[link to stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com]

Controversial 70s guru Adi Da (aka Bubba Free John etc etc) died on Thanksgiving.

My main connection to him is his strong early influence from my erstwhile guru Swami Muktananda. I have a little familiarity with Da from attending programs run by his devotees here in Berkeley; these included some readings from his books, and watching him on video.

I've always been intrigued by how Da was accepted as a super high-class teacher by major writers and philosophers like Ken Wilber and Alan Watts... since his teachings on the whole had so little resonance for me. I've previously posted about Wilber here and here. It was this curiosity about Da's popularity that inspired me to start this blog with a post about Adi Da over a year ago.

I've joined some discussion about Adi Da at the Nonduality Blog and elsewhere. Nonduality.org may be the most lively forum on the topic; Guruphiliac has also added a Da post.

Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say "A bad situation is a good situation." If someone is attached to money, and it's working out well for him, it's very difficult to see and examine and question the underlying attachment. But when a financial crisis hits, the bad situation is an inspiration for inquiry, for looking to the roots of the suffering in our own thinking. Likewise, when a guru dies, the bad situation may be the best time to wonder about our tendency to seek external authority above believing our own experience. That's generally what I've been saying in those discussions.

I happen to have been present in the Ganeshpuri India ashram when Swami Muktananda died. As I saw the devotees scrambling for a new way to project their belief and devotion during those days, it made me wonder about how the needs and wants and expectations of the followers may be the most fundamental part of the equation. (If authoritarian gurus didn't exist, we'd have to invent them.) I've always thought that being in the midst of Muktananda's death-drama was a key experience in pointing me toward a more independent path, which is likely why Da's passing is interesting to me today.