Traditional Teachers and Sages

With so many new teachers offering satsang throughout the West, one might question the value, if any, of studying ancient texts (like the Bhagavad Gita, Brahma Sutras, and Upanishads,) , following ancient traditions (Ch’an, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Kabbalah) and studying the lives of sages (Anandamayi Ma, Ramana Maharshi, Adi Shankaracharya, Huang Po, Lao Tzu, Christ).

The answer, in a word, is clarity.

Becoming Self realized does not assure that one will be a great teacher, as well. And, I respectfully submit, many are not.

Where the West has excelled at the study of objective reality, it is the East that has, since time immemorial, charted the interior space of subjective reality with clarity. The proof is in the pudding: there is an endless chain of enlightened Mahatmas throughout the history of the East; a tradition that continues to this day. What they share in common is access to exactly the same material used since the first millenium BCE.

In spite of these clear credentials and recommendations, many in the West remain intimidated by strange sanskrit terms, an alien alphabet, and prose that is difficult to decipher from the modern perspective.

Acknowledging this, scholars have helped to unlock the great storehouse of knowedge contained in these documents through commentaries designed to make the material more accessible to a Western audience.

This is a controversial path, of course. Any attempt at translation or commentary can color the original text in ways the author did not intend. So, who the commentator is becomes paramount. Thus, Adi Shankaracharya’s commentaries on the 11 major Upanishads (mukhya) have current, but highly respected renderings for modern day English speaking students by Swamis Dayananda, Swami Chinmaya, and his close disciple, James Swartz . Some of James Swartz's work is available here under Free Advaita books, in the resources section.

In an effort to assist you in identifying some of these traditional teachers and sages, we have posted brief boiographies and links to short entries about and by them.

Namaste.