The Teacher (Guru)

The guru is the spiritual teacher — the one who has realized the truth and can transmit it, guide the disciple past pitfalls, and in many traditions confer initiation. Hindu thought holds the living teacher to be all but indispensable: the scriptures are terse and easily misread, and the path needs a guide who has walked it. In the more devotional and tantric streams the guru is revered as a window onto, or even an embodiment of, the divine itself.