Passage 3

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In plain words

Hari Govinda, Hari Govinda, say ‘Hari Govinda’, you dullard! When death is moving close beside you, grammar will not save you!

In this way he sang it out. As soon as the world teacher had taught a verse like this — and the disciples were no ordinary men. Being disciples worthy of their guru, all fourteen recited fourteen verses and set about pleasing the guru then and there. As soon as the fourteen had recited fourteen verses and delighted the guru, he wrote twelve verses more, for the good of the world, as the Dvādaśa Mañjarī. After that he sat, thinking things over. Feeling that mere teaching would be of no use at all, he uttered four more verses as a blessing. First the refrain Bhaja Govindam, then the twelve verses, the disciples' fourteen verses and the four verses of blessing: all of them together made thirty-one verses under the name Moha Mudgara, and this has been given to the world as the Moha Mudgara. The chief thing in it is that he set out his chief aim under the word mūḍhamate. Who in this is the mūḍhamati? What kind of person can we call a mūḍhamati? This he inquired into well, and gave the right answer. When we inquire into the words “Nāstiko mūḍha ucyate”, he concluded that the mūḍhamati is precisely the one who denies the Ātma. Dharmarāja used the words nāstiko mūḍha ucyate in the Yakṣa's questions. But in our usage we take the mūḍhas to be simply those who deny the Ātma. Yet we must inquire a little into the true meaning of mūḍhamati, as we ought to understand it today. I am not the body; I am a son of immortality. Very few come to know the truth that the body decays and I am not one who perishes. Looking with a physical eye: ‘I was born as a body on my own, I am growing on my own, I have the joy of enjoying whatever pleasures I like’ — to waste one's life in such longing is one part.