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From: cyee@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (Chut Ngeow YEE)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: The Nature and Function of a Guru
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.160417.8006@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 3 Jun 91 16:04:17 GMT
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Here is piece by Da Avabhasa, about the nature and function of a guru. It is
an except from a rather humorous talk called "The Gorilla Sermon"(1972).

"When you are dreaming, you take the dream very seriously. You assume your role
within it, your drama within it. You respond to the condition that seems to be
so, whatever the particular circumstances of the dream. If the gorilla is
chasing you up the beach, you feel all the threat. All the emotions become
involved, all of your strategies of survival, or non-survival, become
involved. If it is a sweet, enhoyable, astral sort of dream, with all kinds of
friends and voices and colors and movements, you assume that to be so.  You
float around in it. You take it seriously. You ASSUME it to be so. You assume
it because you have no other point of view from which to enjoy or suffer the
dream except that of the dreamer. But when you wake up in the morning, the
gorilla that was just about to bite off your head losses all significance. All
of the implications of that are already undone in one who is awake. It no
longer has any real significance, it no longer has any implication for life.
It no longer is a genuine threat to life. it no longer is anything except that
appearance. And the only difference is that you are awake. Nothing has been
done to the dream itself. You have only awakened, and therefore the dream is
obviously not your condition.

Understanding is very much this same kind of thing. Understanding is to the
waking state what the waking state is to the dream. In the ordinary waking
state you assume all conditions to be so: my life, my symptoms, my knot in my
stomach, my headaches, my fear, my everything else, my circumstance, my
poverty, my need to do this and that, my death, the news, the war, and all
that appears in life, we all take it very seriously. Here we are, in this
spiritual place, this Ashram. We are very seriously here to get out of all of
this.  Everyone has come here very seriously for this very serious purpose, if
I were to tell you to go home and recite "harry-umpty-ump", concentrate on the
inner green light, or believe in Master Gumbo, what would I be doing? I would
be offering you an alternative within the dream itself. I would be asking you
to remain within the condition of dreams. I would only be telling you to dream
another kind of dream.  "Don't worry about your headaches". "Recite the mantra
all the time". I would simply be exploiting the dream itself, which in this
case is the ordinary waking state. I would be recommending experience to you
as the path of Truth. But all of that is more of the same thing. It is only
another condition for you to take seriously and assume to be your own.

Understanding is not a form of philosophy. it is not a method. it is not
something within the "dream" itself. it is like the waking state as opposed to
the dream. The man of understanding, the true Guru, the Heart is radically
conscious, real, alive, free by his very nature from the implications of the
ordinary waking state, of all states. But the ordinary yogi, the usual
teacher, the philosopher, is a role within the "dream" of waking. He operates 
from its point of view. He is identified with it, suffering or happy within
it. His dilemma is there. His realization, however extraordinary it may
appear, is an artifice whose roots are in the condition or point of view of
the "dream". he is only recommending some distraction to you, some occupation,
some solution within the "dream" itself. But the Heart, understanding, is
simply awake. Understanding is the true waking state, the Self, Reality. It
has no philosophy, no subtle vision, no peculiar state associated with it.
Like one in a dream, one who understands is not presently affected by the
waking state. But, unlike one who dreams or appears within a dream, he is
always, already, consciously free.

The waking state is simply a radically different condition from the dream.
That is why you feel free of the dream upon waking. The Guru appears in the
midst of the dreams of ordinary waking life like sunlight in the morning. When
you are still dreaming, still asleep, the sun comes up. it gets brighter and
brighter, and the light comes into the room. At last, the light, the day
itself becomes sufficient to wake you, and then, all of a sudden, you are not
dreaming, and everything is all right. The Guru is simply that sunlight
process, that intensification, rising on you always, without any other special
activity. His relationship to you, your condition of relationship to him, just
that relationship is sufficient. There is only sunlight on the pillow until
that intensity is sufficient to wake you up. It is the kiss of the Prince and
Sleeping Beauty. Such is understanding.

But the teachings that are generated in the great search are all exploitations
of your dream-state. They take it seriously, they assume it to be the present
condition, even if it is regarded to be only temporary. And that is the
fundamental error of all traditional and remedial paths. They are all
generated from the point of view of your suffering. They serve your suffering,
and they reinforce it in spite of themselves. Therefore, to the seeker, to the
man suffering in dreams, the teachings of the ordinary yogis and philosopher
seem very hopeful. They seem to represent something very desirable."

                                                                  DA AVABHASA
                                                    the method of the siddhas


As you see this view of Reality is radically from the point of views proposed
by varous people in recent postings.  I remember reading something similar
in Mahayana Buddhist Sutras.  For example the Diamond Sutra talks about
'...a realizer sees that there is no multiple beings to be delivered [from
unenlightenment] ...'.  Also the sixth patriah Hui-Neng changed the four
great vows or Mahayana Buddhism from 1) I vow to deliever all the infinite
beings ... to 1) I vow to deliever all the infinite beings of Self-nature ...
He humorously added the term Self-nature to negagte the 'sickness' that an
approaching disciple vow to get rid of.  Indeed if Nirvana is no different
from Samsara and if a blade of grass, a stone a river etc is nothing but
Buddha-nature then all the notions of suffering and sickness and
non-enlightenment is nothing but dreams and illusions.

About John Chq view that an enlightened being is a pointer to the 'truth'...
I think this is also one of the core teaching of Khrisnamurti.  But in order to
point to something then the pointer has to be separated to the object pointed
to. So do you meant to say that an enlightened being is forever separated from
truth or Buddha-nature?  Or what are you trying to convey? I suggest that a
Realiser, an Enlightened One is no different from the Truth. (S)He lives the
Truth in human-bodily form and his(her) 'function' in the world is simply that
of being the sunshine that awakens us from our dream.

Yee.