SB 11.07.20 – To benefit from our guru, we have to become our own guru

Transcript

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Srimad Bhagavatam 11.7.20 Ātmano murur ātmano puruṣha-suraśaṁśataḥ yat-pratyakṣaṇa-māṇāvyaṁ śṛṇya-vasāva-nivṛnda-te Here Lord Krishna, in his instruction to Uddhava, continues to encourage an independent thoughtfulness by stressing that one has to be one’s own guru.
Ātmano murur ātmano The Self has to be certainly the guru of the Self. puruṣha-suraśaṁśataḥ Now, in viśeṣa-taha, in a special sense for a living being. So the statement is not a is not a warranting or justifying the dismissal of a guru or the redundancy of a guru.
But rather it is recognizing and underscoring individual responsibility in individual accountability in spiritual life. We cannot say that just because I have a guru now it is my guru’s responsibility to ensure my spiritual advancement. No.
Our spiritual advancement is our responsibility. Our spiritual advancement depends on our making the right choices and those right choices can be done when we use our intelligence. So, Jiva Swami explains that actually what this means is that what this verse means is that by studying the script, by using our good intelligence, with pratyakṣa-anumāna-bhyāna śreya-sāvana-intate by pratyakṣa and anumāna we understand what is our śreya.
We understand the futility of material life and the necessity of spiritual life. By pratyakṣa we can see that we ourselves suffer from various miseries helplessly and unwillingly. We don’t want to suffer and we can’t stop the suffering in many cases.
So by that we understand this material arena is a place of suffering through our experience and anumāna-bhyāna and we can see that even the people who have the things that the world glorifies and glamorizes such as wealth and power and beauty even those people have to suffer. So nobody is an exception to the principle that everyone has to suffer in the material world. So in this way we can infer also that this world is a place of suffering.
So by experience and by inference one can understand that one’s true benefit will lie at a level that is beyond the material. And that way one can recognize the vitality, the vital necessity of spiritual life. And then one will also understand that just as in other fields one needs a spiritual master, one needs a guide, similarly to pursue spiritual life also one will need a guide.
And that way one will come to understand that I need a spiritual master. And even after one gets a spiritual master and gets instruction from the spiritual master, after hearing from the spiritual master one has to oneself take responsibility for understanding and realizing what the spiritual master is saying and thereby making spiritual advancement. So we see that Shilpa Prabhupada, the spiritual master of Shri Hansa Thakur, they were all exalted spiritual masters, the most exalted they were, who descended from the spiritual master.
Sometimes their disciples had difficulties, some of those disciples fell away. So why did this happen? Is it that the spiritual masters were incompetent? No. Even if the spiritual master is supremely competent, if the disciple doesn’t take responsibility, then the disciple may get deluded by maya and thereby go away from Krishna.
So therefore, each one of us has to take individual responsibility for our spiritual advancement. And this is especially true during our practice of meditation and prayer, that nobody else can take responsibility for my learning to control and fix my mind on Krishna during my prayer and meditation and chanting. Unless I battle and drag the mind from wherever it goes and fix the mind on Krishna, I won’t make spiritual advancement.
So by observing the trends of the mind, by observing the way the mind gets provoked, agitated and runs away, we slowly recognize the patterns of the mind. And then by observing what are the ways that we can correct the mind and discipline it and get it to fix itself on Krishna, we can learn to rectify the mind’s restless nature. So in this way, we have to act as our own spiritual master so that we can benefit from the spiritual master’s mercy, which has manifested as the opportunity in the facility to chant the holy names and thereby develop love for Krishna.