Bhaja Govindam
Sri Adi Sankaracharya
1
Seek Govinda, Seek Govinda, Seek Govinda, O Fool!
When the appointed times comes (death),
grammar rules surely will not save you.
2
O Fool! Give up the thirst to possess wealth. Create in your mind,
devoid of passions, thoughts of the Reality. With whatever you
get, entertain your mind, be content.
3.
Seeing the full bosom of young maidens and their navel, do not
fall a prey to maddening delusion. This is but a modification of
flesh and fat. Think well thus in your mind again and again.
4
The water drop playing 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.
5
As long as there is the ability to earn and save, so long are all
your dependants attached to you. Later on, when you come to
live with an old, infirm body, no one at home cares to speak even
a word with you!!
6
As long as there dwells breath in the body, so long they enquire
of your welfare at home. Once the breath leaves, the body
decays, even the wife fears that very same body.
7
So long as one is in one’s boyhood, one is attached to play, so
long as one is in youth, one is attached to one’s own young
woman; so long as one is in old age, one is attached to anxiety,
yet no one, alas to the Supreme Brahman, is ever seen attached.
8
Who is your wife? Who is your son? Supremely wonderful
indeed is this samsara. Of whom are you? From where have you
come? O brother, think of that Truth here.
9
Through the company of the good, there arises non-attachment;
through non-attachment there arises freedom from delusion;
when there is freedom from delusion, there is the Immutable
Reality; on experiencing the Immutable Reality, there comes the
state of ‘liberated-in-life’.
10
When youthfulness has passed, where is lust and its play? When
water is evaporated, where is the lake? When the wealth is
reduced, where is the retinue? When the Truth is realised, where
is samsara?
11
Take no pride in your possession, in the people at your
command, in the youthfulness that you have. Time loots away all
these in a moment. Leaving aside all these, after knowing their
illusory nature, realise the state of Brahman and enter into it.
12
Day and night, dawn and dusk, winter and spring, again and
again come and depart. Time sports and life ebbs away. And yet,
one leaves not the gusts of desires.
13
O Distracted One! Why worry about wife, wealth? Is there not
for you the One who ordains? In the three worlds it is the
association-with-good-people alone that can serve as a boat to
cross the sea of change, birth and death.
14
One ascetic with matted locks, one with shaven head, one with
hairs pulled out one by one, another parading in his ochre robes
– these are fools who, though seeing, do not see. Indeed, these
different disguises or apparels are only for their belly’s sake.
15
The body has become worn out. The head has turned grey. The
mouth has become toothless. The old man moves about leaning
on his staff. Even then he leaves not the bundle of his desires.
16
In front the fire, at the back the sun, late at night he sits with his
knees held to his chin; he receives alms in his own scooped palm
and lives under the shelter of some tree, and yet the noose of
desires spares him not!
17
One may, in pilgrimage, go to where the Ganges meets the
ocean, called the Gangaasaagar, or observe vows, or distribute
gifts away in charity. If he is devoid of first-hand-experience-of-the-Truth,
according to all schools of thought, he gains no
release, even in a hundred lives.
18
Sheltering in temples, under some trees, sleeping on the naked
ground, wearing a deerskin, and thus renouncing all idea-of
possession and thirst-to-enjoy, to whom will not dispassion bring
happiness?
19
Let one revel in Yoga or let him revel in Bhoga. Let one seek
enjoyment in company or let him revel in solitude away from the
crowd. He whose mind revels in Brahman, he enjoys, verily, he
alone enjoys.
20
To one who has studied the Bhagavad Gita even a little, who has
sipped at least a drop of Ganges-water, who has worshipped at
least one Lord Muraari, to him there is no quarrel with Yama, the
Lord of Death.
21
Again birth, again death, and again lying in mother’s womb – this
samsara process is very hard to cross over. Save me O destroyer
of Mura, (Lord Krishna) through Thy infinite kindness.
22
The Yogin who wears but a godadi (shawl made of rags), who
walks the path that is beyond merit and demerit, whose mind is
joined in perfect Yoga with its goal, he revels (in God consciousness) and lives thereafter
as a child or as a madman.
23
Who are you? Who am I? From where did I come? Who is my
mother? Who is my father? Thus enquire, leaving aside the
entire world-of-experience, essence-less and a mere dreamland,
born of imagination.
24
In you, in me and in all other places too there is but one All
Pervading Reality. Being impatient, you are unnecessarily getting
angry with me. If you want to attain soon the Vishnu-status, be
equal-minded in all circumstances.
25
Strive not, waste not your energy to fight against or to make
friends with your enemy, friend, son or relative. Seeking the Self
everywhere, lift the sense-of-difference born out of ‘ignorance’.
26
Leaving desire, anger, greed and delusion, the seeker sees in the
Self ‘He Am I’. They are fools those who have not Self-knowledge,
and they consequently, as a captive in hell, are tortured.
27
The Bhagavad Gita and Sahasranama are to be chanted; always
the form of the Lord of Lakshmi is to be meditated upon; the
mind is to be led towards the company of the good; wealth is to
be shared with the needy.
28.
Very readily one indulges in carnal pleasures; later on, alas, come
diseases of the body. Even though in the world the ultimate end
is death, even then man leaves not his sinful behaviour.
29
‘Wealth is calamitous’, thus reflect constantly: the truth is that
there is no happiness at all to be got from it. To the rich, there is
fear even from his own son. This is the way with wealth
everywhere.
30
The control of all activities, the sense-withdrawal, the reflection,
along with japa and the practice of reaching the total inner
silence – these, perform with care, with great care.
31
O Devotee of the lotus-feet of the teacher! May you become
liberated soon from the samsara through the discipline of the
sense-organs and the mind. You will come to experience the
Lord that dwells in your own heart.
32
Thus was a silly grammarian lost in rules cleansed of his narrow vision and shown the Light by Shankara's apostles.
33
Worship Govinda, worship Govinda, worship Govinda, Oh fool !
Other than chanting the Lord's names, there is no other way to cross the life's ocean.
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