Guru Purnima

Guru Purnima falls on the full moon of Ashadha and commemorates the birth of Maharishi Veda Vyasa—the greatest organizer of sacred knowledge in human history. It was Vyasa who divided the single primordial Veda into four (Rig, Yajur, Sama, Atharva), composed the eighteen Mahapuranas, compiled the Mahabharata (the world's longest epic with 100,000 verses), and authored the Brahma Sutras. Without Vyasa's monumental work, the vast ocean of Vedic knowledge might have been scattered and lost across millennia.

On this same full moon, the Buddha delivered his first sermon at the Deer Park at Sarnath, setting in motion the "wheel of dharma" and teaching the Four Noble Truths to his first five disciples. This event—Dhammacakkappavattana, "the turning of the wheel of dharma"—is commemorated by Buddhists as Dharma Day.

The deeper meaning of Guru Purnima is recognition that the Guru—the dispeller of darkness (gu = darkness, ru = remover)—is not merely a human teacher but an eternal principle: the light of knowledge itself. The full moon, shining by reflecting sunlight, perfectly symbolises the Guru who transmits the light of divine wisdom received from those before them, in an unbroken lineage reaching back to the source.