Guru and Vãsanãs

The Sanãthana Dharma believes in the concept of Karma which, in a way, can be viewed as the concept of rebirth and re-incarnation. It roughly means that as long as we have Vãsanãs (likes and dislikes), we will take 'Janma' or birth in this world. One who is devoid of any desires is the one who does not have any more birth. It seems to me that Buddhism hits right at the bull's-eye saying "Desire is the root cause of all evils". In our Purãnas, Jata Bharata's story is an oft-quoted parable to stress this fact.

Innumerable Jnãni's who have been incarnated on the face of earth have just preached the same fact. But how do we get rid of all desires? How on earth is this really possible? "I want to get rid of desires" itself seems to be a desire isn't it? What a paradox!!! Well, we need to catch hold of the right strategy.

In one of the Aksharamana Mãlai discourses, Guruji gives a wonderful example.
"On the walls of the building, numerous gross and lewd posters are pasted. The manager of the building desires to get the wall clean. He first gets all the posters torn down and then writes up a small poster which read 'Posters are banned. Trespassers will be prosecuted.' From the next day, no one dared to paste any new poster."

He continues, "Thus, to control our mind and kill the thoughts, we need those benign thoughts that have the power to kill other thoughts, just like the powerful poster that kept off other dirty posters."

I feel the same thing is applicable to desires as well.

Swãmi Tyãgãnanda of Vedanta Society of Boston says that the idea is to kill your ego. That is just not possible on day one. So it is better to start having 'good ego'. It is far far better to say " I am a devotee of God" rather than saying "I am the greatest!".

How true!!

Further, Mahãns compare the rebirth-cycle to sleep. Just like we sleep at night and wake up next morning, death is a longer sleep. Just as we don't forget our surroundings when we wake up, similarly, we hold on to the vãsanãs of our previous birth. There is this destiny which governs us, because of our Vãsanãs.
The idea is to slowly kill these Vãsanãs. Guruji says -- two posters are required, the formost being "Guru" and the next being "Nãma".

Some one asked Maha Periyavã of Kãnchi, "Well Swãmi, if destiny should govern me, then why should I ever go to a Guru and waste my time? If everything has already been pre-destined, why at all this concept of spirituality and Guru". The Mahãswãmi gently replied, "Well, let us assume, your goal is to carry thousand rupees from Chennai to give it to someone in Delhi. You have been carrying on your back a huge bag of one-paise coins totalling to a thousand bucks. There is this intelligent man (or a bank, say), who says, hey dude, why don't you leave the huge bag here and take these two 500 rupee notes. Its going to make your life easier". The Guru is just the bank that does that. He is the one who advises us not to load our baggages on our head, when we are aboard a train.

Taking a deeper look into this, it seems to say that you will enjoy/suffer because of your Vãsanãs or Samskãrãs, but a Guru tames you such that you don't feel the joy or pain of it, and finally shapes you in such a way that all your desires die down and lets you feel eternal bliss.