In ancient times just as today, the teacher and the taught were addressed as guru and shishya - the master and the disciple. But as with many other words, the words lost their wholesome meaning, and some wise persons stopped using them.
We see that the Buddha too refrained from using the word 'guru'; instead, he called those who undertook to teach -'kalyanamitta', a spiritual friend who is one's true well-wisher. He is a guide, a friend in your well being, in your wholesome journey through life. Certainly a true friend would turn our lives in the direction towards further development.
If one gets into the habit of sexual misconduct or of lying, speaking harsh words, gossiping, empty chatter, or gets addicted to drugs and gambling, and then meets someone who helps him come out of such unwholesome habits, such a person would truly be called his guide who has led him out of the dark woods. A spiritual friend who, with our highest welfare in mind, helps us to get established on the wholesome path of sila or morality is indeed our true friend.
If we have not learned to discipline the mind which is very agitated and restless and filled in its depth with impurities, the knots gathered over lifetimes - knots of craving and aversion, knots of blind attachments - these knots would result in us taking birth time and again ever-rotating the wheel of misery. However, if we meet a person who shows us the way to disipline the mind and the way to dissolve these knots and break this ever-rotating wheel of becoming, showing us the way out of unending misery, then such a person would indeed be our kalyanamitta.
Our behaviour with people is often stressful, filled with harshness, latent anger, hurt or rebelliousness.
But if one comes across a guide, a friend who helps us reach a stage whereby the mind gets suffused with compassionate love, generosity and goodwill even as one continues to purify it, then such a person will certainly be called our kalyanamitta. Many addressed the Buddha also as 'kalyanamitta'.
The Buddha explained that when towards the end of the night you see the dawn breaking, then the sun is certain to rise. The golden pink shadow in the east at the end of the night is a harbinger of the message that the sunrise is imminent. So likewise, when one meets a kalyanamitta, a guide, know that liberation is inevitable.
The Buddha was well aware of how something so sound can degenerate. Something as simple as people supporting a spiritual master out of gratitude and respect for what they have learned from him can soon deteriorate into expectations from a guru that his followers should honour him, pay obeisance with flowers and make offerings. As a guru he expects glorification and material things as his right; a false sense of entitlement creeps in. Such a guru indeed turns heavy, into a burden.
Of course, a teacher's needs should be met. A renunciate, a bhikkhu who teaches has many restrictions. He lives with minimal possessions - two sets of robes and a bowl for collecting his daily food when offered. Even then he does not become a burden on others. Like cows that do not eat their fill from one place, but wander around grazing a little here and there on pasture land, or like bees that gather honey a few drops at a time, fluttering from flower to flower, a bhikkhu on alms round walks slowly from door to door. He pauses without making request, with head bowed, gathering some food from every house which is offering, so as not to burden any one household. And everywhere he goes, even if he is not given anything, he is filled with metta - may you be happy. He is light on others. Such a one is worthy of becoming a master, an upadhyaya.
In the country where I was born and brought up, early in the morning one could see a row of bhikkhus moving on alms round. Noiselessly, walking with measured steps, they would stop in front of homes and whether they received offerings or not, they would move on with words of loving metta spoken quietly. When a bhikkhu had gathered enough for his needs, he would sit somewhere quiet and eat, unless there was an alling or an elderly bhikkhu back in the monastery, in which case he would take some food back for him. He would not take more than he required - bhatta-mattaññu, he knows his quantity. He is not greedy.
Otherwise, he will turn into a burden, heavy, a guru for followers. But no, he is light as a bee gathering honey. Of course, he needs to feed himself, but he never makes requests. Once the Buddha said that if you want others to run away then ask them for things. A true teacher will not indulge in such behaviour. Rather, an increasing number of people will be attracted to come to him for their own welfare, to receive Dhamma.
He thus becomes a giver, not a receiver, a giver of Dhamma. He is not indulging in a transaction, like a businessman saying, "I have shown you the path of liberation, have imparted the highest Dhamma...
