The cartoon panel above is from the “Ziggy” comic strip by Tom Wilson. It features the title character, Ziggy, climbing to the top of a mountain seeking the meaning of life from a wise old hermit, also known as the “guru”.
The image of the guru is pretty stereotypical: first, he is quite old, symbolizing that along with his advanced age came the wisdom that can only be attained after experiencing many of life’s trials and journeys; second, he is a hermit, most probably because after acquiring all the wisdom he now has, he has come to realize that true happiness cannot be found in material possessions or other worldly desires, but through spiritual enlightenment, and he has now tasked himself with purifying his soul in isolation to achieve this; and third, he can only be found in the most difficult of places (in this comic, he’s on the top of a mountain, but “gurus” in other media may be living deep within caves, in the middle of uncharted jungles, behind multiple firewalls and online aliases… you get the idea), in effect becoming a literal metaphor with regards to the difficult journey that is often necessary when one seeks to attain wisdom.
It is this image of the guru on the mountain that I’d like to dissect.
Let me get straight to the point: I think this guru on the mountain is a jerk.
By definition, humans are social creatures. We need others just as much as others need us. So what’s up with this guru’s “oh, I need to free myself from worldly desires, so I must detach myself from the rest of the world to do so” line of thinking? How does isolating oneself from others help you reach enlightenment? Perhaps this guru thinks that the less spiritually-gifted masses are actually “tainted”, and if he truly aspired to attain nirvana, then he must not associate with them. Does he actually consider himself to be better than everyone else?
His decision to isolate himself on a mountaintop is rather interesting. It is as if he’s on this lofty perch up in the heavens, looking down on everyone else. Does he really think that highly of himself? Has the realization that he knows more than most people caused him to develop some kind of God complex?
To be able to call himself a guru, he must have amassed a ridiculously high amount of wisdom before going off to live the life of a hermit. Again, this is shown by the fact that the guru is a very old man, and thus must have gone through all kinds of life experiences to learn what he knows. But remember, although he is a guru, he is not immortal, meaning that unless he has discovered the location of the fountain of youth, we can conclude that his lifespan is no different from any other human’s (so at most, he can live to be about 120 years old). Analyzing this further, we can assume that he climbed that mountain back when he was still physically fit, so he was anywhere between 60-80 years of age. My question here is: would it be possible to accumulate all the wisdom there is in the world – or in the universe, even – in a span of 80 years?
I ask this because I’m curious as to why this guru decided to isolate himself on top of a mountain and, as a result, has stopped acquiring more wisdom. (Remember, wisdom comes with experience, and the moment a person stops gaining new experiences he essentially stops furthering his wisdom.) If he had, in fact, gotten to the point where his wisdom approaches omniscience, then great, the guru truly deserves his almost godly position on top of the world. However, I think it most unlikely that a person, a human being can learn all there is to learn in the span of a single lifetime. For us humans to get where we are now – with our laptops, the Internet, air travel, advances in medicine – required 5,000 years of trial and error. That’s five millennia worth of experiences, and no single human being has ever lived that long. And despite all our species’ accomplishments, we’re still not done yet. We are well aware that there is still much to learn, and so we continue to do research, to explore, to experiment, to experience numerous failures, before finally arriving at the desired result, then we do the process all over again in search of something new. Each and every productive member of human society contributes to this process… everyone, except the lonely guru on top of his mountain.
He is such a jerk!
He assumes to be THE keeper of wisdom, yet we’ve just proven that that is impossible, given that he only has the lifespan of a normal human being. If he had just the regular amount of wisdom that other knowledgeable folks have, he should have realized that the acquisition of wisdom knows no end, that it is a continuous process; thus, isolating himself from the rest of the world is actually the DUMBEST thing he could do if he truly claims to be wise!
It is quite apparent that not only is this guru a jerk, he’s rather arrogant as well! Who does he think he is, looking down on us like he’s better than the rest of us?? Who died and made him all-knowing?? What right does he have to act all high and mighty, when it is rather obvious that he doesn’t really know all he thinks he knows??
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… and why, you must probably be wondering, have I taken to assailing a lonely old man sitting by himself when he hasn’t actually done any harm to anybody?
To answer that, let me tell you about an experience I had back in my college days. It happened during an argument I had with a longtime friend. Long story short, he had asked for my opinion and suggestions to a personal problem he was facing, and in my desire to help him out I came up with a solution that would involve him putting out cash as penalties if he didn’t abide by the rules of the solution. The cash penalty, you must understand, wasn’t because I was trying to make money from my friend’s predicament; instead, it was an effort to dissuade him from straying from the path towards the solution he desired, and which I truly believed he could attain. I never thought for a second that he would ever have to pay the cash penalty, but apparently he thought differently. He thought I was trying to take advantage of him and his situation. And he got mad. I mean really mad. And no matter how I tried to explain the truth of the matter, it only seemed to make things worse. Finally, he said something I will never forget: “You think you’re so smart! You always make it a point to make me feel stupid whenever you’re speaking to me!”
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I never saw that coming, mostly because that was really not my intention. But whether I meant to or not, I had hurt my friend with my know-it-all attitude and my arrogance. And it seems he had kept this fact hidden from me for many years, until finally he couldn’t stay silent about it any longer. In this instance, it is probably debatable whether the fault lies with him or with me; I mean, for all anyone knows, he may actually have inferiority issues that I had absolutely nothing to do with in the first place. But what’s troubling to me is that this was by no means an isolated incident: since then, at least one other person who I consider a close friend has said practically the same thing to me, and it also happened during an argument. Was this an example of lightning striking twice?
Perhaps the reason why I’m so hard on the old guy is because sometimes (not very often, mind you, but once in a while) I find myself in his shoes, on top of my own mountain, thinking so highly of myself while looking down on everyone else. I must admit, I swell with pride whenever I get to dispense my own little tidbits of knowledge & wisdom, and also while watching those that receive it do so with a mixture of awe & gratefulness. That is, until I realize that I am again playing the role of the guru, and so I must make a conscious effort to come back down to earth where I belong. Otherwise, I risk being struck by lightning once again.
One more thing I realized whenever I became the guru: it’s lonely at the top.
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