Guru Purnima Blessings
Guru Purnima is the sacred time of the year in which we give thanks and offer our humble gratitude,love and devotion to our Gurus. What is a Guru? A Guru is one who removes our darkness. In Sanskrit, Gu means “darkness” and ru is”that which removes,” so a Guru is one who removes the darkness in our lives, who shines the light of Truth on the illusions in which we live which cause our agony, our pain, and our grudges. The Guru brings the light of true understanding through which our egos,our insatiable desires, our fulfillable expectations and our illusions dissipate.
Guru Purnima is celebrated on the full moon day in the month of Ashadha and marks the beginning of the holy period of Chaturmas. After the long, hot, dry months of summer in which innumerable people, animals and crops have perished, the rainscome coinciding typicaly with the time of Guru Purnima, quenching our thirst and bringing us life. And, in India, when the rains come it is not a mere drizzle which lasts for 10 minutes. Rather, the rains are downpours of heavenly nectar, completely saturating the land which has been parched for months.
Similarly, on this day, as we find ourselves dying of thirst for knowledge, as we find our hearts and minds have become dry due to ignorance, anger and darkness, the Guru comes, pouring forth upon our lives the rain of wisdom, of love, of light and of life. Just as the flowers which have wilted and yellowed in the never-ending heat of summer, suddenly stand erect and succulent as soon as the rains come, so we, who have become ignorant and “dead” to the divinity within us are immediately born anew due to His grace in our lives.
Yet, just as the soil must allow the rain to penetrate its depths in order to reap the benefits of this life-giving nectar, so we must become porous vessels into which the divine nectar of the Guru can flow.
Guru Purnima is a day of renewing our faith, our shraddha, in He who bestows the light upon our lives. It is a day of re-opening our hearts, our souls and our lives to His divine presence and letting it penetrate and saturate every aspect of our being.