Why does the Gita not mention the word guru and refer in plural to seers of the truth in 4.34?

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Transcript

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so there is no mention of the word Guru in the Tadviddhi Panipatena verse and also it is in plural it is referred to Gyanena Sattu Darshinaha so bit we quoted as a prime reference on the Gita for the Guru principle of surrendering to a Guru well we have to understand that the Bhagavad Gita is a in some ways it is an emergency book Arjuna was on a battlefield and in a battlefield you don’t have a lot of time for elaborate discussions so the Bhagavad Gita gives concisely things which are essential for Arjuna to understand now Arjuna lived in a culture where he knew about all the paths of material life all the major paths of material life and spiritual life so Arjuna’s question was not about how to follow a particular path it was which path to follow there are two different things it’s like should I take Ayurveda or allopathy or naturopathy or Unani or herbal medicine or whatever now if you want to take herbal medicine and there are whole books written for that and somebody already knows about these medicines but what treatment should I take so then at that time the discussion will be about which treatment to take not how a particular treatment is to be taken so in general for no path Krishna goes too much into the details if you consider the path of yoga that is the sixth chapter but even there how much is Krishna talking about specifics the yoga sutras of Patanjali go much more into specifics than what the Bhagavad Gita goes if you consider bhakti now Krishna doesn’t talk about the specifics of bhakti also with respect to yoga Krishna doesn’t talk about say the eight limbs Krishna doesn’t specifically dig in it Krishna doesn’t talk about the states of the mind Krishna doesn’t mention the ashtasiddhis similarly with respect to deity with respect to bhakti Krishna doesn’t specifically mention about deity worship Krishna doesn’t mention about avataras although the principle of avatar is there but the word avatar doesn’t come in the Bhagavad Gita the word archa vigraha or archa upasana doesn’t come in the Bhagavad Gita so the Bhagavad Gita is not about specifics of any path it is about the analysis of which path to follow that’s why the specifics specific terms or specific items of specific paths will not come in the Bhagavad Gita so Krishna talks about the principle of offering food of whatever we take which we offer to him but it doesn’t get into specifics about which food to offer and which food to not offer that’s why if you want to specifically find a verse which says that these are the foods to be eaten and these are the foods to not be eaten you can have generic analysis in terms of goodness, passion, ignorance but Krishna doesn’t talk specifics over there he doesn’t give a list of these are the foods you shouldn’t take on Ekadashi, these are the foods you should not take at all now Arjuna doesn’t mean all that so scripture has a part that is has a central core that is eternal but scripture is also given in a particular context and the context will inevitably shape the content so there are many things specifically in the Bhagavad Gita which are not mentioned and we shouldn’t consider that as a weakness that’s just a result of the context now coming to the specific point of the word Guru not being there the culture over there was such that if you can look at the Bhagavad Gita as a part of the Mahabharata then there is an immense reverence towards Brahminical culture over there in general and the Pandavas even when they are in the forest repeatedly sages are meeting them and they are responding to the sages, they are hearing from the sages learning from the sages it’s all very, it’s very clear and that that’s very, very clear and in general the traditional culture was what our moment is gradually moving toward that this plural is very significant why because in our real life it’s not that we learn only from one Guru we learn from many, many Gurus the Mahabharata itself is a hundred thousand verses but the Mahabharata doesn’t spare even half a verse to tell us who is the Guru of the Pandavas it doesn’t, you know we could say Vyasadeva is one of their teachers Drona is their martial Guru, Dhaumya is their priest but who is their initiating Guru that’s not so important because the Guru is important but the principle of what the Guru represents is even more important and the Pandavas they learn from so many people they learn from Markandeya, from Narada from Vyasa, from Parvatmuni from so many other sages and we see our movement started in a very historically anomalous unusual situation that Prabhupada had to transplant a whole culture in a place where nobody knew about that culture and that’s why Prabhupada was almost like the be-all and end-all for his disciples and although his books contain internal principles his books were also written at a particular time, in a particular context so Prabhupada in many ways stresses the position of the Guru much more than what is done in the tradition and that is because that was what was required for transplanting the tradition at that time we say Vishwanath Chakradakul quotes Yashya Prasadad, Bhagavad Prasad and how he was devoted to his spiritual master yes, that is true in terms of the bhava in terms of sentiment but Vishwanath Chakradakul in his Bhagavad Gita or Bhagavatam commentaries he hardly ever quotes his spiritual master Baldevidyabhushan in his Vedanta Sutra commentary never once quotes Vishwanath Chakradakul because he is writing Vedanta Sutra commentary to reach out to people, to authorities from other traditions and they are going to accept not the authorities of our tradition they are going to accept universal authorities so he quotes from the Upanishads he quotes from the Puranas, not so much from Puranas Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita Ashwathis, primary Swathis so the Guru, the spiritual master is extremely important but it is not the spiritual master is the be all and end all and nobody else matters we learn from many many Gurus and that is how our situation is in our movement we have our spiritual master but we learn from so many other Vaishnavas also and in a sense the way ISKCON started was anomalous was different from what is standard and as our movement is getting more and more established we are returning to what is the standard that there is one spiritual master but there is respect for the Gurus and that is why so we have many many teachers and we learn from all of them and that is the principle that Krishna is presenting to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita and that is why that plural is there over there does it answer the question?