Got Guru?!

Attended a wonderful Sai Satsang at Shiva's place yesterday. As always, great crowd and uplifting bhajans. It was nice that Srini opened up discussion at the end of puja, and Raj and others shared their spiritual experiences. One might argue, "why bother talking about abstract spiritual concepts? let us just pray and leave the rest to God". I too think that no matter what, we all must offer prayers without questioning, or expectation of benefits. However, I think that healthy spiritual discussions (parallely) would help us in offering our bhakti more effectively.

An analogy that I can think of is, our usage of a quiet room, incense sticks, devotional music etc. when we meditate. Do we really need all these things to offer our prayers? I think the answer is "no". Technically, you can be in the middle of a boxing fight and offer a better (more devout) prayer than a person at the feet of Balaji statue in Tirupati. However, devotional music etc. certainly would act as catalysts in getting us into a meditative mode (like in Pavlov's Dog!). Similarly, I think productive spiritual discussions, sharing of pleasant spiritual experiences, reading good books, and pious living would help us immensely in becoming better bhaktins and Bhaktas.

One of the questions that came up yesterday was, "do we need a living guru for spiritual guidance?" I don't see this question any different than "do we need a music teacher for learning to play rock guitar?" My answer is, if you are like Jimi Hendrix, you don't; if you are like me, you probably will need the help of a whole music department! For a (lot) better and relevant answer to this question, please see - Need for Guru.