Gurus Wear Different Garb

Whatever he wears, and wherever he is guiding his students, Jaggi Vasudev seems to be in his element. His students remark about his zest for life. That is all well and good when most of us—whether successful or not—are burdened by anxieties. To unburden those anxieties and to learn about our bodies and minds, the Isha Foundation has a beautiful retreat and ashram in Tennessee. Just as at the Indian retreat, students get to learn yoga, and are helped by trained teachers to work through one's physical and other ailments. But Jaggi Vasudev, while helping one student at a time, has also set his sights on transforming the world, realizing however that even a Godman is limited in his abilities to will change. When he was asked recently in India about what he needed to change the world, he said that he would want the attention of heads of the twenty-four most powerful nations in the world for five days, and that if he transformed them they would be able to, in turn, navigate the world into safer waters. Let us keep our fingers crossed!

What would he tell them and show them? What are Jaggi Vasudev's special/unique lessons that enable his students to go back home happier than when they first went to meet him? One facility that he has is that he speaks well the language of modern, educated citizens of the world.

He has traveled around the world, met with business leaders, politicians, and academics. Business schools have sent their students to learn from him. However, there is nothing new that he says because there cannot be anything new in human travails and what can be said about them! He does believe, however, that there is a change in guard from military leaders to politicians, and soon power will be shifted into the hands of those who hold and have economic power. And how should they wield power then? He says: "Power is a privilege that some human beings get. So when such a privilege and responsibility is placed in your hands, every action and every thought that it generates, every emotion that you can form, can touch and transform millions of lives. I think the kind of thought you generate, the action that comes out of you, has to be looked at from that perspective."

Hmmm.... I continue to be a skeptic about such global transformation. Sometimes, one doubts if there can be even an individual transformation, as the maverick Indian guru, U.G. Krishnamurti went around proclaiming for almost as long as J. Krishnamurti went around proclaiming the opposite!