06/11/2013

Good morning. One evening my brother arrived home, walked into the kitchen stood for just a moment and my mother announced that he had been smoking. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

She berated him for being so young and irresponsible whereupon my father said, “You can’t give out to him”. There was genuine shock and the whole family was now at attention. Never before had my mother been so questioned. “What do you mean”, she demanded. To which my father told a story about Gandhi. One day, he said, a woman took her child to Gandhi and told the Mahatma that her son ate too much sugar, could he get him to stop. Gandhi asked her to return in three days. Three days later she returned and Gandhi told the child to always listen to his mother and not to eat sugar if she asked this of him. The child nodded and his mother politely asked why she had to come after three days.

Gandhi told her that three days ago he also ate sugar. My father - and I don’t know where he got this stuff from - had very succinctly explained the principle of guru in Indian tradition, in fact the principle of the highest kind of guru, the acharya. Guru simply means teacher but acharya means “one who teaches by example”.

He then explained to my mother that as she smoked forty cigarettes a day she could not chastise my brother for smoking. But, worse for my brother, he could, as he did not smoke. It was a very important lesson in my life, and wonderfully taught.

Dear Lord, thank you for my teachers whose personal example and sacrifice has made spiritual life real for me, worth the effort, and whose virtues encourage me every day to get up, dress up, and show up for service. Hare Krishna.