A Discussion on Bhajagovindam : ( 19/01/2013. )

1.Who is your wife? 2. Who is your son? 3.Of whom are you? 4.From where have you come? There is no denying the fact that the institution of home, the bonds of family relations, etc., have all a beneficial influence on individuals, and they can certainly liberate man from his egocentric selfishness. And yet, they are themselves, even at their best, very limited. They can never be an end in themselves. Man and woman living together in mutual love and respect as a couple, and growing to the dignified status of av father and a mother, have much to learn from each other.  Both get well trained by their mutual association if they live in a true spirit of togetherness. Bot, ordinarily, in their folly, they grow into such an unhealthy state  of attachment to each other that the very balm becomes a poison. According to Hindu sastras, man and woman in wedlock must live, no doubt, in a spirit of togetherness, but Acharya insists: "Let there be a space between the two"-- let th...

Life is short, long is the pilgrimage:- The rational intellect is so powerful a mechanism that it can rocket a man of pure heart into the highest levels of incomparable divinity in a very short time, if only he is available for it. Alas! he is not. He gets himself tied down to the passing sorcerers of the flesh in the world. Deluded by his passions, he discovers an enchantment in the gold, a value in the baser things, a sweetness in the very bitter agonies of life. Lust and passions:- Hoodwinked with lust, drunk with passions, the tottering fool wanders away from the main road into the thorny bushes, and there, lacerated and bleeding, soon fatigued,  he tumbles down into the bottomless pits of death. As the teacher realizes this universal folly of man, he feels a painful desperation, and the resultant song is the 7th verse in Bhajagovindam. under discussion. Chronologically following human:- Swami Sankaracharya says, that the childhood days of man are wasted in hi...

The body is everything:- In short, to spend one's entire lifetime in sheer body worship, in earning more so that this  futile worship may be made more elaborate, is one of the abominable intellectual stupidities into which humanity readily sinks.  For, if the body be the altar  of worship, it may not remain permanently there as the days of decay and old age are not far away even for today's young bodies. To sweat and toil, to fight and procure, to feed and breed, to clothe and shelter the body--are all in themselves necessary, but to spend whole life time in these alone is a criminal waste  of human abilities. For, era long it is to grow old, tottering, infirm and, in the end die away. At least the animal body has some value when it is dead; a human body, when once dead, has only a nuisance value. It is to maintain and to fatten such a bundle of despicable filth that wealth is earned, hoarded, many throats cut, low dissipation practiced and cruel wars waged...

Nothing for Nothing:- As an animal, man is selfish. He will not generally give without hopes of getting. 'Nothing for nothing', seems to be the law that governs nature. This being a universal law, ordinarily, even intimate relations and dear and near ones are deferential  towards the earning-saving member of the family. This has been observed at all levels of relationships---man and wife, father and son, brother and sister. In short, in all human relationships, one who is capable of earning-and-saving alone is, with due reverence, respected and adored by others around who have some hope of being benefitted  by a share of his saving! Keeping this fundamental point in mind, Swami Sankaracharya says that one can be popular and beloved of the people around one only so long as one is capable of 'earning-and-saving'. Then alone others can make use of , or making a prey of, the 'rich'one. When his capacities decay and he comes to live in his own old infirm...

Life ever unstable:- " The water-drop rolling on a lotus petal has an extremely uncertain existence; so also is life ever unstable. Understand, the very world is consumed by disease and conceit, and is riddled with pangs."     Death, wealth, women, in the last three stanzas, now Acharya sees human life to be as uncertain as a minute drop of water trembling/unbalanced at the tip of Lotus petal. Life is uncertain in itself, and even during its uncertain existence it is consumed by disease and conceits, persecuted by a hundred different voiceless pangs!   In the first half of the slokam, Swamiji is pointing the mortality of individual existence. In the second half of the stanza, Acharya  points the pain-ridden nature of the world itself.  This is a typical example of pratipaksha  bhavana upon the individual and the total life.     Since life is so uncertain, and the world is in a sense nothing but sorrow, th...

Kamini:- In the previous slokam(2) a true seeker is advised to give up all covetousness for wealth of the world, and here he is advised to give up lusty passions for women. From the days of the Upanisad to our own times, we find in all masters this constant warning against wealth(kancana) and woman (kamini). But no insult is meant to either; this is a statement of a scientific truth. All intelligent living  creatures have these two irresistible urges, 'to possess more' (wealth) and to 'enjoy' (woman). The Reality:- Here Sankaracharya gives us a line of thinking, which can be  an efficient antidote to the fanciful price, that the body gives to the object of senses. The soft inviting bosom of your beloved , if sentimentally analysed and mentally seen in its realty, will reveal itself to be composed of only abhorrent flesh and fat , packed  in a scaly skin! If these component parts are brought  before  your mental vision, spiritually the mind sh...

Wealth:- Last slokam deals with uncertainty of life  and  unexpected death. Here in the second slokam Acharya stress on wealth. O fool! give up the thirst to possess wealth. Create in your mind, devoid of passions, thoughts of the Reality. With whatever you get (as reward of the past), entertain  your mind (be content).   Acharya  Sankara   here indicates how we must live in the world. His advice to us is to live joyously in contentment and satisfaction with what we would get 'as a result of our karma (action).' There is no limit to human imaginations. An individual who has given reins to it can never stop at any conceivable point. Desires multiply, the more we satisfy them. The more the desires are satisfied, the more seems to be the hunger, and the deeper gnaws into our peace a sense of tragic dissatisfaction.   Desire for wealth degrades man. Attachment brings endless worries. There is strain in acquiring. There...

INTRODUCTION:- MOHA MUDGARA- Bhaja Govindam is one of the seemingly smaller but, in fact, extremely important works of Adi Sankara. Here the fundamentals of Vedanta are taught in simple, musical verses so that, even from early childhood, the children of the Rishies can grow up amidst the melody of Advaita.  The musical rhythm in these slokams (stanzas) makes it easy even for children to remember and repeat these pregnant (with deep tattvams) verses. For an intelligent young man, a sincere study of this poem can remove all his delusions (Moha), and so the poem is also called Moha  Mudgara (Hammer). SLOKAM-1. "Grammar rules will  never help anyone at the time of death. While living, strive to realise the deathless state of purity and perfection".  The grammar-rule that has been indicated here stands for "all secular knowledge and possessions". The import of this condemnation, that all grammar and such other secular sciences cannot save the soul, when...