I have this cat companion who at times feels very familiar to me, like I know him from somewhere. I know reincarnation is a strange concept to many people. I know that the idea that one person can become another person is beyond believable to some. And yet when I feel that feeling, it's almost as if I don't care about engaging in any debate. I just feel what I feel, right or wrong, with proof or without proof. I started to wonder if my white cat were my dog Scrappy who passed away, or my cat Rumi, or even my late father. When I thought of those possibilities, I started to tear up, because if those were true, it means that our relationship has not ended, and I still have an opportunity to take care of someone I used to know, once again. And in the case of my father, we can build the kind of loving parent-child relationship we didn't really have, except with the roles reversed. In the midst of these thoughts, I realized, what does it matter if my cat is someone who already appeared in my life before? Whether he is my dog or cat or my father or a stranger in a new body shouldn't change the way that I love him. And isn't that the ultimate teaching, to see each "other" as a beloved being, so we are no longer separated by false temporary identities? Isn't the teaching simply that there are no "others"?
Guru Sakshat, the teacher that is nearby, may not take a specific form that we expect. He or she may not be in an orange robe or have a title or be a popular name in our community. He or she may be the homeless person in the street or the one who cut in front of us in a line or the animal whose gaze pierced through our hearts at a chance encounter. That being, like my white cat, may teach us that while we may be attached to an individual being, the love is truly universal and limitless and goes beyond the border of time and space and lifetimes. Guru Sakshat, the guru that is nearby, is a teaching that awakens us to the reality that every single being is our teacher, and not only that, but that every single being shares our collective soul.
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