Sringeri Week: How Much I’ve Changed in Four Years!

Four years ago I tagged along on a trip my parents took to Sringeri to see the guru, His Holiness Shankaracharya Sri Bharati Tirtha. I wasn’t that interested in seeing the guru. I just wanted to finally go to India for the first time. It’s amazing to me now how I squandered the opportunity that I had. Shankaracharya is a weighty title and it’s a really big deal. The gurus at this math (pronounced maat, meaning temple complex) have an unbroken line back to Adi Shankara himself who founded our branch of Hinduism.

My parents tried to tell me that I should soak in as much time in his presence as I could. But at the time I was not in a good place emotionally. I thought “what difference does it make whether I’m in his presence or not? God is everywhere.” I thought “He’s their guru but he’s not mine.” I’ve struggled with authority figures since leaving the organization I grew up in. I’m skeptical of gurus for the most part. Not that I was skeptical of this one because he has amazing credentials but I wasn’t ready to submit myself spiritually.

In 2011 I was there to experience India and I did and I loved it.

In 2015 I was there to grow spiritually and I did.

In a way His Holiness “proved” himself to me by fulfilling my mother’s request. In 2011 she asked for a blessing for me to find the right husband for me and less than a year later I met him (this after dating my own way and failing for twelve years!) That impressed me and I showed up in Sringeri this year with a very different attitude.

And I was rewarded for that change. As I’ll talk more about later this week, being in the presence of the guru really is something special.

For a long time I went without a guru and tried to do it all on my own. This is the same mistake made by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment when he thinks that he is one of Nietzsche’s extraordinary men (Ubermensch). Yes it is possible to gain enlightenment without the guidance of a guru. You do have God within you and it is possible to discover that on your own. However, not many people are that advanced. I certainly am not.

But sometimes you have to do some prep work before you meet your guru. So I think I met His Holiness at just the right time in my life.

I also am very lucky (and must have some good karma) to have been able to meet a Shankaracharya. As I said, it’s a very big deal title. In Sringeri there were very few other westerners and the couple of guys we met from the Netherlands are also former SES people. So it seems that perhaps 95% of His Holiness’s western devotees are former SES! It is because of those SES ties that we were blessed to be able to become his devotees. How special that is really hit me when we went after Sringeri to Tiruvannamalai to see the Ramanasram and there were a whole lot of western seekers there. Sri Ramana Maharshi is someone that is known in the west and is a little more accessible.

So we all arrived in Sringeri after an inter-India flight and a two hour drive. We were put up in the housing across the street from the math. Sringeri is a little town and the town itself is probably the same size as the grounds within the temple math! The rooms were spacious and spartan. Between eight of us there were three rooms so we did one room of men and two of ladies. It was super nice being right across the street. Made it easy to get to everything without having to plan and coordinate between all eight of us.

We went into town and got some offerings for our first darshan (“seeing” of the guru): flowers and fruit to which we added some money. Everyday we went to two darshans and the evening puja that His Holiness himself performs. We had a couple of guides to help us during our stay. One was a friend of our companion Sundar who wasn’t able to come with us to Sringeri because of family obligations (however he knows Sringeri extremely well and has deep connections to His Holiness and the Shishya). Another was someone who works closely with His Holiness and he helped us submit questions and be in the right place at the right time.

Sundar is incredibly perceptive. He apparently told his friend ahead of time that I’m Hindu and it allowed me to relax my defensiveness completely. I often feel like I’m forced into a position where I have to be always proving myself as a Hindu and fighting to be recognized as such. With this kind gesture, Sundar removed all of that for me for the stay. I was able to relax and focus on my inner work without feeling like I had to fight.

Almost immediately after arriving in Sringeri it was clear to me how very different I was inside and out. Finding the love I had been waiting for transformed me. I was less cynical, less hardened, and more ready to embrace the spiritual energy that Sringeri offers in abundance. It took coming back for me to realize the change.