Sunday, October 30, 2005

Guru or Grail

A la Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That, page 88-9:

The Eastern Way is to get a guru.
The Western Way is to seek the grail.

"The mythological Grail was not inside any Church, and
only the person who had a certain character could find
it." The knights of the Round Table took a vow that
"since they thought it a disgrace to go forth in a group,
each should enter the forest at the point where he found
it darkest, and where no other path existed."

Is there a middle way? What about taking a teacher, a
role model, a 'master', learning what he has to teach,
and moving on-- perhaps to another teacher, etc. etc.,
until one is prepared for the search for the grail.

Re Christ: guru or teacher? Maybe both. Maybe some
will never develop the character to seek the grail, at
the darkest spot. Maybe some will.

Is Christ your Saviour or your friend? Have you grown
up into the fullness?

Guru or Grail: we need debate.

9 comments:

Gregg Koskela said...

Hi Larry...thanks for the encouraging comment on my blog. I'll catch up on my reading later tonight, but wanted to say thanks.

I went to Fuller, not Duke Divinity. My brother DID go to Duke Divinity for his M.Div., before getting his Ph.D. at SMU.

Paul said...

I have learned to not limit myself to choices presented to me -- A or B. I see you do the same as I do -- A or B or A & B.

I think we need both guru and grail. Perhaps as times in our life we will move to one or the other but both are needed.

Thanks for being a guru in this post.

Larry Clayton said...

Thanks Gregg; I went to Duke and was scheduled for Perkins, but got side tracked at N.O.So.Bapt.Sem. Makes me a sort of a combination of you and your brother. Does he have a blog?

Paul, thanks for your comment. We are in perfect accord, except for a very minor semantic problem.

George Breed said...

Someone told me once there was a guru in a neighboring town and asked if I was going to see him. I replied if he is a guru, he knows where I live.

Now teachers are something else. I'll take all the teachers I can get. And they are here every day all day long.

Thanks for the post, Larry.

Larry Clayton said...

Thanks, George; I like teacher.
Another good word is mentor. Christ (Jesus) to me is examplar, teacher, mentor, not God. I don't think he ever thought of himself as God. That happened around 425 CE.

Meredith said...

Dear Larry,
Sometimes my beloved and I play a little game. One will ask a "this or that" question, and the other will answer, "yes."

Guru or grail? Yes
Kingom of God within or without? Yes

Larry Clayton said...

Thanks, Meredith; I'm well aware that you are beyond these mundane matters.

Jon said...

Your post reminds me that my teacher (Kitabu Roshi is a guru, BTW) points out that Christ says we must go through him to come to the Father. "Why then," Kitabu asks, "do we stop when we come TO him, instead of going THROUGH him?"

Larry Clayton said...

This has always bugged me, too, Jon. At 31 Jesus introduced me to the Father, like he has millions through the centuries. I've been talking to the Father ever since, and, like your teacher, I often wonder why people pray to Jesus instead of the God he pointed us to.