Guru Purnima

Guru Purnima honours the teacher as the person who removes ignorance and guides a student toward knowledge, discipline and inner clarity. The full moon is traditionally associated with Sage Vyasa, the revered compiler and arranger of Vedic and epic traditions, and is therefore also called Vyasa Purnima. In Hindu practice, devotees remember spiritual gurus, teachers and lineage holders; monasteries and ashrams may hold special guru puja, recitations and discourses. The day is also important in Buddhist tradition because it is associated with the Buddha's first teaching at Sarnath after enlightenment, and Jain communities connect the season with their own teacher lineages. The festival is not limited to worship of a famous religious personality: its larger meaning is gratitude toward those who transmit knowledge responsibly. Students offer respect, seek blessings, renew commitment to study and reflect on the duties that accompany both teaching and learning.

Guru Purnima is valued for devotion, family tradition and the spiritual or seasonal meaning attached to the day.

A teacher is visited, or written to, or remembered where visiting is no longer possible. Ashrams and music schools hold a formal puja and the students offer a fruit and a cloth. It falls at the start of chaturmas, when a wandering teacher stops travelling for the rains and stays in one place, which is why it is a day people can actually go.

Kept by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains on the same full moon. Buddhists mark the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath. In Maharashtra the Datta and Nath lineages keep it largest; the Sikh tradition does not observe it, holding that the Guru Granth Sahib ended the line of living gurus.