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, whose spiritual contributions are much more preserved and untainted compared with the words of other sages (or “prophets” – which have been edited, transmogrified, abrogated, and censored countless times).
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). In India the material is more important than the person. Thus you rarely see Hindu’s fighting (or crucifying or beheading) over the name of one Hindu sage or the other (no matter how radically opposed each ones ideology was).
Not to mention the over a hundred bhakti sages vis-à-vis great spiritual classics like the Periya Puraanam, Naalaayira Divya Prabhandam, Thiruppugazh, Thiruppaavai, etc.
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. One of the characteristics of sages is that they are at a stage where they are beyond any particular faith. Keeping that in mind, some of notable ones are:
- The Siddhars – all the siddhars of deep 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 – she can be positively considered a bhakti saint along the lineage of the bhakti saints.
- Shridi Sai Baba – found his biography to be genuine and appealing.
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 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 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 – he’s not a thinker (just look at how he fields question answer sessions – especially Q&A that aren’t pre-canned). Ravishankar just doesn’t cut it. But his contributions to society are noteworthy.
- 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” (or something like that).
- Aurobindo – same as above.
- Sri Sathya Sai Baba – for some reason turned off by him totally.