Guru Dakshina

[salimondo]

DRONA IS ONE of two great teachers in the Mahabharata. A dirt-poor brahmin retained by the court of Dhritarashtra to civilize the young lizard princes and their equally rambunctious royal cousins, he was almost impeccable, which is good because his first task was to beat his students into submission (the master whose butt you can kick is not your

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The Best Schools

[salimondo]

1a. Thanks for the clarification -- learning what nobody knows is indeed a different problem than finding a guru; we all have our techniques for calling up our clay guru who does have the answers. Ekalavya seemed to have learned archery tricks that not even the "real" Drona could teach. He was one dangerous individual.

1b. Another great point. I doubt that many people have the combination of talent, discipline and desire to go Ekalavya's route, and so can only be as good as the flesh-and-blood gurus that come their way. However, the flesh teachers offer fringe benefits that the idol seems to have trouble granting -- Drona ends up leading the troops for his students and personally knocks Ekalavya out of competition with them (as well as knocking the idol out of direct competition with himself).

Likewise, the kids at the elite prep schools you brought up here a few months ago tend to not actually be all that bright or even end up knowing all that much, but the network still looks out for them. And we can all imagine filiations that exist only to propagate their structure, not any especially rich body of initiatic content -- the Odd Fellows, for example.

2-3. These seem to have grown together. Is AC (or any writer or ancestral figure) convenient only to the extent he is dead? Does this have something to do with how sorcerers successfully practice(d) "necromancy" instead of the various other operations alluded to in 1a? PS. I have actually always considered you extremely Arjunaesque (in terms of expertise and general balanced pandavadom), but you're closer to the situation than I am.

4. They seem to be trying to move from one answer to the question to the other. Why this would be done in public where I can see it, I don't know. Presumably their eventual pedagocial framework will address the C student types.

5. We've talked a little about how Ekalavya could have improved his position. What if anything does Drona do wrong in this situation? By modern standards, he is a failure: dead son, wasted empire, broken caste, wrecked karma, the only students left who remember his teaching are the ones who used it (and others) to kill him. Can we think like Drona but achieve different results? Or is it always already too late for this guy, the god of combat born poor?