Accidental Doga Guru

3 weeks ago By Yogi Anoop

Accidental Doga Guru

    Those days did not feel like moments of spiritual attainment. They felt more like quiet encounters with disbelief—a strange inward astonishment. One morning, a phone rang, and with that call arrived a revelation: I was no longer merely a teacher of yoga and meditation. Somewhere, somehow, I had also become a Doga Guru.

This recognition did not descend through initiation, discipline, or any prolonged austerity. No lineage confirmed it. No silence revealed it. It emerged instead through a mobile network—clear, efficient, and unquestioned.

With the title came its responsibilities. People began approaching me with the troubles of their frustrated dogs. The concerns were earnest, deeply felt. And the remedies they sought were equally specific: organic, yogic, meditative. It was then that I noticed something subtle about the modern mind—when it fails to understand itself, it does not abandon hope. It redirects it. If not the self, then at least the dog must be understood.

One call remains particularly vivid. A voice, carefully polite, reverent in tone, declared, “You are doing great work.”

At once, within me, those familiar chemical movements began—the quiet inner responses by which even the most ordinary guru may begin to feel extraordinary.

Maintaining the formal courtesy expected of wisdom, I asked, “What seems to be the problem?”

“My dog has lost self-control,” the voice replied. “So I am taking him to a dog hotel in Gurugram—for dating. He will spend the day with female dogs. That should bring him inner peace.”

For a moment, I entered silence. Not the silence of meditation, nor the absorption of samādhi, but the silence of sheer bewilderment. Perhaps for the first time, it became unmistakably clear to me that brahmacharya is not a challenge reserved for human beings alone. It appears to trouble dogs as well.

With some effort, I said, “My friend, I am not a guru of dogs.”

But faith rarely pauses for reason. It moves faster, and with greater confidence.

“No, Gurudev,” came the reply. “You are a great guru of dogs. I read about you in a magazine. You have made many dogs chant ‘Om.’ You have calmed their lust and anger. This is your service to the animal world.”

Silently, I wondered whether the next question would be about granting dogs self-realization—or whether that service had been deferred to a future birth.

Outwardly composed, I responded only this: “It is possible that there is a serious misunderstanding. I possess no such specialized knowledge. And it remains as much a mystery to me as to anyone else—when, how, and why I was declared a ‘Doga Guru.’”

Perhaps this is the defining truth of our age: knowledge has grown scarce, but labels have become abundant. Knowledge demands time, silence, and sustained discipline. Labels require only a momentary assumption. Experience is no longer examined; titles are accepted in its place. Truth is not tested—it is packaged. And the less something is explained, the more readily it is believed.

To become a guru now, one does not need sādhanā. One needs only a misquoted sentence. A line removed from its context, a thought half-heard, and imagination—assisted by reverence—completes the rest. Neither the disciple requires discipline, nor the teacher realization. Initiation today consists of a printed line, a viral phrase, and a shared misunderstanding.

And yet, in spite of all this, I remain present within my own experience.

I am.—I am.

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