Sri Adi Shankaracharya Swamiji's BHAJA GOVINDAM - A Call to Wakefullness - 3 : Swami Chidananda

01/09/2018
3. Spontaneous Poetry :-

The truths of the Bhagavad Gita, and the truths which Shankaracharya expounds in his beautiful lyric Dvadasha Manjanka — popularly known as Bhaja Govindam — are not different from each other. But the style in which it is given and the way in which it is expounded to the layman are different. Bhagavad Gita, Brahma-Sutra and the Upanishads are for a Sanskrit scholar, who has already got some background of philosophy; but for Bhaja Govindam no such background is necessary, because it tells you what you already know. It tells you home truths within the range of your own bitter and sweet experiences of this world of human nature and of the state of things that prevail in human society.

The great compassionate Jagad-guru Adi Shankaracharya might have thought, ‘If these people, who are the children of Bharatavarsha, who are the descendants of those great illumined sages, who are the heirs to this wonderful cultural treasure of knowledge, are to be deprived of it, it would be a great pity. Something should be done to bring quintessence of the teachings of all the great Upanishads and the Vedanta, within easy reach of the common man. I shall, for the common man, bring to their very homes, at their very doorstep, the Upanishadic message, the loftiest truths of the Upanishads in an easy, interesting, concise style, but at the same time in a complete, compact and comprehensive way.’ And this great gift Bhaja Govindam was the outcome.

3. Spontaneous Poetry :-

The origin of all the wisdom teachings was spontaneous, unrehearsed; there was no pre-meditation. Sri Shankaracharya had composed this great scripture, Bhaja Govindam, on the spur of the moment without any intention of composing something, not being aware that such a thing will come out of him.

The sage Valmiki, before whom Sanskrit poetry did not exist, is known as the adi-kavi, the first poet. By a chance incident, when he was going to take a bath in the river, he saw a hunter aiming at two lovemaking birds. He was so struck, ‘Oh, this man is going to kill this loving pair!’ And spontaneously the words came out: "Ma nishad ... Don’t, O hunter! . . ." So out of that heinous incident, out of the urgency to do something to prevent that dire occurrence, poetry came out spontaneously from the heart of sage Valmiki. Even so, poetry flowed spontaneously from Shankaracharya when he saw one student very diligently trying to learn by heart some grammar rule: "Dukrin karane, Dukrin karane, Dukrin karane."

To be continued