a second it’s equal one sings about it that when he has that absolute truth has been sung in various ways by different saintly people so in the Rig Veda there is a famous words there is one absolute truth one truth and the sages speak about it in different ways the point of that words it’s a very famous verse which talks about how the one absolute truth manifests in different ways to different people and described by different people different people in different ways and these are not ordinary people’s necessarily speculating about things the word you should describe them are vipra vipra means saintly people so the difference is speak about the one absolute truth in different ways so that’s even similar theme is being talked about over here that that brahma is advitiya there is only one brahma but the sages they sing about it speak about it different sages speak about it in different ways and he’s saying that therefore if one just learns from only one guru if you learn only from one guru then the knowledge will not become very deep or very complete so now there are two ways of looking at this one of course is to understand that we need to learn from one spiritual master and generally there is one diksha guru whom we have and he becomes he plays a critical role in our journey towards enlightenment and so that is not the point which is being rejected by the statement on scripture the brahmana is not rejecting that but he’s saying that the point is we shouldn’t keep the keep the spiritual knowledge locked within our head so the avadhut brahmana take has taken responsibility for learning he has not the left the responsibility for teaching only on his guru and he says okay the guru will give me instruction and i will it is the guru’s responsibility to give instruction no it is my responsibility to learn it is my responsibility to internalize it is my responsibility to realize and when we have that mood of learning then the same krishna who teaches us through our diksha guru also teaches us through other saintly people and we see that if we look at the rama and if you look at the mahabharat the characters have their primary spiritual guides so ram has vashishta but then he’s as his guru but then when ram goes into the forest at that time there are he meets different sages and different sages he hears from them similarly the pandavas have dhaumya as their priest but still when they are in the forest they hear from different sages so we can hear we can and we can learn from different perspectives the same knowledge that has been given by the spiritual master so jiva goswami states that those who contradict the spiritual master’s teaching we should not learn from them so he says for example that there is a atheist kapila whose teachings contradict the teachings of vedanta and one should not hear from them so like that those who are giving teachings contrary to the vedic teachings we should not hear from them at the same time we must we when we hear from different saintly people then our our different devotees internalize different aspects of krishna’s teachings they internalize different aspects of they internalize they embody different aspects of krishna’s all attractiveness in some ways and that’s how we become connected we become attracted we become elevated so the sometimes the neophyte mind becomes insecure when we hear an instruction which seems contradictory to the standard instruction that we have heard yeah the standard instruction is just surrender to the spiritual master yes that is true but if we look even in the bhagavad gita krishna uses the word plural so he says one should learn from the seers of truth so actually the sanskrit is plural over there so one can learn from one’s initiating spiritual master and one can learn from other learned people who are also capable who are also learned and can give us knowledge so vishwanath chakraborty explains in his commentary that the practical things in this world i have learned from these different gurus that means that i have learned the broad principles that my spiritual master taught me i have internalized them from by realizing it through different spiritual masters so when we look at the look at the world through the eyes of the guru has given us then the whole world we see in new light and we are able to we are able to learn much better we are able to learn much deeper and we are able to actually appreciate shastra better and we are able to appreciate the teachings of the the truth truths of shastra as they’re demonstrated in life better so the important thing for us is to always have a learning attitude and to keep the spiritual master the initiating spiritual master as the foremost among our sources of learning but along with that we learn from others the important thing is ultimately our spiritual advancement is our responsibility the spiritual master takes the responsibility of taking us back to godhead that is true at the same time it is it is for us to endeavor it is for us to the spiritual master is the rope of mercy if krishna extends the rope of mercy through the spiritual master it is for us to hold on to it now if we are not ready to take up responsivity no matter how potent the spiritual master may be the spiritual master cannot help us now kala krishnadas was the chaitanya mahaprabhu and still he fell away he became eluded by the bhattahari of course the chaitanya mahaprabhu’s mercy that he came and reclaimed him but the point is that we have to take responsibility for learning and we can broaden our horizons by hearing the scripture from different perspectives shila prabhupada also said that you should study the scripture from different perspectives from different angles of vision and then we will understand things better and deeper and our conviction will become stronger and thus our gradually by practice our devotion will become richer so overall this verse import is we rather than seeing it decontextualized as as an in as stating that one spiritual master is inadequate we should see the spirit of the word the spirit of the verses that we shouldn’t think that just because i have got a spiritual master now everything is taken care of for me now after the spiritual in getting initiation from a spiritual master accepting a spiritual master is the beginning of spiritual life to the first step so this taking initiation indicates the response becoming responsible for in our spiritual journey taking responsibility for our learning and that attitude of responsible learning is reflected in our wanting to connect with spiritual truth with scriptural everything that we observe and thus we deepen our realizations and then our knowledge will become steady realization will become steady