There is a full moon in the monsoon month of Ashadha, usually in July, that belongs to no god in particular. It belongs to the teacher. On Guru Purnima disciples travel to their gurus' ashrams, students touch the feet of their music and dance teachers, and ordinary families telephone the schoolteacher who first taught them to read. It is the one day in the Hindu year set aside for gratitude towards those from whom we have learned.
The day is also called Vyasa Purnima, after the sage who, more than any other, made the tradition teachable. To understand the festival one has to understand what a Hindu means by the word guru, and why the greatest teacher in the tradition's iconography is one who says nothing at all.
Vyasa, the first teacher
Krishna Dvaipayana, called Vyasa, is credited with arranging the one Veda into four so that it could be learned and handed on, which is why he is also Veda Vyasa, the one who divided the Veda. Tradition names him the author of the Mahabharata, in which he is also a character, and of the Puranas and the Brahma Sutras. Tradition also holds that he was born on the full moon of Ashadha, and the day honours him as the teacher of all teachers.
His influence is built into the furniture. In any hall where scripture is expounded, the raised seat from which the speaker talks is the vyasa-peetha, Vyasa's seat, and the speaker sits there on his authority, not their own.
What guru means
The popular explanation of the word, taught in every ashram, is that gu means darkness and ru means the one who removes it: the guru is the dispeller of darkness. This is a traditional etymology, found in the Advayataraka Upanishad, and it tells you what the tradition values; it is not, strictly, how the word was formed. In Sanskrit guru simply means heavy, weighty, and by extension a person of weight whose words carry gravity. Both meanings are worth keeping. The guru is the one who has substance, and the one who lets in light.
The verse sung on this day above all others comes from the Guru Stotram:
Gurur Brahma gurur Vishnuh gurur devo Maheshvarah,
guruh sakshat Parabrahma tasmai shri gurave namah.
The guru is Brahma, the guru is Vishnu, the guru is the god Maheshvara;
the guru is the supreme Brahman made visible. To that guru, salutations.
A second verse from the same hymn gives the image behind the etymology:
Ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-shalakaya,
chakshur unmilitam yena tasmai shri gurave namah.
To the one who opened the eyes of a person blinded by the darkness of ignorance,
with the collyrium stick of knowledge: to that guru, salutations.
The teacher here is not a lecturer but a physician, applying an ointment that lets the student see what was already there.
The guru-shishya parampara
Hindu knowledge has always travelled from person to person. The word Upanishad itself means sitting down near, and the earliest texts are conversations between a seeker and someone who knows. The Bhagavad Gita describes the method:
Learn it by prostration, by questioning, by service; the wise who have seen the truth will teach you that knowledge.
(Bhagavad Gita 4.34)
Three things are asked of the shishya, the student: humility, curiosity and work. In return the guru gives not information but transmission, and the chain from guru to disciple to disciple's disciple is the parampara, the lineage. The gurukula, where the student lived in the teacher's household, has mostly gone, but the parampara survives in the monastic orders of Shankara, in the Vaishnava lineages, in yoga, and most visibly in Indian classical music and dance, where a musician will still name their teacher and their teacher's teacher before they name a raga.
The tradition also insists that a guru may be anyone, or anything. The Bhagavata Purana tells of the sage Dattatreya, who listed twenty-four teachers including the earth, the wind, a python, a courtesan and a child, each of which had taught him something by its nature.
Dakshinamurti, the silent teacher
On the south wall of nearly every Shiva temple in Tamil Nadu is a figure seated under a banyan tree, one foot on a dwarf, right hand raised with thumb and forefinger joined. This is Dakshinamurti, Shiva as the teacher who faces south. The sages at his feet are old men; he is young. And he teaches in silence.
The image answers a question every teacher knows: what do you do when words have run out? Dakshinamurti's chin mudra, the joined thumb and forefinger, is read as the individual self touching the universal self, with the other three fingers, the three gunas or qualities of nature, held apart. The dwarf under his foot is ignorance. Adi Shankara's Dakshinamurti Stotram is often recited on Guru Purnima, and its point is that the deepest teaching is not spoken but recognised: the student, sitting near, comes to see what the teacher sees.
How the day is kept
The observances vary with the kind of guru one has.
- Disciples of a living guru go to the ashram if they can and perform padapuja, washing the guru's feet with water, milk and flowers, and offering dakshina, a gift. The guru speaks, and the day passes in satsang, gathering in the company of the truth, with chanting and discourses.
- Where the guru has passed away, the puja is offered to a photograph or to the padukas, the sandals, which stand for the feet.
- Those without a personal guru worship Vyasa, often through a reading from the Bhagavata or the Gita, or honour their ishta devata, chosen deity, as the guru within.
- Students of music and dance perform for their teachers and receive blessings.
- It is the traditional day to begin a new study: a child's first lesson, an initiation into a mantra, the first page of a new text.
The full moon of Ashadha is shared with other traditions. Buddhists observe it as Asalha Puja, the day the Buddha gave his first sermon at Sarnath to five ascetics; it also begins the vassa, the three-month rains retreat during which monks stay in one place. Jain tradition remembers it as the day on which Mahavira, after his enlightenment, accepted Indrabhuti Gautama as his first disciple, and Jains too call it Guru Purnima.
For Hindu ascetics the day opens Chaturmas, the four months of the monsoon during which wandering sannyasis stop travelling and settle in one place to teach. The rains made roads impassable; the stillness made study possible. Householders mark Chaturmas with vows, simpler food and more time for scripture. Guru Purnima is thus a beginning as much as a commemoration.
Teachers of every kind
The Taittiriya Upanishad, in the passage a teacher speaks to a departing student, says matru devo bhava, pitru devo bhava, acharya devo bhava: let your mother be a god to you, let your father be a god to you, let your teacher be a god to you. Mother and father come first in the list because they are the first teachers. The schoolteacher who corrected your handwriting, the aunt who taught you to light a lamp without burning your fingers, the grandfather who made you repeat Shuklambaradharam until you had it, the coach, the senior colleague, the friend who told you the truth: all of these stand in the line of Vyasa, and Guru Purnima is the day to tell them so.
Celebrating at home
Light a lamp in the morning and recite the Guru Brahma verse, or sing it with the children. Place a flower before a picture of your guru, of Vyasa, of Dakshinamurti, or simply of whoever taught you most. Then make a list, actually write it, of the people from whom you have learned, and contact at least three of them before the day is out. If you teach anyone anything, resolve to do it with more patience. And begin something: a new book, a new mantra, the first verse of a stotram you have always meant to learn. The full moon is a good night to start.