Tasyai dise satatam
anjalires aarye
Praksipyate mukharito
madhupairbudhaisca,
Jagarti yatra bhagavan guru cakravarti
visvodaya - pralaya nataka - nityasaksi
O noble one, the wise always offer a handful of flowers humming with bees in the direction where Bhagavan, the sovereign Guru, is awake (residing). He is the eternal witness of the drama of the rise and the dissolution of this universe.
In this shloka, Lord Shiva reveals yet another way of worshipping the Guru. We have known from several shlokas of Shri Guru Gita that the most auspicious form of Guru worship is paada puja or worshipping the Lotus Feet of the Guru. The second most auspicious puja, which is just as sacred, is that of facing the direction where the Guru abides and offering flowers to the Guru while chanting his name, just as the buzzing of the bees.
In this shloka Shiva is teaching us how we should turn every situation into an opportunity for worshipping the Lotus Feet of the Guru. Knowing this truth, many saints have extolled the glories of the Guru through their poems, teachings and sayings. Saint Eknath from Maharashtra has said, “The means of all means is the Guru. The Guru is so great that by merely holding his Lotus Feet, all ignorance disappears, by the dust of his Lotus Feet, all work is accomplished.”
If we go into the subtlety of this shloka, Lord Shiva tells us that even by merely turning in the direction where the Guru resides, if we simply offer flowers with the chants, it will reach him and we get connected to our soul. In the dark age of Kali yuga, people will be so busy amongst their household chores or will be so stuck at work that they may find it extremely difficult to visit the Guru’s ashram and pay reverence. The devotees will not be able to devote time for spirituality or meditation due to which people will lack peace of mind by seeing and hearing about creation and dissolution of so many things that happen during the course of the day in their lives.
Lord Shiva says that the one and the only solution to gain peace is through Guru worship as the Guru is the Absolute. Therefore, to make it easy for devotees to at least orient themselves towards the Guru who is nothing but their own soul, Lord Shiva suggests various simple methods of worshipping the Guru so that we can experience the peace as well as earn Guru’s grace by adopting at least any one of them. Lord Shiva says, The Guru witnesses the srishti or creation as well as Pralaya or dissolution. Both the creation and dissolution take place as per the Will of the Guru too. We may wonder — there are so many Gurus, which Guru can Will the creation and dissolution? There is only one light — the light of the guru known as Guru Jyothi. If there are 1 lakh Gurus, all of them will get prerana or intuition at the same time and say ’yes’ together for the Will to be exercised. Just as there is only one transmitting source but many TV receivers in different parts of the world, likewise, there is only one Guru Shakti and all Gurus are mere reflections of the same Guru principle. This method of worshiping the Guru facing the direction of where the Guru resides, also reveals the fact of life that our soul (Guru) is the eternal witness (nitya saakshi) to the creation and dissolution of this universe and its various elements. Therefore everything should be viewed in the saakshi bhaava.
Excerpt from The Force of Nirvana by Shri Shri Nimishananda