Sages
There is no shortage of Jesus’s or Buddha’s in Hindu culture. India has produced scores of them over its several thousand year old history, who in turn have contributed scores of illuminating spiritual texts — so many, and so varied, that you can pick and chose, mix and match, to whichever ones match your temperament – the path of bhakti (devotion), jnana (knowledge), raja (meditation), action (karma), hatha, kriya, tantra, etc.
It’s not possible to name the earliest of Hindu monks, as they left no credits to their colossal works (Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Itihasas, etc). Not to mention the over a hundred bhakti sages and their great spiritual classics like the Periya Puraanam, Naalaayira Divya Prabhandam, Thiruppugazh, Thiruppaavai, etc.
In India the material is more important than the person. People also understand that people are different, and some are radically different, so a single path cannot address everyone. Thus you rarely see Hindu’s fighting over whose path is the “true path” or whose guru is the “true guru” (no matter how radically opposed each ones ideology was).
Idolization
Idolization is not bad (see separate article on idolization). If done properly can act as a tremendous tool towards focussing the mind inward and away from worldly distractions.
However it is bad when it forms a cult — as are most fundamentalist religions, where they’ve idolized their prophet. That is, when you claim exclusivity – that your idol/guru is the only true one and that others are not — even in spite of no longer making any spiritual progress for years on.
Remember the Buddhist proverb: “don’t confuse the moon with the finger pointing to it”. When it comes to gurus, people tend to idolize the messenger, and forget his message. Or as Ramakrishna put it, don’t throw away the banana and get attached to (or fight over) the banana peel. The banana peel is the messenger. It is just the decoration encapsulating the message, the fruit.
Look beyond the person and focus on his/her message. In fact the message is not even in the guru’s teachings, but in guru’s life — the critical thinking, meditation, etc. that he went through to reach the level of “awareness” that he attained. Just a study of the life of different class-1 enlightened people (Ammachi, Buddha, Ramana, various Siddhars, Jesus, etc) offers more insight and inspiration in shaping ones own spiritual path than the teachings themselves.
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Though we’ll probably never know who/what composed those scores of spiritual literature (dating over 6,000 years old), we do know the names of contemporary (i.e. in the last 400 years contemporary) saints. A key characteristic of any sage is that they reached a stage where they are beyond any particular faith. Keeping that in mind, some of notable ones are:
- The Siddhars – all the 18 principle siddhars of southern India.
- The bhakti saints (the 13 Allvars and 63 Nayanars) of southern India.
- Ramana Maharshi – the simplicity of approach and spiritual empiricism of this enlightened sage is one of a kind.
- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa – my very first inspiration towards spirituality happened to be through this enlightened sage.
- Mata Amritanandamayi – a contemporary bhakti saint along the lineage of the bhakti saints.
- Shridi Sai Baba – haven’t had much time to get acquainted with his works, but found his biography to be very genuine.
Also great, but not “perfect” (I have a few bones of contention regarding their works, but over 90% of it is sound):
- Swami Vivekananda – more than anything, he is logician beyond comparison. Sword of knowledge cutting through ignorance – he is it.
- Osho – his writings/talks have an uncanny ability to capture and grab hold of people’s attention. More than his writings, I consider him to be a unique case study of enlightenement; he was uninhibited in his approach and lifestyle (as jarring as it may seem to public). It helps establish a new point of reference for what we consider as gurus.
- Swami Vedathri Maharishi – yet another unique presentation of spirituality.
Notable non-Indian sages:
- Peace Pilgrim
- Don Juan (the Native American, Yaqui shaman) as documented by Carlos Castaneda.
- Aboriginals of Australia as documented by Marlo Morgan in her Mutant Message Down Under (don’t get the book; get the audio book on cd).
These are also notable, but just don’t really appeal to me:
- Sri Sri Ravishankar – I always felt his responses and talks are so lousy not befitting a person who is supposed to be a guru. But his contributions to society are noteworthy. I’d respect him more as a guru if he were to just stick to his own niche that he’s good at.
- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev – not too impressed about the man, his writings, or his talks — but really like his approach of spirituality which is tightly coupled with nature, and his emphasis on expressing spirituality through acting on the environment.
- Jiddu Krishnamurthy – philosopher, but too simple and watered down for me. I believe in Einstein’s, simplify, simplify, simplify, but don’t make it too simple.
- Aurobindo – same as above.
- Sri Sathya Sai Baba – for some reason he just as no appeal to me.