What Is Guru?

Like many Sanskrit words, "guru" can be translated in several different ways. In Western culture, the term carries several different connotations, not all of them positive. But what does guru really mean? Please join yoga teachers, Phoebe and Keric, for an informal discussion on the meaning of the term "guru."

Transcript

Hi,

Kerik.

Hi,

Phoebe.

So,

Full disclosure,

Everyone,

We already recorded an episode on today's term,

Which is the term guru.

And then we went back and listened to it and we didn't really like it.

We went a little bit negative with it,

Which isn't really in alignment with our philosophy.

So we are back at it with some positive perspectives on the term guru.

So Kerik,

What comes to mind positively when you hear the term guru?

Guru to me in its simplest terms is teacher.

And we all have teachers.

I believe that we're all students,

Whether we do yoga or not,

We're students of life.

We all have things to learn in life.

And so we all have many teachers.

And in its simplest form,

We can just translate guru as teacher.

And I think that can be very positive.

Teachers help us to learn and grow.

And that's how we advance our lives.

So without gurus,

Without teachers,

We would never grow up,

We'd never learn,

We would never improve.

So gurus guide us and help us through life.

That's a good one.

One of my favorite definitions of guru I actually learned in your class and it is the weighty one.

And I really love that because in yoga,

A guru is someone who is so weighty in what they believe in that they can't be swayed.

And I remember you taught it in a particularly challenging class where it was really important to be weighty in your lower body so that we could do some crazy stuff in our upper body.

And it was a great theme physically.

And then philosophically,

I love it because it refers to someone who is really,

Really in touch with what they believe in and can't be swayed by the beliefs of others.

I know that there are a couple other definitions of guru.

What are some of the other ones?

There are several.

I really like that one too.

The heavy one is how I often translate it.

And the typical example that I've been given over the years,

I've heard this analogy a couple of times,

Several times,

Is if you have like a big king-sized bed and we threw a bunch of sports balls on the bed,

Volley balls,

Baseballs,

Golf balls,

Basketballs,

And then we took one bowling ball and put that bowling ball in the center of the king-sized bed,

All of the other balls would roll towards that bowling ball.

They would all be attracted to the bowling ball because of its weight.

And so you can also think of it like the sun in the center of the solar system and all of the planets revolve around the sun.

And it's because of the sun's weight,

Because of its gravity,

That the other planets align and orbit the sun.

And so the weight of the guru,

As you said,

Keeps the guru from being swayed or pulled in different directions.

The guru is so knowledgeable and so grounded in the philosophy or in the teachings that the guru doesn't need to go off and do something else or try something else or find something else.

The guru knows that the practices and the principles and the teachings of the guru are good.

And then I do want to point out that it's not,

The guru being set in his or her ways is not to say that the guru is not open to other ideas.

It's not that they're like stubborn or pig-headed and that's why they're unwilling to change.

The heaviness is really this grounded quality.

So they're not shutting other people out and only doing their thing.

But the guru knows that the practice is enough and doesn't need to go in several different directions and try different things like many of us do.

We want to figure out how to,

What's best for our lives.

So we try everything.

We try every sport and every modality of exercise and different kinds of yoga because we're trying to find the one that works.

The guru already knows what works.

I love that and for me it ties in really seamlessly with the first principle of anusara which is set the foundation and open to grace.

And a guru in this context embodies that.

Their foundation is set.

They are grounded in what is true to them in such a way that they can then open to the unknown.

So in the yoga practice it manifests as being really stable in your legs so that you can try something interesting with your arms.

Or in an inversion for an example,

Being really steady on your hands so that you can maybe try a lotus position or something in your legs.

So it's that foundation,

It's that heaviness in groundedness that enables this openness to uncertainty and to spirit which is the first principle of anusara.

So how else does guru manifest for you in your practice or just in your understanding of life?

So another definition of guru,

We can go down to just the literal meaning of the word and we can break down gu and ru into dark and light.

So literally gu is dark and ru is light.

The symbolism here is that the guru is one who helps us move from the darkness into the light and that this is what we're trying to do on the yoga mat and throughout life.

We all want to learn,

We all want to grow,

We all want to get better,

We all want life to get better.

And so we're moving very often from a place of ignorance or darkness or pain and suffering.

And the idea is that we all want to move into the light,

Into a space of knowledge,

Into a space of openness,

Into a space where we're out of pain.

And the guru can be one to help us do that,

To move from the darkness into the light.

That's another great definition and that can have a huge psycho-spiritual definition and also it can have a very literal definition in the yoga practice when you confront the darkness of something in your body,

Maybe that your shoulders are asymmetrical or that you,

For me,

Something that I didn't realize,

It took me a really long time to kick up into handstand.

And after maybe two or three years of trying,

I figured out that it was because I wasn't exhaling on the way up.

It was a really,

Really small detail.

And so in someone pointing that out to me,

It was moving from darkness to light.

It was this key that I hadn't been able to see that I then found and it unlocked the pose for me.

Who was the person that gave you the key that unlocked the pose?

Do you remember?

I think it was Yvette,

Another teacher in our training.

I think she pointed out,

She was like,

You're holding your breath as you kick up.

And then I made it a point to exhale all the way up and I just went,

Shoop.

So for those of you who don't know,

Yvette is a very good friend of ours and Yvette and Phoebe did teacher training together.

So Yvette wasn't the trainer,

She was a trainee along with Phoebe.

And so they're peers at that moment.

And Yvette was the guru in that moment.

So another way that I like to define guru is the teacher within.

And we all have a guru inside of us,

This little teacher,

This inner light that imparts wisdom to us on and off of the yoga mat.

And then we can all be teachers in different moments.

So I love that your example is that in that moment,

The person who brought you from the darkness into the light was Yvette,

Who's a peer and not necessarily your teacher at that time.

And I think that this is a really great way to look at this term guru is to think about anyone who can help us move from the dark into the light.

So who are people in your experience,

Yoga related or not,

Who have been gurus to you?

Oh,

That is such a tough question for me to answer.

You know,

I do have a couple of teachers who have been the most influential on my practice,

My yoga practice and in my teaching.

Their names are Ross Rayburn and Tiffany Frazier.

And for sure hands down more than any other people in my life have helped me shape the way that I teach yoga and the way that I practice yoga.

Now the question is,

Would I call them my gurus?

I probably wouldn't use that term.

I would definitely call them my teachers.

And they have been super influential moving me from dark to light.

And both of them are super grounded and knowledgeable and don't get swayed by the current trend in yoga,

So they're not switching to whatever the latest trend in yoga is.

But I would hesitate to use the term guru.

It's not a term that I would use.

I like that you're making this distinction because it's kind of getting down to what we're clarifying in this episode,

Which is that we can have gurus for moments in time,

For little revelations.

But that doesn't make them our guru for the rest of our lives.

And I think in pop culture and just sort of modern discourse,

There's this idea of a guru being this bearded man who lives in India and imparts wisdom to you and is kind of the sole source of that.

But here's the thing.

In my experience,

I've had many gurus and sometimes it's been from pretty negative situations.

Someone has brought me from darkness to light by showing me something in a sort of unfavorable way.

And the lesson is just as powerful as if it were from a guru.

So you can have a guru be someone who is rude to you,

Who brings a dark truth about yourself into the light,

Maybe in realizing that you were rude to them or something like that.

So I think we actually have gurus daily if you look at it from that perspective.

And if we can look at them,

And I believe personally that we learn something from everyone,

That we have many gurus in our lives for a little moment in time,

And that the practice really is to take the lesson and not attach to them in a positive or negative way.

Have you ever had that experience where you've learned something really powerful from a negative situation but that made you aware of something?

Sure.

I think just physically on the yoga mat,

Injury often is a great teacher.

And it's not something that any of us really like.

I don't,

Well,

Maybe some people do.

I don't like getting injured.

But some of my injuries have been my biggest teachers.

So I know not to do that thing that hurts me again,

Or I learned how to heal my body from the injury,

And there's so much learning that comes from that.

And I think that challenging situations in our lives are often the biggest teachers too.

It's great when everything's going our way and everything is falling into place.

And it sucks when we hit a rough patch,

But it's often from the most difficult and trying times that we learn and grow the most.

Because those trying times are the darkness.

And then to get out of it,

To come back to equilibrium or even expand again to be happy,

To move into the light,

That's the guru experience,

If we want to call it that.

I appreciate that because it makes painful and challenging moments lessons instead of just these isolated negative incidents,

Which is really powerful.

And if we can look at at times when things aren't going our way as a guru in a sense,

Then we learn from them,

We get a little bit smarter.

I am a business owner,

And have had many guru situations where I've learned from them really powerfully.

When I first started my business,

I marketed myself as someone who just did marketing and didn't really clarify what that was.

And I didn't get any work for six months.

And every single person who I handed a business card and then never called me became a guru and helping me realize I really had to turn inward and figure out,

Okay,

Well,

What am I offering?

And that was when I started to refine my business and figure out a target audience and begin to understand that in order to thrive as a business owner,

You need to get a lot more specific.

And I thank all of the people who didn't give me any business because I just said,

I did marketing and didn't clarify.

So yes,

Situations,

People,

Challenges,

All have the opportunity to be our guru,

If you look at it from that perspective.

Right,

In terms of something that moves us from dark to light,

Right?

If we're taking that definition,

We're taking some liberties with the definition.

I think traditionally,

Guru was applied to like a person or a figure,

A teacher,

And then now we're broadening it quite a bit.

But I do love that you sort of described this guru experience.

And really in that situation,

When you're learning from a bad business decision,

And that becomes the guru,

Quote unquote,

The thing that moves you from dark to light,

Then I think that really,

You're learning from that experience and that guru is within you.

So guru to me,

I think I said this a little earlier,

But can be like this teacher within us.

And so sometimes we don't need a master yoga teacher to teach us about yoga.

Sometimes we're on the yoga mat by ourselves in a pose.

And we have this moment where it seems like spontaneously,

Graciously,

We learned something and we teach ourselves and that that guru can come from within.

So we all have the guru within us and we can help other people,

We can teach other people.

And we have this guru within that can teach us like we kind of our own teachers in a way.

And I think that happens all the time for all of us.

And sometimes we're not even aware that it's happening,

That we have these moments from inside that help us grow.

Yeah,

I think the most powerful way to teach other people is to teach yourself because that,

I think as humans,

We,

I mean,

Sometimes if someone tells you to do something,

You listen,

But it's such a powerful moment when it comes to you on your own.

And when you see someone have a revelation on their own and they don't,

They don't direct you to do anything,

Sometimes it shines a light on something at you,

It brings something from darkness into the light.

And I think the people who are called gurus are the ones who've really connected with that,

That inner voice,

That inner wisdom.

And we all have the opportunity to do that as soon as we believe truly that our own wisdom is just as powerful,

If not more than anyone else's.

So the practice is to begin to admire the quality of someone trusting themselves in someone else,

Realizing that you're not desiring to be like them,

You're desiring the quality of trusting yourself,

Which is different.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

In the one example that jumps out at me every day from pop culture is the example of guru to me is the Star Wars relationship between the Padawan and the Jedi master.

In the Star Wars movies,

The Jedi are an order of the really protectors of the peace is the way they describe themselves.

And they are skilled in the ways of the Jedi.

They study everything from combat techniques to meditation techniques.

They have almost superpowers where they can see the future.

And the force is what they call spirit,

Is their connection to everything.

And they have practices to connect to the force,

To wield the force,

To enhance their lives.

And the master Jedi are called just that.

So Yoda,

You've maybe heard of him,

Is the master Jedi.

And he imparts wisdom and teaches and trains the other Jedi.

And I think that within the Star Wars universe,

There's a very positive relationship between the master Jedi,

The Jedi Knights,

And the Padawan.

The Padawans are the Jedi who are just starting out and they're students.

They're just learning the ways,

The arts of the Jedi.

And that to me is a guru relationship between the master Jedi and the other Jedi who are learning from him or her.

And it's this relationship that helps everyone to grow.

And even in the Star Wars universe,

I think it's really interesting that Yoda,

The master Jedi,

He's not always right.

He can sometimes make mistakes and he's fallible.

And the other Jedi will sometimes call him out on it.

And I think that's a healthy guru relationship.

That takes me to a definition of master by Bruce Lee that I love and I teach sometimes in class.

And it's the definition of master,

And I'm paraphrasing here,

Is that a master is not someone who doesn't make mistakes.

A master is someone who rebounds so quickly from them,

You never ever see the pause.

And I love that definition so much of master and of guru in a sense because it's exactly like you said,

Yoda is fallible.

And sometimes when we use this term guru,

We are implying that gurus are above very basic human principles.

I remember being in a yoga class with a teacher who many consider a guru.

And I remember him slipping out to use the restroom and someone was like appalled that he was using the restroom.

And it's funny the way that we think because someone has some body of wisdom or knowledge that for some reason basic human principles won't apply.

So masters and gurus are still people.

They are flawed human beings who have simply tuned into their own inner wisdom and become so connected with that that it seems like they don't make mistakes,

But they do.

I bet you they get some parking tickets too.

I think that as you are alluding to,

One of the biggest challenges with the term guru is that it immediately sets up a power differential between the guru and the student or the follower or whatever you're going to call the person who is looking up to the guru.

And even as I as those words come out of my mouth looking up to the guru right is the way that I think about it.

And I think that's where the term guru can be problematic.

When that power differential is abused or just not really put in the right perspective.

And so really to me keeping guru in a in a good place is about keeping everything in perspective and I love that you mentioned how the guru is human and the guru,

You know is flawed.

And as long as we can remember that I think that we can probably stay in in a more informed and a better space when we forget that when we start to think of the guru as something so far beyond the human experience we start to elevate them to a point where the guru can't do any wrong and then we start to do things that the guru is saying just because the guru is saying it not because it's true but just because it's the guru then we have then we have a problem.

It's the transition of power into force in that context.

Yeah so to pan out a little bit from yoga I so one of my favorite entrepreneurs who I really look up to is Sarah Blakely.

If you don't know who she is she's the founder of Spanx.

She is the first female self-made billionaire and she is someone I aspire to be like.

I really really admire her and she is so real about her humanness.

Her story is amazing.

You know she used to sell fax machines for a really long time and she made dozens of mistakes talks about those mistakes and then came up with this product and now her social media presence and her marketing content and even her product when you think about it is about embracing your flaws.

Spanx is this garment that makes your body look a little bit smoother because as women we have bumps and lumps that need a little bit of smoothing.

And so for me she is someone who I look to as a guru not because she is better than me.

I mean she's certainly wealthier than me but because she has become so connected with who she is she's really goofy.

She doesn't take herself seriously and she's a billionaire.

So she's doing something right and so in her I see the connection that I desire to have with myself to be able to flourish as a business owner.

Right so in your example the guru is connected to something very deeply that something I would argue is what I call source or the universe or spirit.

So she's connected.

She's got like a direct line to something really good and what you see in her why you admire her is you want to have a similar connection right connection to source connection to wisdom or whatever you want to call it.

And I think that's really what what we all want is we're looking for a guru who is not someone just to tell us what to do but someone who is who knows what they're doing and has this path and then we have the opportunity to connect to that as well.

So the guru is not necessarily imparting power or or something directly to us the guru is getting their knowledge and wisdom from the same source that we're trying to connect to.

Exactly exactly right.

So I don't want to create undergarments.

I want to create the type of of transparency and vulnerability that Sarah Blakely has because she has this connection and and I think that's the way to look to other people of influence.

There are many people who are considered gurus in the business world or politically and and so we're here to remind you that that those people are no different from you.

They are flawed human beings who have established a connection with themselves and have become so resilient in the face of mistakes that it seems like they don't make any mistakes but they do just like all of us.

And that's the really cool interpretation of this idea of guru that even in our very flawed human condition we are able to be grounded enough to open up to something bigger than ourselves and continue along the path.

The last thing that we had talked about before we flipped on microphones today was that guru keeping the term guru in a good place in a in a healthy perspective is about non attachment.

So when if we become overly attached to one person one teacher a guru if things become out of balance we get overly attached to every word every action that the guru takes or does then then we can run into problems and if we're able to pull back and look at the big perspective remember the humanness remember that the guru can be flawed and likely is then then we can continue to have a healthy relationship with the guru and the guru can continue to pull us into the light.

Right gurus have bad days so if we're so attached to one person and they're having a bad day then by that logic then we're gonna have a bad day right but by becoming our own gurus we control that type of connection and one of the most fundamental truths of the human experience is that we can't control anyone else and we shouldn't be controlled by anyone else so in that we we leave you with the idea of really becoming your own guru of being a master and being as connected with your own inner wisdom as you are to your flaws and your darkness because that is part of a guru as well the first syllable means darkness and I think just having healthy relationships with with if you're calling someone your guru that that has to be a healthy relationship and even if we're looking at the guru within us having a healthy relationship within ourselves is really important as well so keeping things in perspective healthy relationships so that we can continue to have these moments of learning and growing and moving into the light.