Bhaja Govindam

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.