Why do only men have established guru lineages ?

[Guest guest]

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

guru :

 

 

In Hinduism, a personal spiritual teacher.

 

In ancient India, knowledge of the Vedas was transmitted through oral teaching from guru to pupil. The rise of the bhakti movement further increased the importance of gurus, who were often looked on as living embodiments of spiritual truth and were identified with the deity. They prescribed spiritual disciplines to their devotees, who followed their dictates in a tradition of willing service and obedience. Men or women may be gurus, though generally only men have established lineages

 

 

[I_love_krishna_]

stupid beliefs and and stupid explanations to keep women under men.

 

 

[gHari]

There is another possible way to understand those words.

 

"though generally only men have established lineages" could have been meant to suggest that only men established lineages. Only men have shaved off their beards.

 

By the way, I have found that these mundane sources like Encyclopedias are good only to see how far off western thought is in understanding the truth of Vedic culture. If I were grading them as a high school paper, they would never get better than 65% and most often would simply fail.

[Guest guest]

"were identified with the deity"

 

especially this is not correct... bogus guru and bogus disciples

[theist]

Are we accepting the body of the guru as guru? Certainly we accepted it as spiritual energy but it may be better to accept the instructions. If so what gender are they?

 

Others will go further in some lines and say their guru is really female, that is manjari. I don't know about all that, but I do know the instructions are genderless and guru is never subjected to old age disease and death even though he may appear to.

 

Yes the world's culture is primarily male dominated, in speech politics etc. Who really has the power between the two is a question though.

 

The thing is parampara or the living current of transcendence is not subject to gender issues.

 

Anyway it does matter to me if that current flows through a male or female form.

[Krishna69]

Encyclopedia Britanica is not something all in all. There is good number of evidence that there were many women scholars in India.

Gargi, was a wise and learned daughter of Rishi (sage) Vachaknu, who was also known as Brahmavadini as she possessed the knowledge of Brahma-vidya. It's known that She participated in a debate with Yajnavalkya in the Yajnasala (place for sacrifices) of King Janaka." (father of Janaki (sita Devi)

 

“Series of dialogues in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad between Gargi and Yajnavalkya explains this. Thus it is evident that in ancient India, women used to obtain knowledge of many sciences and disciplines. NOn only that, the rishis's wife's (rishi pathni) were also teachers to the respecitive desciples of her husband. But as the society was patriarchial they too bear the same gothram of their husbands and hence their husband's lineages were known. But it is normally understood that rishi's pathnis from the fact that they also used to participate in public functions and take part in intellectual debates. There used to be no ban of any sort in the field of knowledge, this is established very clearly from the account of Gargi's life. This is also evident from the fact that In south India too, there were many women poetess during ancient India. ONe of the famous poetess of the second century was Avaiyar, who was devotee of Karthikeya (warrior form of Shree Krishna worshiped in tamilnadu) and history says that she not only participated in intellectual debates, but also acted as a major peace keeping force among the emperors.

In present day India also there are good number of women in spiritual paths who has good number of followers.

Regards

Shyam

 

[Krishna69]

I dont know how many of you are aware of Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Sharadha Devi. Sharadha Devi was the wife of Paramahamsa and she was equally a teacher who learned spirituality and religion from her husband and performed the role of Guru and universal mother to all his desciples. One of his desciples who is well known is Swami Vivekanandha. Regards

Shyam

[Krishna69]

The following link gives you information about Sharadha Devi

 

http://srinaath.freeyellow.com/maa.html

 

Shyam