श्रीमद्भिनवविद्यातीर्थाक्षरमालास्त्रोत्रम् Śrimad-Abhinava-Vidyātīrtha-Akṣaramālā-Stotram

Verse 1

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: Venerated as the Supreme Brahman, as Iśvara, and as a Captivating Sage

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha, who has a captivating lotus-like face, is the giver of each and every happiness (of all), is the Guru of the universe, and is worthy of universal reverence.]

In this opening verse – which begins with the first syllable ‘a’ of His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātirtha Mahāsvāmin’s revered name – His Holiness is adored as the Supreme Brahman, as Īśvara, and, in His human aspect, as a captivating sage. His Holiness is definitively described as the Supreme Brahman in the second verse and as Īśvara in the fourth, fifth and sixth verses. The third, seventh and eighth verses conceive of Him as a peerless jīvanmukta-guru. Each of the verses ends with a heartfelt expression of surrender to Him. The first syllables of the eight verses together yield His Holiness’s sacred name.

The first quarter of this first verse – which means ‘He is the giver of each and every happiness (of all)’ – reveals that He is the Supreme Brahman, since, according to the scriptures, it is the Supreme Brahman that is the basis of every happiness experienced by every being, right up to Brahmā.

The following is culled and paraphrased from what His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin taught in His classes on the prasthāna-traya and from what He told me individually – with the cited passages translated on the basis of Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣyas as explicated by Him:

‘Brahman is of the very nature of absolute, infinite bliss. The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad declares, “vijñānam ānandaṁ brahma – Brahman is pure consciousness and absolute bliss” ¹, and the Chāndogya-upaniṣad teaches, “yo vai bhūmā tat sukhaṁ nālpe sukham asti – That which is infinite is bliss; there is no happiness in what is finite.”¹ The Supreme Brahman, which is of the nature of bliss, is the sole, real source of every happiness of every kind of every being, right up to Brahmā. Thus, the Taittirīya-upaniṣad asserts: “raso vai saḥ / rasaṁ hy evāyaṁ labdhvānandī bhavati…ko hy evānyāt kaḥ prāṇyāt / yadeṣa ākāśa ānando na syāt / eṣa hy evānandayāti – The self-creator (Brahman) is surely the source of happiness…Who indeed would inhale, and who indeed would exhale, if this Space (Brahman) that is bliss were not there? This one alone makes individuals happy.”² Likewise, the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad points out, “etasyaivānadasyānyāni bhūtāni mātrām upajīvanti – All other beings (all unenlightened beings) subsist on a particle of this very bliss.”³

‘While Brahman is absolute, infinite bliss – without any subject-object division or change whatsoever – the happiness experienced by beings when they are awake or dreaming has a beginning and an end, is limited, varies, and is marked by an experiencer–experience–experienced division. How, then, is Brahman taught to be the true basis of every experienced joy? Though Brahman is non-dual, duality is falsely superimposed on it due to avidyā, and, remaining totally changeless, It appears as the world with all its diversity, like a rope misapprehended as a snake in dim light. The limited, time-bound joys that are marked by the experiencer–experience– experienced division lie in the domain of avidyā. Like the reflections of the sun in muddy, unsteady waters, they are reflections of the infinite bliss of Brahman in inconstant minds. Just as the unchanged rope is the real basis of the false snake, and just as the single, intensely luminous sun in the sky is the fount of the various unsteady, differently bright reflections in muddy, unsteady waters, so Brahman, of the very nature of infinite bliss – which is totally changeless and without any experiencer–experience– experienced division – is the true source of all joys.

‘The bliss of Brahman does not manifest in all mental states; it is common knowledge, for instance, that a person is not joyous when overpowered by wrath. It manifests to various extents in sāttvika mental states. The greater the mental tranquillity, the greater is the joy experienced, just as the sun’s reflection becomes clearer and brighter when the unsteady, muddy water bearing the reflection becomes, with the calming of wind and the settling of mud, steadier and clearer. The happiness experienced when a desired object is obtained arises because the temporary quieting of the mind upon the consummation of the desire for that object facilitates the manifestation in the mind of that degree of Brahman’s bliss.

‘When all desires are renounced through viveka, and the mind is centred on Brahman and thoroughly quiescent in samādhi, the manifestation of the bliss of Brahman is extreme; it manifests there in all its fullness when the veil of avidyā is rent asunder by the realization of Brahman. In the case of the unenlightened in dreamless sleep, the mind is dissolved and the bliss of Brahman, shrouded just by primal avidyā – not by primal avidyā and its effects as in the states of waking and dream – manifests; this great bliss of deep sleep – which is unaccompanied by the sense of “I” – is the same in the case of a child, an ignoramus, a scholar, a cow, a dog and other life-forms.

‘Every jīva experiences happiness and unhappiness in a life as the fruit of its dharma and its adharma respectively. When some dharma – puṇya – acquired earlier by a jīva fructifies in a life, the bliss of Brahman manifests to the extent called for by that dharma and is the happiness that the jīva experiences at that time. This manifestation of the bliss of Brahman, in the form of the joy experienced, occurs only through the conjunction of the factors required for it, not out of the blue. With greater and greater dharma, a jīva attains higher and higher worlds, up to that of Brahmā, and, according to the scriptures, the joy that is experienced is a hundred times greater in each successive higher world than in the preceding one. In every case, what manifests as the happiness experienced in a realm is the bliss of Brahman only.

‘Though the sun just shines (prakāśate), being luminous by nature, it is also spoken of, with reference to objects, as variously illuminating them (prakāśayati); likewise, though Brahman is bliss by Its very nature and devoid of activity, It is also spoken of in the scripture – through words such as rasaḥ and ānandayāti (a Vedic form of ānandayati) – as the giver of happiness.’

The third quarter of the verse presents His Holiness as Īśvara. Taken literally, rather than in any qualified sense, its first word, jagadguruṁ, conveys that His Holiness is ‘the Guru of the universe’, and its second and final word, jagatpūjyaṁ, that He is ‘worthy of universal reverence’ – and it is only Īśvara who is truly so. The use of jagadguruṁ in conjunction with jagatpūjyaṁ indicates that the word jagadguruṁ is not employed as an honorific or in any other figurative sense; and verses 4, 5, and 6 leave no room for doubt that both jagadguruṁ and jagatpūjyaṁ are used here in their primary senses alone.

Sureśvarācārya definitively describes Īsvara and explicitly identifies Him as the Jagadguru: ‘sarvajñaḥ sarvaśaktiś ca sarvātmā sarvago dhruvaḥ / jagaj-janisthitidhvaṁsa-hetur eṣa sadeśvaraḥ //…īśo ’sāvantaryāmī jagadguruḥ – He is omniscient, omnipotent, the Ātman of all, omnipresent and changeless. He is the eternal Lord, the cause of the birth, subsistence and destruction of the world. …This Lord, the indwelling controller of all, is the universal Guru (jagadguru).’¹

The following is my English paraphrase of a conversation between a first-time visitor, Chandramouli, and His Holiness, which took place in New Delhi in the third week of August 1982:²

Chandramouli: Who is a jagadguru in the primary sense of the term? Kr̥ṣṇa is called ‘jagadguru’ in the verse ‘vasudevasutaṁ devaṁ kaṁsa-cāṇūramardanam / devakīparamānandaṁ kr̥ṣṇam vande jagadgurum (I pay obeisance to God Kr̥ṣṇa, the Guru of the universe, the son of Vasudeva, the slayer of Kaṁsa and Cāṇūra, and the supreme delight of Devakī).’³ Is He literally a jagadguru and, if so, how? Or is He one only in a figurative sense? As there are atheists – and Kr̥ṣṇa Himself refers to them, saying, ‘jagad āhur anīśvaram (They say that the world is without any Īśvara)’⁴ – how can there be any jagadguru unless the primary sense of the term is diluted to exclude them?

His Holiness: It is Īśvara – the creator, protector and destroyer of the entire gross and subtle jagat, the inner controller of all beings, the giver of the fruits of karma, and the omniscient, first imparter of the Vedas at the start of each cycle of creation – who is the true jagadguru in the primary sense of the term. The ultimate jagadguru cannot be conditioned by time, for he could not then be the Guru of those who arose before him. Further, he must be omniscient, for otherwise, he would himself be in need of a Guru. Thus, in the Yoga-sūtras, it is first established that Īśvara is omniscient, and then it is stated: ‘sa pūrveṣām api guruḥ kālenānavacchedāt – He is the Guru of even the ancient ones (such as Brāhmā) since He is not conditioned by time.’¹ The Yoga-bhāṣya explains that just as Īśvara was present with perfect knowledge at the beginning of the present cycle of creation, on the authority of the scriptures, it must be understood that such was the case in the earlier cycles of creation also.

H.H. (continuing): The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad states that the Vedas are like the Supreme’s breath and, thus, indicates that they emerged from the Supreme virtually effortlessly: ‘asya mahato bhūtasya niḥśvasitam etad yad r̥gvedo yajurvedaḥ sāmavedo ’tharvāṅgirasaḥ – The R̥gveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda, the Ātharvaveda…are like the breath of this Infinite Reality’². The Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad states that it is the Supreme Lord ‘yo brahmāṇaṁ vidadhāti pūrvaṁ yo vai vedāṁś ca prahiṇoti tasmai – who creates Brahmā in the beginning and who, indeed, imparts the Vedas to Him’³. The Vedas reveal the means to prosperity and heaven and that to liberation from saṁsāra – means that cannot be known through direct perception or independent reasoning. Thus, from the words of the śruti, which is a flawless valid means of knowledge, it is discernible that the Supreme Lord is the one who, through the Vedas, imparts to the jagat the means to happiness here and in the hereafter and to liberation; and that He is the Guru even of Brahmā. He graced sages to compose the Dharma-śāstras, Itihāsas and Purāṇas with the Vedas as their fount. The scriptural teachings encapsulate sanātana-dharma, which is timeless and universal, possessing an intrinsic validity that is not dependent upon anyone’s acceptance or rejection of it.

H.H. (continuing): Īśvara is the antaryāmin, the inner controller who dwells in and controls everything from within. No activity – mental, verbal or physical – of anyone ever occurs at any time or under any circumstance without the antaryāmin’s impelling it; He impels in keeping with factors such as the individual’s karma – not biasedly or capriciously. This is equally true in the case of a sincere devotee and a die-hard atheist. Thus, it cannot be said that an atheist is totally unguided by Īśvara in any manner. Moreover, the śruti says that He is: ‘īśānaḥ sarvavidyānāṁ – The ruler of all knowledge’¹; the vidyās referred to in the passage include, as stated in Sāyaṇa’s authoritative bhāṣya, all forms of secular learning as well. Hence, any arts or sciences learnt by an atheist are actually rooted in Īśvara. Further, regardless of the teacher from whom an atheist learns any arts or sciences, that teacher is included within Īśvara’s cosmic form. It may even be conceived that Īśvara teaches him in the form of that teacher, for the śruti says, ‘sahasraśīrṣā puruṣaḥ / sahasrākṣaḥ sahasrapāt – The Puruṣa has a thousand heads (the heads of all), a thousand eyes (the eyes of all) and a thousand feet (the feet of all)’² and thus points out that all bodies are His.

H.H. (continuing): Īśvara is intrinsically formless. Nonetheless, He assumes forms through His power of Māyā, which is fully subservient to Him, in order to specially grace the world. Even when He assumes some such form – whether that of Śiva with five heads, or of Viṣṇu with four arms, or of an incarnation of Viṣṇu such as Rāma or Kr̥ṣṇa – and enacts any divine līlā – such as being afflicted with sorrow upon Sītā’s abduction, or being sleepless with anxiety on the night before Arjuna had to fulfil his vow to slay Jayadratha or give up his life – His perfection as Īśvara is not actually compromised in any way. Thus, Kr̥ṣṇa could assert, ‘avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā mānuṣaṁ tanum āśritam / paraṁ bhāvam ajānanto mama bhūta-maheśvaram – Non-discriminating people disregard Me clad in a human form, not knowing My supreme nature as the great Lord of all beings’³; and grace Arjuna with a vision of His cosmic form. Hence, the term jagadguru applies to Kr̥ṣṇa in its primary sense. It is unconditionally apposite only in the case of Īsvara and His divine manifestations.

Chandramouli: I am glad that I posed my question about ‘jagadguru’ to Your Holiness, even though I feared that it might be viewed as disrespectful. I so overwhelmingly experience divinity in Your Holiness – whom I am seeing for the first time – that I am sure that Your Holiness is Īśvara in human form and a full jagadguru.

His Holiness (laughing heartily): Me? I am just a very ordinary old man.

(Chandramouli told me that His Holiness’s artless self-effacement and utter absence of ego only increased his awe for Him. As he was to leave New Delhi early the next morning to return home, His Holiness blessed him with mantrākṣata and a fruit immediately after the conversation and gave him leave to depart.)

The second quarter of the verse turns to His Holiness’s physical presence – His serene and joyful face, resplendent with spiritual splendour, adorned with eyes overflowing with compassion, and captivating all who behold Him – and praises Him as one endowed with a captivating, lotus-like visage (manojña-mukhapaṅkajam).

The following is an excerpt from a talk by Dr G. Lakshmipathy:

‘His Holiness was ever established in a state of equipoise and perfect peace. Once, in Coimbatore, His Holiness visited the Sharada Temple, and I went to have His darśana. A function was in progress. The area was filled with people of every kind, the noise high, and the nādasvara was being played loudly. In addition to the din, smoke from the homa-kuṇḍa pervaded the air. I found it difficult to sit amidst the din and bustle, the crowd, the smoke and the sweat. However, His Holiness was sitting on the dais, entirely at peace, a beatific smile on His face, His eyes half closed. I realized that this was the greatest sight I had ever beheld, for His face arrested my gaze entirely.’

The following is a free English translation of H. S. Ramatheertha’s account, in the Kannada book Jagadguru, describing his chance sight of His Holiness in Mysuru:

I had my education abroad and am disinclined to accept as fact anything that has not been ascertained beyond doubt. However, I had an impactful but inexplicable experience. One evening, I went to my uncle’s house to study. Hardly a few minutes had passed when I felt an urge to go out. I set out on my bicycle. After passing Tank Bund Road, I saw one of the founder-members of my institution standing amidst a gathering. Curious to know what was going on, I stopped. Soon, a car arrived and halted near the gathering. Chanting of veda-mantras began, as did victory slogans. Glittering like molten gold, wearing an ochre robe, his forehead resplendent with vibhūti and his neck adorned with a rudrākṣa-mālā, a sage emerged and moved towards the assembled ones. Oh, what spiritual splendour! I am unable to put into words the experience that I had. Without knowing Him, I spontaneously offered many salutations to His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin.’

The verse’s final quarter mentions the sacred name of His Holiness on which this eight-verse stotra is founded, gathers together – through the word taṁ – all that has been said about Him in the first three quarters, and concludes with an expression of complete surrender to Him (āśraye).

Verse 2

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: Scripturally the Supreme Brahman and Familiarly a Tranquil Sage

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha, who is tranquil, about whom the śruti declares, ‘On realizing whom the knot of the heart (the ignorance-based misidentification of the Ātman with the body-mind complex, manifesting in the form of desires in the mind) is rent asunder …’ and who is (referred to in the aforesaid mantra itself as) the Being who is both superior (as the cause) and inferior (as the effect).]

The final purport of the Upaniṣads – unambiguously determined by Bhagavatpāda in His bhāṣyas – is that the realization of the Supreme Brahman is the sole, direct and certain means to liberation from saṁsāra. A weighty and oft-quoted mantra of the Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad that plainly reveals that on realizing the Supreme, one becomes freed from bondage even while living is: ‘bhidyate hr̥daya-granthiś chidyante sarva-saṁśayāḥ / kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi tasmin dr̥ṣṭe parāvare – The knot of the heart is rent asunder, all his doubts cease, and his karmas are dissipated when that One who is both superior (as the cause) and inferior (as the effect) is realized.’¹

The second verse of the stotra unmistakably references the aforesaid mantra of the Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad by citing, verbatim, its first quarter – ‘bhidyate hr̥daya-granthiḥ (the knot of the heart is rent asunder)’. The mantra refers to the Supreme by the term parāvara. The second verse makes clear that the Supreme – the parāvara upon whose realization one becomes a jīvanmukta – is none other than His Holiness. It employs the very word parāvara with reference to Him, thereby leaving no room for doubt that His Holiness is the One whose realization the mantra speaks of as rending asunder the knot of the heart, putting an end to all doubts, and dissipating all karmas that lead to rebirth. His Holiness is thus unequivocally identified here with the Supreme Brahman.

In consonance with what is emphasized both at the beginning and at the end of this section of the Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad – namely, that there is nothing at all other than the Supreme – Bhagavatpāda explains the word parāvara thus:‘parāvare paraṁ ca kāraṇātmanā avaraṁ ca kāryātmanā tasmin –One who is both superior as the cause and inferior as the effect’.¹ An alternative interpretation is offered by Śrī Vidyāraṇya in the Anubhūti-prakāśa – that parāvara means ‘the One in comparison to whom even the highest, the Unmanifest (the avyākr̥ta), is inferior’² and thus means ‘the One who is absolutely the highest’.

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin has provided profound clarity on the nature of the hr̥daya-granthi (knot of the heart) spoken of in the mantra. The following is a free rendering of His elucidation:

‘The hr̥daya-granthi mentioned here is spoken of earlier in the Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad itself as the “āvidyā-granthi – the knot of ignorance”.³ In harmony with this, the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad says: “kāmā ye’sya hr̥di sthitāḥ – the desires that dwell in his (the unenlightened one’s) heart.”⁴.

‘The Ātman – which is none other than the Supreme Brahman – is of the nature of pure consciousness and is ever totally changeless. The intellect-mind⁵, by contrast, is inert and changeful. Yet, owing to avidyā, every living being is subject to an innate, false, mutual superimposition of the Ātman and the intellect. Erroneously superimposing the intellect on the Ātman, one regards oneself as a doer and an experiencer, entertaining notions such as, “I do this” and “I am unhappy”. Conversely, the intellect – the bearer of the notion “I” – passes off as conscious.

‘On the strength of this mutual superimposition, the Ātman is falsely mixed-up with the rest of the body-mind complex, giving rise to notions such as, “I am hard of hearing” or “I am tall and dark”. This adhyāsa (mutual superimposition) causes the bondage of saṁsāra. Its foundation is the primal avidyā that shrouds the Ātman – an avidyā that persists even in deep sleep where mutual superimposition is absent, and remains intact even through the great cosmic dissolution (mahāpralaya).

‘The realization of the Supreme Brahman as oneself is the sole means of destroying this primal avidyā and, thereby, the mutual superimposition (adhyāsa) it sustains. The mutual superimposition produces impressions in the intellect-mind, and these, in turn, buttress the mutual superimposition. The mutual superimposition of the Ātman and the intellect is the basis of the host of desires.

‘What is called here the knot of the heart (hr̥daya-granthi), and – earlier in the Munḍaka-upaniṣad – the knot of ignorance (avidyā-granthi) is the false superimposition of the Ātman and the intellect fortified by its accumulated impressions. It is called a “knot” since these impressions bind the false identification of the Ātman and non-Ātman with great tenacity. Sustained by this very host of impressions, mutual superimposition manifests as the avidyā-born desires of the mind described in the Br̥hadaraṇyaka-upaniṣad.

‘When – and only when – the Supreme Brahman is realized as oneself, this knot of the heart is rent asunder, and with it the desires of the mind that are rooted in the mutual superimposition of the Ātman and the intellect, the locus of the “I”-notion.’

Lord Kr̥ṣṇa says in the Uddhava-gītā: ‘brahma māṁ paramaṁ prāpuḥ – They attained Me, the Supreme Brahman’¹; and ‘bhidyate hr̥daya-granthiś chidyante sarva-saṁśayāḥ / kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi mayi dr̥ṣṭe ’khilātmani – The knot of the heart is rent asunder, all his doubts cease and his karmas are dissipated when I, the Ātman of all, am realized’². He thus identifies Himself as the Supreme Brahman. He cites the mantra of the Muṇḍaka-upanisaḍ concerning the realization of the Supreme that results in the rending of the knot of the heart; yet He makes clear that this occurs when He is realized. He has also, on several occasions, identified Himself as Īśvara. He has been praised – such as by Brahmā – as the Supreme Brahman and as Īśvara. Just as Kr̥ṣna is clearly identified with the Supreme Brahman and Īśvara, so too, in this stotra, His Holiness is unmistakably identified with the Supreme Brahman in this second verse, and explicitly with Īśvara in the fourth, fifth and sixth verses.

His physical appearance was described in the first verse. Here, His state of mind is spoken of – by the word śāntāṁ, tranquil. The placement of the word śāntaṁ immediately after parāvaraṁ is significant. Just as Brahman is naturally tranquil, so is His mind, which is thoroughly established in It. As Gauḍapādācārya puts it: ‘viprāṇām…eṣaḥ śamah prākr̥ta ucyate – This tranquillity of those steadily abiding in identity with Brahman is said to be natural.’³ Bhagavatpāda explains in His Bhāṣya on the Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad and Gauḍapādācārya’s kārkās: ‘svabhāvata evopaśāntatvād brahmaṇaḥ –This is so because Brahman is quiescent by nature.’ His Holiness’s tranquillity remained the bedrock even during all His activities and interactions. Sage Vasiṣtha advised Rāma: ‘bahiḥ kr̥trima-saṁrambho hr̥di saṁrambha-varjitaḥ /… loke vihara rāghava – O Rāghava, sport in the world with assumed attachment, anger and the like on the outside but without any real turbulence in the heart.’ His Holiness did sport in the world without any real turbulence in His mind.

Even about a lower level of tranquillity than that intended by the word śāntaṁ in the verse, the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha asserts: ‘mano hi sarvabhūtānāṁ prasādam adhigacchati / na tathendor yathā śānte jane janitakautukam //¹ … mātarīva paraṁ yānti viṣamāṇi mr̥dūni ca / viśvāsam iha bhūtāni sarvāṇi śāmaśālini //²… na ca vyāghra-bhujaṅgā vā dviśanti śamaśalinam ³ – Every being’s mind, drawn towards the tranquil one, becomes pleased on seeing him – even more so than at the sight of the moon. … All beings, harmful and gentle alike, fully trust the tranquil person – just as one trusts one’s mother. …Neither tigers nor snakes are hostile to the one who is firmly tranquil.’ Here are some instances of the profound effect of His Holiness’s truly tranquil presence on humans and non-humans:

The following was narrated by K. C. Mahadevan:

‘A man came to the place where His Holiness was camping and started shouting, “What are these Swamis for? What is their role in this world? I want to see this Swami and question him.” He had a pistol on his person. When the matter was reported to His Holiness, He calmly said, ‘Let him in.’ As he entered His Holiness’s room, He welcomed him with a smile. The moment he looked at His Holiness, he unexpectedly joined his palms and then prostrated before Him. After he got up, His Holiness spoke with him and blessed him. He left, a transformed man.’

A person in his late twenties happened to visit Sringeri in 1984. On entering Sacchidananda Vilas, he told me, who was standing in the front hall, that he was a lawyer. He further said, ‘I came here for sightseeing. I am an atheist but am curious to see what the head of this Math is like. Can I see Him? As I have no respect for saṁnyāsins, I will not prostrate before Him.’ I told him, “His Holiness will be giving darśana in a few minutes. Anybody can go in. You can decide for yourself whether to go in or not.’ I then went inside and, in a few minutes, opened the door for people to enter the room in the eastern side of Sacchidananda Vilas where His Holiness was seated. The lawyer followed a group of devotees into the room. He stood right at the back. In a few minutes, His Holiness’s eyes fell on him. His Holiness beckoned to him, holding a fruit in His hand. The lawyer stepped forward, abruptly prostrated himself and remained lying prostrate. Some time passed, but he showed no sign of getting up. Finally, His Holiness asked him to rise. He got up with tears in his eyes and, in a choked voice, requested His Holiness to bless him. His Holiness gave him His blessings and also prasāda.

The following was narrated by Venkatasubba Rao:

‘I accompanied His Holiness on His Kundapura camp. I was travelling in the jeep that was piloting His Holiness’s vehicle when, at one point, I noticed that His Holiness had ordered His car to stop. He asked me to sit in the front seat of His car and sent His personal attendant, Mahabala, to the jeep. No conversation ensued. His Holiness lost Himself in the contemplation of the Ātman. The effect of His silent ātmānusandhāna on me was tremendous.’

When His Holiness was observing cāturmāsya at Kalady in 1958, He entered His room one afternoon after His bhikṣā and saw a large crow flying about inside. A window was partially open but the bird kept heading towards another window. His Holiness opened the partially open window fully; yet, the crow did not fly out through it. Maybe, it was disoriented, for it bumped lightly against the closed window once. Finally, it perched itself atop a pile of books. His Holiness walked slowly towards it. The crow noticed Him but did not react. When He was near it, He gently grasped it and picked it up. It did not try to peck Him – though it easily could have; it just looked at Him and did nothing more. He carried it to the open window, held it outside and released it. It flew off and settled on a nearby tree. His Holiness asked for an edible item to be brought. He then stretched out His left hand through the open window, His palm turned upward with His handkerchief spread upon it. He placed the edible item on His right, upturned palm and held it near His left hand. The crow immediately flew towards Him and perched on His left hand. It turned towards Him and then towards the food, which it proceeded to consume then and there. After this, it flew away. His Holiness did not recall seeing that crow there again when He narrated all this to me in 1978.

On 5 December 1935, when His Holiness emerged from samādhi on a hilltop, He noticed a large cobra coiled around His neck, its hood near His cheek and facing away. He gently stroked it. It softly placed the back of its hood against His cheek. After a few minutes, it uncoiled itself and left.

Verse 3

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: Pre-eminently Knowledgeable, Immaculately Eloquent and a Reliever of Afflictions

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha, who is skilled in ending the afflictions of the obeisant and in the stage of whose mouth Goddess Śarasvatī Herself dances.]

His Holiness’s physical appearance was described in the first verse and His natural state of mind in the second. His wide-ranging and thorough knowledge and His immaculate eloquence are indicated by the declaration in the first half of this third verse that Goddess Sarasvatī Herself dances on the stage of His mouth.

The Sarasvatī-rahasya-upaniṣad has, as a part of a ten-verse prayer, the following supplication: ‘mahāsarasvatī devī jihvāgre sanniveśyatām – May the Goddess, the great Sarasvatī, abide in the tip of my tongue’¹; ‘vāci tiṣṭhatu me sadā – May She ever reside in my speech.’² The Upaniṣad teaches that when the devotee’s prayer becomes fulfilled: ‘tataḥ pravartate vāṇī svecchayā lalitākṣarā / gadyapadyātmakaiḥ śabdair aprameyair vivakṣitaiḥ // aśruto budyate granthaḥ prāyaḥ sārasvataḥ kaviḥ – Then, speech issues forth from him effortlessly, with graceful syllables, in prose and in poetry, boundless in depth and perfectly expressing what he intends. This wise person inspired by Sarasvatī generally comprehends even texts he has not heard.’³ Thus, when Goddess Sarasvatī resides in the tip of a person’s tongue, in his speech, he is very knowledgeable and eloquent.

In the Skanda-purāṇa, there is an account of Sage Vālmiki having earlier been a robber, some r̥ṣis helping him to reform, and his engaging in penance. After this, the r̥ṣis bless him, saying: ‘svacchandā bhāratī devī jihvāgre te bhaviṣyati / kr̥tvā rāmāyaṇaṁ kāvyaṁ tato mokṣaṁ gamiṣyasi – The free-willed Goddess Bhāratī (Sarasvatī ) will abide in the tip of your tongue; you will compose the poetical work, Rāmāyaṇa, and then attain liberation.’⁴

It is plain that Sarasvatī’s abidance in the tip of his tongue is linked here to his composing the sacred and inspiring poetic masterpiece, the Rāmāyaṇa.

Just as Goddess Sarasvatī is described as dwelling in a person’s tongue or mouth, She is also spoken of as dancing there; in both descriptions, what is conveyed is that the person so graced becomes endowed with wide-ranging, in-depth knowledge, as well as the ability to express himself with excellent eloquence. Sage Agastya’s Sarasvatī-stotra, for instance, contains in one verse a prayer to Goddess Sarasvatī to dwell in his mouth and, in the very next verse, a prayer for Her to dance there: ‘sā me vāgdevateyaṁ nivasatu vadane sarvadā suprasannā – May the Goddess of speech (Sarasvatī), being kindly disposed, always dwell in my mouth¹; sarasvatī nr̥tyatu vāci me sadā – May Sarasvatī ever dance in my speech.²

His Holiness’s anugraha-bhāṣanās – heard in person by vast numbers of people and many of them now accessible in recorded form – bear testimony to His perfect eloquence and His precise, clear and matchless explanations of even complex topics in a way that all could understand but without compromising accuracy in the least.³ Here are some instances that attest to His Holiness’s deep, wide-ranging knowledge.

The following is based on an article in Tamil by K. S. Venkatarama Sastri, a vidvān, published in the 1977 Special Issue of Shankara Krupa:

‘Once, the Maharaja of Cochin, himself an accomplished scholar in the Nyāya-śāstra, had prayed to His Holiness to resolve one of his doubts in the Nyāya-śāstra. He wrote a letter to His Holiness detailing his query and sent it through a scholar from Kerala. At that time, a vidvat-sadas was going on in the august presence of His Holiness. When the letter was submitted, His Holiness directed one of the scholars to read it out before the scholars assembled at the vidvat-sadas, thereby initiating a discussion among the scholars. One by one, the scholars attempted their resolution of the issue but one or the other scholar promptly rebutted the replies. Erudite vidvāns such as Mathur Venkateswara Sastri, who had learnt under none other than Jagadguru Śrī Candraśekhara Bhāratī Mahāsvāmin and later became a professor in the Mysore University, and Madhusudana Bhattacharya, a renowned Nyāya-scholar from Kolkata, too offered their explanations only to be subsequently countered by the other scholars. The debate continued and it seemed as though it would be eternity before a conclusion could be reached. His Holiness suggested to the scholars that all of them reflect on the issue further and come out with a tenable conclusion before the concluding session of the sabhā. ‘As it turned out, even on the concluding day, none of the scholars was able to resolve the doubt to the satisfaction of the sabhā. At this juncture, His Holiness Himself intervened and presented an appropriate answer in His inimitably lucid style. The scholars were awestruck by the splendid reply given by His Holiness. Mathur Venkateswara Sastri openly remarked, “Only His Holiness can put any doubt to rest. After all, is He not the Goddess Śāradāmbā in human form?” It became a memorable sadas for the vidvāns. The Maharaja’s joy knew no bounds when he received the clarification offered by His Holiness. He promptly wrote a letter to His Holiness conveying his reverential salutations and gratitude for the guidance received.’

For long, to proceed to Narasimhavana, where His Holiness dwelt, from the Sringeri Math’s temple complex, people had to cross the river Tunga by means of a wooden bridge – a temporary structure that was dismantled every year at the start of the rainy construction and rebuilt months later when the depth of the river decreased. Since people were put to inconvenience in the rainy season and since there occurred an unfortunate event in which a boat capsized, His Holiness decided in the early 1980s to put up a permanent bridge there. He meticulously collected details of various bridges in India and abroad. He entrusted the construction of the bridge He envisioned to Gammon India. When T. N. Subba Rao, the Managing Director of the company, visited His Holiness, he was surprised to find Him speaking very knowledgeably about various bridges, such as the Laxman Jhula in Rishikesh, Howrah Bridge in Kolkata, Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He exclaimed to H. S. Nageswaran, a disciple of His Holiness who had accompanied him (and who reported this in a talk), ‘I think He has travelled all over the world!’

His Holiness expressed His preference to avoid columns in the middle of the river because, as He put it, He did not want the fishes in the river to be disturbed by the construction work. Finally, after taking various factors into consideration, He approved Gammon India’s proposal to build a bridge with one column in the middle of the river. He regularly watched over the construction.

T. M. Nagarajan had many varieties of rose plants on the terrace of his house in Bengaluru. When he left Bengaluru on transfer to another branch of the UCO Bank, he took all his plants to Sringeri and submitted them to His Holiness. When he later went to Sringeri for darśana, His Holiness showed him a splendid rosebush with roses of three colours and told him that this was the plant with yellow roses that he had given Him. His Holiness Himself had done the grafting that resulted in the rosebush with yellow roses becoming lovelier, bearing roses of two other colours as well.

His Holiness sent for me one evening in the first week of June 1975. He was seated in the room in which He usually granted private audience on the ground floor of Saccidananda Vilas, His abode in Sringeri. A person in his forties was seated in front of Him. His Holiness mentioned to me that he was a ‘Physics Professor from Bihar.’ He introduced me to him as ‘My disciple.’ In the conversation that followed, while the professor spoke in Hindi, he did use words like ‘gravity’ rather than their equivalents in Hindi; for His convenience, His Holiness did the same. The professor deemed that the Bhagavadgītā and the Purāṇas have made known that the universe undergoes endless, similar cycles of expansion and contraction and that what was taught by them long ago itself is what modern science is arriving at. Since the professor intended to impart to students his idea of the correlation between the scripture and science about the universe’s start and end, His Holiness gently alerted him to some snags, by posing questions. He first led the professor to understand that his premise that the expanding universe would later begin to contract because of gravity was, till then, not substantiated by data. The intended hint was that he was seeking to glorify the scripture by correlating its teaching – as conceived by him – with what was till then hypothetical. His Holiness pointed out that for his scripture-science correlation to hold, not only must there be cycles of expansion and contraction, the cycles must be similar. The professor said that if the need to admit dissimilar cycles arose, he would re-examine the scripture and find how they have taught this. His Holiness told him that in that case, he would be reinterpreting the scripture in terms of modern science to claim that the scripture had made known what science was finding! Science relies on data. If years later (after 1975), data were to support accelerated expansion of the cosmos, would he then reinterpret the scripture to claim that it specifies not a cyclical universe but one that expands faster and faster?

Recognizing the shortcomings of the correlation he had conceived, the professor conveyed that his fundamental aim was only to acquaint students with the greatness of India’s past. His Holiness delighted him by providing incontestable examples of Indian achievements of the past in the fields of mathematics, medicine, and engineering; He cited offhand and explained some Śulba-sūtras of Sage Bodhāyana and showed how they the relate the length of a diagonal of a rectangle to the lengths of its sides – the equivalent of Pythagoras theorem, arrived at independently and before Pythagoras; and a method to compute the square root of two. In the course of His explanation, He drew offhand upon two commentaries on the Sulba-sūtras of Sage Āpastamba. After illustrating the mathematical contributions of the ancient Śulba-sūtras, which are concerned with the construction of sacrificial alters for Vedic rites, He said, ‘The concept of zero as a number is another instance of what we can be proud of. Our country was the first to comprehend and explicate it.’ He cited from memory and explained several verses of Brahmagupta’s Brahma-spuṭa-siddhānta to show how zero was impressively understood. Being a stickler for accuracy and truthfulness, He also pointed out an error of Brahmagupta – the incorrect assertion ‘khaṁ kha-bhaktaṁ kham – zero divided by zero is zero.’ After this, He clarified, ‘I deliberately pointed out a flaw even while presenting an instance of an estimable Indian accomplishment of the past. My view is that it is best to stick to facts, not evade inconvenient data, and be wary of fanciful claims and interpretations.’ He then took up two pioneering accomplishments of our country long ago itself in the field of medicine; citing verses from the Suśruta-saṁhitā, he explained how cataracts were operated on and how cut noses were reconstructed. Finally, by way of illustrating our nation’s great accomplishments of the past in the field of engineering, he spoke of the Delhi Iron Pillar and the Kailasa Temple at Ellora.¹

In the last week of January 1984, I humbly requested His Holiness, ‘In case Your Holiness kindly permits me, I shall, when convenient to Your Holiness, present Your Holiness, in 30-45 minutes, an overview of information about the brain and its extensive effect on the mind and consciousness; and then entreat Your Holiness to throw light on whether the scriptural teaching about the mind and consciousness can accommodate or is incompatible with the data.’ His Holiness said, ‘I shall let you know when to tell me.’ He went to Sondekoppa (near Bengaluru) on 30th January. On 3rd February, He called me to His room in the afternoon, around 3 p.m. He told me, ‘Tell me about the brain now’ and added, ‘You have brought pictures of the brain with you to Sondekoppa, have you not? Go and bring them.’ I promptly fetched three sheets of paper with photocopies of pictures of the brain from books. His Holiness took them from me, looked at the drawings, pointed at the right ‘parietal lobe’ in one of the pictures, and said, ‘Start by telling me one consequence of damage to this.’ I said that following damage to the right parietal lobe because of, say, a stroke, a person may neglect his left side and left visual space. He may shave just the right side of his face, not comb half of his hair, and eat from half his plate; asked to copy a picture, such as of a flower, he may sketch just its right half; told to bisect a line, he may put his mark towards its right half; questioned by an examiner on his left, he may respond without turning or looking to the left; if told to imagine a specific, well-known place and then describe what he perceives from a particular position there, he may refer to the structures that lie in the front and on the right but, unlike one without brain damage, omit those on the left. Such persons are not conscious that they are neglecting anything. An explanation for unilateral neglect is that the parietal lobes are involved in directing spatial attention and that due to damage to the right parietal lobe, there occurs a disability in directing attention to the left space. His Holiness asked whether damage to the area on the left side of the brain results in similar neglect of the right side. I replied that in most cases it does not and that a reason that has been given is that while the left space essentially lies in the purview of just the right side of the brain in right-handers, the right space is processed even by the right side of the brain. His Holiness nodded. I proceeded with my presentation of data and concluded in 45 minutes.

His Holiness then commenced His response as follows:

‘Even if it were to be established that every kind of thought, emotion, perception, conscious experience, and conscious and unconscious behaviour may be elicited, modified or blocked by manipulation of brain-states, the teaching of the śāstra about the mind and consciousness would not be undermined.¹ This is because the śāstra never states or even hints that corporeal factors cannot affect the mind; on the contrary, it highlights that the mind can be extensively influenced by physical factors such as what is ingested. Were the scripture to have ruled out the influence of corporeal factors on, for example, memory, this would have been contradicted by the fact that brain-damage can adversely impact memory. However, the scripture neither does anything such as this nor does it mention any limit to the extent to which any mental act can be impacted. The scriptural teaching that there does exist a jīva that is distinct from the body and is eternal; that, on account of avidyā, it transmigrates as associated with the mind, senses, and prāṇa in accordance with its karma; and that it is intrinsically of the very nature of changeless, limitless consciousness pertains to what transcends the domains of perception and inference¹ and, therefore, brain data can neither rule this out nor establish it. Since what you wanted me to consider in the light of the śāstra is the data about the brain’s effect on the mind, how the mind acts on the body is not pertinent here.’

His Holiness switched from Tamil to Sanskrit following these introductory remarks. His Holiness established, through citations from the scripture and Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣyas that, as per the śāstra, a body is required for the functioning of the subtle mind, which accompanies the jīva from birth to birth; the functioning of the mind is influenced by what is ingested; physical factors are involved in the onset of dreams and dreamless sleep; bodily factors can lead to even the derangement of the mind and medicines given to the body can positively impact an affected mind; the expression of mental impressions of experiences does depend on the body and its state. Having illustrated in five ways that the śāstra does accept that the mind can be and is extensively influenced by somatic factors, His Holiness expounded in depth the scriptural account of the mind, Ātman of the nature of pure consciousness, jīva, misidentification, due to avidyā, of consciousness with the mind, and consciousness in deep sleep and set out the framework and laid the foundation for establishing that nothing in the data about the brain is antithetical to the scriptural teaching about the mind and consciousness. In continuation of this, His Holiness took up scriptural statements on waking, dream, deep sleep, their subdivisions, and unconsciousness with and without convulsions, and then pointed out how the scriptural classification of states is wide enough to cover sleepwalking, etc. His Holiness presented three scriptural accounts and drawing upon them pointed out that adverse impacts on the mind on account of physical causes as also abnormal behaviour without subsequent recollection are not antithetical to the scriptural teaching. After this, His Holiness considered the role of prāṇa in some detail and showed, in the light of scriptural statements, that activities without conscious awareness are recognized. His Holiness then showed that the data about perception, hemi-neglect and brain-bisection is not discordant with the scripture.²

The third quarter of the verse points out that His Holiness is versed in ending the afflictions of anyone who pays obeisance to Him – mentally offering salutations to Him even once from afar is itself sufficient for one to be freed from affliction through His grace. Here are some instances of how He relieved people of their physical and mental problems in various ways – each time in the manner best suited to the supplicant.

A man who had served in the army came to have His Holiness’s darśana. He was suffering from severe mental agony, tormented no end by the thought that he had caused the death of people. Belonging to a traditional Hindu family, he had learnt, by rote, the Lakṣmī-nr̥siṁha-karāvalamba-stotra and, while entering His Holiness’s room, he chanted it aloud. His Holiness spoke to him compassionately. In response he lamented, ‘Swamiji, I have killed people and have thereby committed an unpardonable sin. I deserve to die.’ When he finished his emotional outpouring, His Holiness did something unexpected. He placed both His hands on the person’s head and declared, ‘You will be alright. Do not worry.’ The man was elated at this unexpected blessing. In that very moment, his long-standing anguish subsided. He left with peace of mind.

The source of the following is an article penned by K. V. Santhanagopalachariar in 1977 and published in a souvenir.

During His Holiness’s tour to Rameswaram, two Muslims named Allah Pasha and Ibrahim came to have His darśana. Allah Pasha’s wife had suffered six miscarriages and the couple was childless. Desirous of a child, he had come to seek the blessings of His Holiness. His Holiness blessed him saying, ‘You will beget a good son.’ Needless to mention, in due course, a male child was born to the couple.

The other person, Ibrahim, submitted to His Holiness that someone was causing him great trouble in his business. He was in utter despair and had almost reached the point of having to shut down his enterprise. His Holiness said, ‘All your problems will cease and you will be happy.’ Soon, the one who was creating trouble went away. His departure paved the way for Ibrahim’s business to recover and grow without impediments.

With their prayers fulfilled, both Allah Pasha and Ibrahim went to Sringeri and sought His Holiness’s permission to offer pādapūjā (involving pūjā to the pādukās of His Holiness’s Guru). His Holiness advised them not to perform pādapūjā as such a mode of worship was discordant with the tenets of Islam. They then requested Him to permit them to make some offerings to the Maṭh. His Holiness granted their fervent prayer and blessed them.

His Holiness was once camping at Kotekar, near Mangaluru. It was about 2:30 p.m. He was seated in His private room. He was telling me about an event, when He abruptly got up, walked to the door leading to the open veranda in the front of the building, and opened it. In moments, a man came rushing there. He was sweating; his shirt and trousers were dirty; his forehead was bandaged. His Holiness gently asked him who he was and what he wanted. The man blurted out, in Kannada, ‘Please save…’, but could not proceed further, for he had begun to sob. Even without his anything further, His Holiness told him, ‘Your son will be alright soon. Do not worry.’ Then indicating to him to wait, He went inside and returned with two large packets of cashew nuts and a large pack of almonds. He handed them to him, saying, ‘Give some of these to your son daily, after some days.’ Having respectfully taken the dry fruits, he told His Holiness, ‘My son is in hospital. The doctor told me today that my child is suffering from cancer.’ ‘No, he does not have cancer. He will come home soon from the hospital and be well,’ His Holiness stated emphatically. The man joined his palms, thanked Him and left. His Holiness shut the door, resumed His seat and continued to talk to me from the point where He had stopped.

The next evening, as His Holiness was completing His evening walk, He saw the man standing at a distance, with palms joined. He smiled at him and entered the building. The man remained where he stood. After His Holiness had gone for His evening bath, when I stepped out, the man walked up to me and said, ‘Last evening, after I returned to the hospital from here, the doctor came and said, “There was a mistake; reports had got mixed up. Your son does not have cancer. We can discharge him in two days. After taking him home, give him good nourishment.” Please convey this to Swami. I am very thankful to Him. As I did not wish to disturb Him today, I stayed at a distance.’ I replied that I would submit this information to His Holiness. As I was about to leave, he added, ‘I am a Christian. When I was shellshocked on hearing that my child had cancer, a Hindu friend told me to approach Swami for blessings. That is why I rushed here yesterday. I am glad that I did so.’ Later, when I reported the matter to His Holiness, He simply listened in silence.

Verses 4 and 5

Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti and His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: One and the Same

[Having left His (seat at) the base of a banyan tree, He now dwells in Sringeri and imparts the knowledge of the ultimate Reality (Brahman) to devotees. I seek refuge in Him (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin), who is Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti.]

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha who (as Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti) graced meditative saints who, having renounced all desire for objects, were established in utmost dispassion.]

The fourth verse makes known that Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, who abided at the base of a banyan tree, now resides in Sringeri as His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin and imparts the knowledge of the Supreme Brahman to devotees there, while the fifth verse points out that His Holiness was the one who, as Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, enlightened very dispassionate, meditative sages at the base of the banyan tree. By pointing out that Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti now enlightens as His Holiness and that His Holiness earlier did so as Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, the two verses as a unit drive home the identity of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti and His Holiness.

The mention of a banyan tree in the fourth verse and of meditative sages (munis) in the fifth verse is significant because scriptural passages have presented Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti in association with them; Bhagavatpāda has extolled Him in this manner; also, idols in temples depict Him thus. While prescribing a meditation on Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, the Dakṣiṇāmūrti-upaniṣad says: ‘phaṇīndra-kakṣyaṁ munibhiḥ śukādyaiḥ sevyaṁ vaṭādhaḥ kr̥tanīḍam īde – I extol Him who has a snake as a girdle, is worshipped by meditative sages such as Śuka and abides at the base of a banyan tree.’¹ Likewise, while presenting a mantra on Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, the Nārada-purāṇa states: ‘himācalataṭe ramye…/…ādyaiḥ śukādyair munibhir ajasra-sukhasevite /…vaṭavr̥kṣaṁ mahocchrāyaṁ…//…tasya mūle susaṁklr̥pta-ratnasiṁhāsane śubhe // āsīnaṁ…suprasannaṁ haraṁ smaret /…dakṣiṇāmūrti-sandhyānāc chastravyākhyānakr̥d bhavet – On a picturesque ridge of the Himalayas…joyfully and constantly resorted to by great meditative sages such as Śuka, …there is an imposing banyan tree…Śiva is seated on an auspicious gem-studded throne at its base. He, who is very kindly disposed, should be held in mind...By meditating on Dakṣiṇāmūrti thus, one becomes an exponent of the śāstras.’¹ Another scriptural passage about Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti: The Sūta-saṁhitā, which is regarded as a part of the Skanda-purāṇa, says, ‘…vedapāragaiḥ / munibhiḥ saṁvr̥taṁ māyāvaṭa-mūlāśritaṁ – He remains at the base of the banyan tree of Māyā, surrounded by meditative sages versed in the Vedas.’²

As the base of the banyan tree alone is mentioned in scriptural passages such as those cited as the location of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, the fourth verse states that He ‘quit (parityajya)’ the base of the banyan tree (vaṭamūlam) and then says that He is ‘residing (nivasan)’ at Sringeri in the form of His Holiness. The statement that a person is a resident of Kashi is in no way invalidated if he journeys, at different times, to Rameswaram, Mathura or Somnath and, each time, returns to his abode in Kashi. Likewise, the statement that Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti ‘resides’ in Sringeri is consistent with the following factual data. In the 35 years – from 1954 to 1989 – that His Holiness presided over the ‘Dakshinamnaya Sringeri Sharada Peetham’ as its 35th ‘Jagadguru Shankaracharya’, He undertook 35 vijaya-yātras that lasted on the whole for over 16 years. Even prior to the composition of this stotra, He had already undertaken vijaya-yātras spanning over 13.5 years. These included a six-year-and-four-month tour of South India, an almost four-year All-India tour (with a visit to Nepal), and another All-India tour that lasted one year and two months. During His tours, He graced devotees with impactful and lucid expositions of the Truth. Two instances: In 1966, while observing cāturmāsya at Ujjain, He expounded, in full, the Taittirīya-upaniṣad with Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya and the sub-commentary, Vanamālā; and in 1977, at Chennai, He delivered two benedictory addresses based on the first two Brahmasūtras and Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya thereon. As for His teaching the Truth at Sringeri, He, for instance, expounded the Bhagavadgītā with Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya and Ānandagiri’s sub-commentary in 1979 and, thereafter, the Brahmasūtras with Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya and the sub-commentary, Ratna-prabhā. It is in order to reveal the new residence and form of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti that the fourth verse declares, through the apt words, ‘vaṭamūlaṁ partyajya (quit the base of the banyan tree)’ and ‘śriṅgādrau nivasan (residing at Sringeri)’, that Sringeri is now His base and that He is in the form of His Holiness and that He who earlier imparted the Truth at the base of the banyan tree now imparts it at Sringeri in the form of His Holiness. The fact that His Holiness undertook tours and expounded the Truth elsewhere too certainly does not contradict what is said in the verse.

Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti is spoken of, such as in the passage of the Dakṣiṇāmūrti-upaniṣad cited earlier, as served by meditative sages such as Śuka. Śuka is uniformly described in scriptural texts as exceedingly dispassionate. For instance, the Mahābhārata states that he was ‘sthira-buddhir alolupaḥ – steadfast in mind and free of desires’¹ and the Bhāgavata-purāṇa that, ‘sa vai nivr̥tti-nirataḥ sarvatropekṣako muniḥ – He was decidedly a meditative sage intent on withdrawal and indifferent to everything.’² Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti is depicted in temple idols as revered by the sages Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanātana and Sanatkumāra, the mind-born sons of Brahmā, all of whom are described in scriptural texts as highly dispassionate. Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti’s disciples were, thus, totally dispassionate. Highlighting this, Bhagavatpāda has said in a verse on Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti: ‘upāsate yaṁ munayaḥ śukādyā nirāśiṣo nirmamatādhivāsāḥ – He is worshipped by meditative sages such as Śūka who are without desires and without any sense of “mine” (even with regard to their bodies).’³ Accordingly, the fifth verse aptly specifies that those who received, at the base of the banyan tree, the extraordinary grace of His Holiness in the form of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti were most dispassionate (vairāgyaṁ paramaṁ śritāḥ) meditative sages.

In deep sleep, one does not desire anything; when a very near and dear one dies, one may, for a time, experience disinterest in everything; and a woman in the throes of labour pain may feel no interest in objects of enjoyment. In such cases, the absence of desire is only temporary. This passing, situational dispassion is not what the scriptures prescribe as an important means to securing enlightenment and liberation. The spiritually significant vairāgya (dispassion) stressed by the scripture results from viveka, discrimination, and is steady; such was the dispassion of the meditative sages who resorted to Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti at the base of the banyan tree. The Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad prescribes it as follows: ‘parīkṣya lokān karmacitān brāhmaṇo nirvedam āyāt – Having examined the worlds that are attainable by karma (through perception, inference, analogy and scriptural statements and discerning that they are all impermanent, comparable to a dream, and assailed by sorrows), a brahmaṇa should become dispassionate.’¹ Bhagavatpāda has specified the nature and cause of true vairāgya thus in His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya: ‘vairāgyaṁ nāma dr̥ṣṭādr̥ṣṭabhogeṣu doṣadarśanābhyāsād vaitr̥ṣṇyaṁ – vairāgya is the freedom from desire for pleasures of this world and the hereafter resulting from the practice of discerning their defects.’² The Liṅga-purāṇa contains the following description of the discrimination and vairāgya of Sage Sanaka and his brothers: ‘alpasaukhyaṁ bahukleṣaṁ jarāśoka-samanvitam / jīvanaṁ maraṇaṁ caiva saṁbhavaś ca punaḥ punaḥ //…viditvā…trīn guṇāṇ hitvā…sanakādayaḥ // vaivartena tu jñānena pravr̥ttās te…– Realizing that birth and death are attended by meagre joys and abundant miseries, and that they recur again and again, Sanaka and his brothers renounced all desire for anything in this world or the hereafter, and strove for the knowledge of the Supreme.’³ The Mahābhārata records that: ‘…śukenoktaṁ sarvataḥ parimucyatā / pratiṣṭhatā mahāraṇyaṁ…// yaḥ kāmān āpnuyāt sarvān yaś caitān kevalāṁs tyajet/ prāpaṇāt sarvakāmānāṁ parityāgo viśiṣyate – While giving up everything and departing for the vast forest, Śuka asserted, ‘Between him who acquires all that he wishes for and him who gives up all desires – between the fulfilment of all desires and their renunciation – the latter is superior.”’⁴ The intense dispassion of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti’s disciples such as Śuka, Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanātana and Sanatkumāra was unwavering and conducive to enlightenment; it rested on the strong foundation of discernment, which, according to scriptural texts, came naturally to them and resulted in their renouncing all desire for objects. Drawing attention to this, the fifth verse states that the meditative sages, who were graced at the base of the banyan tree by His Holiness in the form of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti, had ‘viṣayāśām parityajya, discarded all desire for objects’ and become established in supreme dispassion.

In the fourth verse, the imparting of the ultimate Truth (tattvam) to devotees by Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti in the form of His Holiness is explicitly expressed through the word ‘bodhayate – He makes known.’ By contrast, in the fifth verse, the enlightening of the meditative sages by His Holiness in the form of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti is indicated by just saying that they became ‘yat-kr̥pābhājaḥ – the recipients of His grace.’ This is because in the latter case, the imparting of the Truth was not through words but through silence. As the second half of a well-known, authoritative verse on Dakṣiṇāmūrti says: ‘guros tu maunaṁ vyākhyānaṁ śiṣyās tu chinna-saṁśayāḥ – The Guru’s silence is the teaching and the disciples’ doubts are dispelled.’ Bhagavatpāda has, in His Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya, drawn attention to a Vedic account of Bāṣkali approaching Sage Bādhva as a disciple and requesting, ‘Teach me Brahman.’ Bādhva remained silent. Bāṣkali repeated the request; Bādhva remained silent. When Bāṣkali asked for the third time, Bādhva stated: ‘brūmaḥ khalu tvaṁ tu na vijānāsi / upaśānto’yam ātma – I taught you but you did not comprehend. The Ātman is absolute quiescence.’ ¹

The following is a merged English translation of portions of two anugraha-bhāṣaṇas delivered in Kannada by His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava Vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin on 1st and 2nd September 1987, at Bengaluru:

‘Where does Dakṣiṇāmūrti abide? He dwells atop the Himalayas. There is a big banyan tree there and He is seated in the shade of that tree. How is He seated? In one hand, He has the cinmudrā (the sign of the knowledge of the non-dual Truth in which the tips of the thumb and the index finger touch and the other three fingers are held straight). In another hand, He has a book. He has mastered all His senses and His body is motionless. The Lord’s eyes are slightly open. There is no activity at all in His body. Silence is His mode of exposition. There is no need for the disciple to ask any question. There is no need for the Guru to verbalize any reply. If one sits before of such a Guru, śakti-pāta (descent of spiritual power, the direct transmission of grace) takes place. As for the disciple, all doubts vanish; this happens with his realizing the Supreme. Dakṣiṇāmūrti, purely by His grace, fulfils the desire of Śuka and other great meditative sages to know the Truth and grants them enlightenment. What do the disciples of Dakṣiṇāmūrti aver? Each of them asserts, “On my coming to Your presence, all my doubts have been cleared. I have received instruction about Brahman.” By just the teaching imparted through silence, the doubts of the great sages were set at rest and they became enlightened. We have ignorance; the sages too had ignorance. What then is the difference between their ignorance and ours? There is darkness on the night of the full moon and also on the night of the new moon; there is no night without darkness. In the darkness of the night of the full moon, we are able to move about on the roads and are able to perform our routine activities. We have, however, to strain to read a book; that is all. In the darkness of the night of the new moon, if the sky happens to be overcast, it is not possible for us to walk on the road and engage in our usual activities; the question of reading a book does not arise at all. The ignorance of the great, meditative sages was like the darkness of the night of the full moon, while our ignorance is like the darkness of the night of the new moon. For uplifting the sages, the Lord showed the cinmudrā; with a smiling face, He radiated peace; His glance rained cool nectar on them. That was sufficient to enlighten and liberate them. For us, this much is insufficient.’

The following is an English translation of an extract from the anugraha-bhāṣaṇa delivered by Him in Kannada at Mysuru on 15 April 1988: ‘Consider the case of a person who has approached a Guru and carried out intense spiritual disciple but failed to get the realization of the Truth before passing away. He will attain enlightenment easily in his next birth. In exceptional cases, such a person may not require any physical Guru at all. In the Upaśānti-prakaraṇa of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, there is a story of how King Janaka of Videha obtained the realization of the Truth without being systematically taught by a Guru.¹ The text recounts that while walking alone in a grove, he happened to hear a song sung by several siddhas. The song was about the Truth and their realization. Upon hearing the song, he reflected and attained enlightenment. In the Veda, we hear of Vāmadeva obtaining the realization of the Truth while still in his mother’s womb. By contrast, we read the Bhagavadgītā, which contains a lucid exposition of the Truth, every day; yet, we continue to remain ignorant. The remedy lies in approaching an enlightened Guru. Learning from him leads to the desired realization; merely reading books or reasoning independently will not suffice. The ideal Guru imparts the knowledge of the Truth to a disciple according to the disciple’s capacity.’

Thus, Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti’s teaching through silence was sufficient to fully enlighten and liberate the disciples at the base of the banyan tree as they, being supremely dispassionate, meditative sages, were thoroughly fit for the dawn of realization; they had already almost perfected themselves in earlier lives. On the other hand, teaching through words was needed in the case of the much less qualified devotees at Sringeri. Accordingly, the fourth verse about Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti in the form of His Holiness at Sringeri has the word, ‘bodhayate –teaches’, while the fifth verse about His Holiness in the form of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti at the base of the banyan tree just states that the most dispassionate meditative sages there received His grace (yat-kr̥pā-bhājaḥ). The identification of Lord Dakṣīṇamūrti with His Holiness in the fourth verse followed by the identification of His Holiness with Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti in the fifth verse emphasizes their oneness and, thereby, even confirms that His Holiness had the unfettered capacity to enlighten not only by verbally teaching the Truth but also through just silence.

An instance of His Holiness resolving a person’s doubts by just blessing him:

A brahmacārin from Rishikesh came to Sringeri on 2 June 1984, to have the darśana of His Holiness. His Holiness was to leave for Kalady via Bengaluru that day; He had already finished giving darśana to people and had gone for His afternoon bath. This brahmacārin informed me, ‘I have seven questions pertaining to yoga and vedānta which I wish to pose to His Holiness. They are very important to me. I contacted numerous scholars, practitioners of yoga, and saṁnyāsins at Rishikesh, Uttarkashi, and Kashi, but none was able to satisfy me. A scholar at Kashi directed me to Sringeri, saying, “If the Jagadguru of Sringeri cannot satisfactorily answer you then there is none in the world who can.” That is why I have come most eagerly to Sringeri.’

I told him, ‘His Holiness will be leaving on a tour today. If you wait here, you can have His darśana just prior to His departure. However, there is no time for you to have a lengthy private session with Him.’ He said, ‘I will gladly wait to behold Him even if it is just for a moment.’ He then told me one of his seven questions and requested me to tell His Holiness about him.

I fulfilled his request shortly after His Holiness completed His afternoon āhnika and had His bhikṣā. His Holiness said, ‘The question that he has conveyed to you is good and pertinent. As there is no time to spare, he may, if he wishes, meet me at Bengaluru and pose his questions to me there. If I happen to know the answers, I shall tell him. Else, I shall readily admit that I am not in a position to help him.’ In about half an hour, His Holiness came to the front veranda of Sacchidananda Vilas. Some devotees including the brahmacārin were there. He prostrated before His Holiness. His Holiness looked at him with full compassion, raised His right hand in a gesture of blessing, and said in Hindi, ‘May you be happy.’ He then moved on.

I quickly conveyed to him what His Holiness had told me. Even before I finished, he said, ‘The answers to all my questions became fully known to me the moment His Holiness blessed me.’ His Holiness at times made known scriptural answers even without verbal expression and on a few occasions conferred samādhi purely as an act of grace. Such facts accord with the oneness of Lord Dakṣiṇāmūrti and His Holiness, as pointed out in the fourth and fifth verses.

Verse 6

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: Scripturally Presented as God Supreme

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha, the Supreme Lord of all about whom the śruti says, ‘The one God creating heaven and earth…’]

In this sixth verse, His Holiness is declared to be the Supreme Īśvara. This is done through the epithet sarveśa (Lord of all) and by alluding to three mantras of the Śvestāśvatara-upaniṣad concerning Īśvara. The allusion is made by citing the fourth quarter of the third mantra in that triad. The three mantras are:

sa eko jālavān īśata īśanībhiḥ sarvāl̃ lokān īśata īśanībhiḥ / ya evaika udbhave sambhave ca ya etad vidur amr̥tās te bhavanti – The non-dual One rules as the master of Māyā by His divine powers. (What does He rule over?) By His divine powers, He rules over all the worlds (from Brahmaloka, the highest realm, to pātāla, the lowest hell). He alone exists before creation, during the subsistence of the world, and when all is dissolved. They who realize Him become immortal.¹

eko hi rudro na dvitīyāya tasthur ya imāl̃ lokān īśata īśanībhiḥ / pratyaṅ janāṁs tiṣṭhati sañcukocāntakale saṁsr̥jya viśvā bhuvanāni gopāḥ – Rudra (the terminator of all sorrows), who rules over all these worlds by His divine powers, who is within every being in the form of the jīva, who projects all the worlds, is their protector, and withdraws everything at the time of cosmic dissolution, is just one. Hence, the knowers of Brahman did not look for any second entity.²

viśvataścakṣur uta viśvatomukho viśvatobāhur uta viśvataspāt / saṁ bāhubhyāṁ dhamati saṁpatatrair dyāvābhūmī janayan deva ekaḥ – [To produce a pot, a potter requires a place to work, clay as the material, and accessories such as a wheel. But when the worlds were fashioned, what was the place for the Creator? What was the material, and what were His accessories? Since these were absent, how could He have created the worlds? In response, it is pointed out that, unlike the potter who is different from the pot, Īśvara projected the world in Himself, by Himself, and through His own powers, without requiring anything apart from Himself. He is both the material and the efficient cause. Thus, He manifests as the entire cosmos and has in this universal form the eyes, faces, hands, and feet of all beings. This is expressed as follows in this mantra:] He has eyes everywhere (all eyes are His), He has faces everywhere, He has hands everywhere, and He has legs everywhere. Creating earth and heaven, the one God assigns hands to humans and wings to birds.¹

Besides the Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad, the third of these mantras occurs in the R̥gveda-saṁhitā, Śukla-yajurveda-saṁhitā and the Kr̥ṣṇa-yajurveda’s Taittirīya-saṁhitā.² The objections addressed by this mantra are explicitly set forth in the R̥gveda-saṁhitā in the mantra that immediately precedes it there. That mantra is: ‘kiṁ svid āsīd adhiṣṭhānam ārambhaṇaṁ katamat svit kathāsīt / yato bhūmiṁ janayan visvakarmā vi dyām aurṇīn mahinā viśvacakṣāḥ –What was the site for the all-seeing Īśvara when by His power He fashioned the earth and heaven? (There was none.) What was the material? (There was none.) If at all there was some material, of what kind was it?’³ The Śukla-yajurveda-saṁhitā too frames through this mantra the objection that is settled by the mantra about God having eyes, faces, hands and legs everywhere.⁴ In the Taittirīya-saṁhitā, these words follow, not precede, those about God’s cosmic form and serve to point out that the objections are ruled out.⁵

In this sixth verse, a quarter of a mantra is explicitly quoted to allude to that mantra together with the two preceding ones of the Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad. This is evident from the following. The verse specifies that the scriptural passage in question explicates sarveśa, the Lord of all. The word sarveśvara – a synonym of sarveśa – occurs in the Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad and Bhagavatpāda has explained it in His bhāṣya thereon as, ‘bhedajātasya sarvasyeśitā – the ruler of duality in its entirety.’ However, neither what is explicitly cited here – translatable as, ‘Creating heaven and earth, the one Deva’ – nor the full mantra of which it is a part provides an adequate account of sarveśa, the Lord of all. By contrast, this mantra, together with the preceding two mantras of the third chapter of the Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad, forms an integral triad that explicitly and adequately describes Īśvara.

There is no dearth of instances of a part of a verse being cited to allude to the complete verse, or even to more than one verse. For instance, in His Upadeśa-sāhasrī, Bhagavatpāda alludes to verse 13 of chapter 5 of the Bhagavadgītā by citing a part – navadvāre pure (in the body, the city with nine gates) – of the third quarter of the verse.¹ The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad alludes to three mantras of the R̥gveda-saṁhitā by quoting just the first quarter of the first mantra. It says, ‘tad dhyetad paśyann r̥ṣir vāmadevaḥ pratipede “ahaṁ manur abhavaṁ sūryaś ca” iti – When realizing his own self as Brahman, Sage Vāmadeva cognized, “I was Mānu and the sun-god.”’² From Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya on this passage, it follows that not merely the cited portion, but three complete mantras of the R̥gveda-saṁhitā are being referred to.³

Drawing upon and paraphrasing the Bhagavadgītā, the śruti, and the Viṣṇu-purāṇa concerning Īśvara and His incarnation in human form, Bhagavatpada writes in the introductory portion of His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya: ‘sa ca bhagavān jñānaiśvarya-śakti-bala-vīrya-tejobhiḥ sadā saṁpannas triguṇatmikāṁ vaiṣṇavīṁ svāṁ māyāṁ mūlaprakr̥tiṁ vaśīkr̥tyājo ’vyayo bhūtānām īṣvaro nityaśuddhabuddhamuktasvabhāvo ’pi san svamāyayā dehavān iva jāta iva lokānugrahaṁ kurval̃ lakṣayate⁴ – He, Bhagavān, always possessed of (full and unimpeded) knowledge, sovereignty, power, strength, vigour and splendour, controls His Māyā – the primordial material cause (prakr̥ti) comprising the three guṇas (sattva, rajas and tamas) and belonging to Him as Viṣṇu (the all-pervading One) – and appears as if embodied and as if born, and bestows grace upon people. He does so though He is unborn, imperishable (with unwavering power of knowledge) and the Lord of all beings (from Brahmā to a clump of grass), and is intrinsically eternal (absolutely changeless), pure (without cause), enlightened and free (untouched by ignorance, desire and action).’ Thus, even when manifested in human form and functioning as a human, Īśvara’s nature and greatness remain intact.

The present verse makes it known that His Holiness is the Supreme, the śarveśa (the Lord of all) described in the first three mantras of the third chapter of the Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad. The Supreme Lord is, indeed, worthy of worship by all. Since, as pointed out here, His Holiness is the Supreme, the epithet jagat-pūjya (worthy of universal reverence) specified in the first verse is wholly applicable to Him.

Verses 7 and 8

His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin: Viewed as a Great Jīvanmukta and Peerless Guru

[I seek refuge in (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī ) Vidyātīrtha, the king of (human) Gurus (when viewed as a matchless, enlightenment-conferring jīvanmukta), who dwells on the bank of the river Tunga (that is, in Sringeri) and reveals the absolute Reality (Brahman) to disciples.]

[I seek refuge in Him (His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Abhinava-vidyātīrtha Mahāsvāmin) who (as a consummate knower of the scripture) correctly spells out to disciples the teaching of the scripture and makes them devoted to the path of dharma (that is two-fold, as characterized by rites and duties and meant for those with desires, and as characterized by renunciation and meant for the dispassionate intent on liberating knowledge).]

His Holiness is presented in verses 7 and 8 as a great jīvanmukta and peerless Guru; the word ‘deśika-rājam (the king of Gurus)’ points to this. The description of His Holiness in verse 6 as the Supreme Lord Himself and His portrayal here as a jīvanmukta and human Guru are not incompatible. Rāma and Bhagavatpāda were ever divine and beyond ignorance, and yet they enacted the divine līla of being, as it were, ignorant of Their true nature, and then realizing it. As for His Holiness, He played the divine līlā of being, unenlightened as it were, practising intense sādhana, and finally attaining enlightenment, as it were, and becoming a jīvanmukta.

Though Rāma was a divine incarnation, He portrayed Himself as ignorant of His true nature. When Sītā fearlessly entered into the blazing fire, Brahmā appeared before Rāma. As Rāma respectfully stood with joined palms, Brahmā asked Him why He who was the creator of the universe did not intervene as Sītā entered the fire. Rāma replied: ‘ātmānaṁ mānuṣaṁ manye rāmaṁ daśarathātmajam – I regard myself as a human, Rāma, the son of Daśaratha.’¹ Rāma then asked Brahma to tell Him who He really was and whence He had come. Brahmā categorically told Him that He was Lord Nārāyaṇa, that He was the imperishable Brahman, and that He had taken up a human form for destroying Rāvaṇa. Thus, Lord Rāma was ignorant, as it were, of His true nature and then realized it, as it were, upon hearing Brahmā’s words. Illustrating the destruction of delusion on hearing the great scriptural declaration, ‘tat tvam asi – You are That,’¹ Bhagavatpāda refers to this incident thus: ‘brahmā dāśarather yadvad uktyaivāpānudat tamaḥ / tasya viṣṇutvasaṁbodhe na yatnāntaram ūcivān – This is just as Brahmā removed the ignorance of Daśaratha’s son (Rāma) just by declaring that He was Viṣṇu. He did not mention any further effort for Him to realize His identity as Viṣnu.’² According to the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, young Rāma went on a pilgrimage and returned cheerless after discerning that everything comes to an end; Sage Vasiṣṭha taught Him the non-dual Truth; He became enlightened and said that by the Sage’s grace, He was beyond all injunctions and prohibitions.³ While the ever-free and perfect Lord did not act as though He was first ignorant and then attained enlightenment when He incarnated as Vāmana and as Kr̥ṣna, He did so as Rāma (as portrayed in the Rāmāyaṇa and the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha).

Bhagavatpāda was surely the Lord incarnate. His disciple Toṭakācārya has declared with certitude: ‘bhava eva bhavān – You are indeed Bhava (Śiva).’⁴ Padmapādācārya has fascinatingly indicated this in an invocatory verse in which each word refers to Bhagavatpāda when understood in one way, and to Śiva when understood in another way.⁵ The Mādhavīya-śāṅkara-vijaya, which details His life and accomplishments, unequivocally portrays Him as an incarnation of Śiva. Though being the Lord incarnate, Bhagavatpāda nevertheless says that He was entrapped in saṁsāra, and that He was freed from it, through enlightenment, by His Guru. His words at the close of His Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad-kārikā-bhaṣya are: ‘yatprajñālokabhāsā pratihatam agamat svāntamohāndhakāro majjonmajjac ca ghore hy askr̥d upajanodanvany atitrāsane me – (I offer salutation with my whole being at the purifying feet of my Guru,) the light of whose knowledge dispelled the darkness of delusion in my mind and put an end forever to my fear of sinking and rising repeatedly in this terrible ocean of innumerable births.’⁶

His Holiness’s Guru, His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Candraśekhara-bhāratī Mahāsvāmin, guided, kept track of, and blessed His Holiness’s intense practice of sādhana. When His Holiness attained enlightenment atop a hill on the evening of 12 December 1935 and went to His Guru, the latter spontaneously discerned that His Holiness had attained enlightenment and become a jīvanmukta. Even before His Holiness uttered a word, His Guru cited passages of the śruti and smr̥ti about jīvanmukti and declared firmly that all of them were now applicable to His Holiness. Nevertheless, some months later, when His Holiness was to depart for Bengaluru for a stay of some months there, His Guru stated categorically, ‘I know that you are actually the Supreme God; that all your intense practice of spiritual disciplines for attaining liberation was just your divine sport; and that your beholding Śiva and receiving His blessings (on 5 December 1935) was merely a divine play, on par with Kr̥ṣṇa’s beholding Lord Śiva and receiving from Him a boon to beget a son.’¹ A few years later, in the month of Āśvina of the cyclical year Subhānu (that is, between 30.9.1943 and 29.10 1943), He composed seven verses on His Holiness. In one of them, He says: ‘nikhilajagatī-rakṣaṇacaṇaṁ…parabrahmākāraṁ praṇava-viditaṁ gurum vidyātīrthaṁ kalayata budhās citta-kamale – O wise ones, enshrine in your heart-lotus the Guru, Vidyātīrtha, who is of the very nature of the Supreme Brahman, who is realized through the praṇava (Oṁ) and who is adept in protecting the entire world.’ Regarding this, He told His Holiness, ‘I have written only what I know with certainty to be true. There is no exaggeration here.’ Thus, His Guru described Him as a jīvamukta and as the Supreme Lord Himself. Likewise, in this stotra, His Holiness is spoken of as God in verses 4-6, and as a great jīvanmukta-guru in verses 7 and 8.

That His Holiness is portrayed in verse 7 as a human Guru par excellence is conveyed by the term ‘deśika-rājam (the king of Gurus)’ used therein. A comparison of verse 7 with verse 4 serves to highlight this. Both verse 4 and verse 7 speak of ‘tattvam (Truth, the non-dual Supreme Brahman)’ as that which is made known. The imparting of the Truth is said to take place in Sringeri, expressed by the word ‘śriṅgādrau’ in verse 4, and indicated by the phrase ‘tīre tuṇga-taṭinyāḥ (on the bank of the river Tuṅgā)’ in verse 7. In both verses, the act of teaching is expressed through the same verbal root, budhi̐r². The pivotal difference is that verse 4 presents God, manifested as His Holiness, as the imparter of the Truth in Sringeri, while verse 7 speaks of His Holiness as a pre-eminent human Guru – as the deśika-rāja (the king of Gurus) – making known the Truth there.

When it is said here that His Holiness is the desika-raja (the king of Gurus) who enlightens disciples at Sringeri, it follows that He is regarded as a great jīvanmukta-guru with mastery over the scripture and boundless, causeless mercy. Various passages about the Guru who reveals Brahman confirm this. The Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad prescribes that to realize the Truth, one must duly approach: ‘gurum…śrotriyaṁ brahmaniṣṭham – a Guru who is versed in the scripture and is established in the Supreme Brahman;’¹ that is, a jīvanmukta conversant with the scripture. Bhagavatpāda points out in His bhāṣya that this Guru is: ‘śamadamadayādi-saṁpannam – endowed with mastery over the mind and the senses, compassion and such other qualities.’² The Kaṭha-upaniṣad declares: ‘na nareṇāvareṇa prokta eṣa suvijñeyo bahudhā cintyamānaḥ / ananyaprokte gatir atra nāsti – If taught by an unenlightened person, this Ātman cannot be realized, for It is conceived variously. When taught by one who has become identified with It, there is no incomprehension (there arises realization).’³ In His Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, Bhagavatpāda defines the Guru who can bring about emancipating enlightenment in the disciple thus: ‘śrotriyo ’vr̥jino ’kāmahato yo brahmavittamaḥ / brahmaṇy uparataḥ śānto nirindhana ivānalaḥ // ahetuka-dayāsindhur bandhur ānamatāṁ satām – He is versed in the scripture, sinless, not smitten by desires, an excellent knower of Brahman, with mind absorbed in Brahman, quiescent like fire without fuel, an ocean of mercy without cause, and a remover of all the sorrows of the virtuous persons who prostrate before him.’⁴ His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Candraśekhara-bhāratī Mahāsvāmin has, in His authoritative commentary on the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, explained the causeless nature of the compassion of the enlightened Guru thus: ‘dayā paraduḥkha-prahāṇecchā …itarasya dayalor api anyatra duḥkhadarśanena svasyāpi jātaduḥkhatvāt / …asya tu jñānamahimnā svato vā parato vā duḥkhāprasakteḥ kevalaṁ janās tarantu saṁsāravāridhim iti icchā paraṁ vyutthāna-kāle – Kindness (dayā) is the wish to remove the unhappiness of another. In the case of the unenlightened compassionate person, he experiences unhappiness on seeing the suffering of another…On the other hand, in the case of this enlightened one, because of the glory of His knowledge of Brahman, there is no question of his being actually subject to unhappiness, whether on his own account or because of another’s pain. Nevertheless, when he not in samādhi, he has, (unmotivated by any actual experience of personal unhappiness due to another’s suffering,) the spontaneous wish that people transcend the ocean of transmigratory existence (and thus, all unhappiness).’ Thus, His Holiness cannot be said to be a deṣika-rāja (the king of Gurus) who teaches disciples the Truth without His being seen as an outstanding jīvanmukta-guru, with mastery over the scripture and boundless, causeless compassion.

Numerous are the instances that leave no room for doubt about His Holiness’s steadfast establishment in the Truth. On 22 February 1983, He suffered an attack of angina, with severe pain in the chest and a dull pain in His left arm. Around 6:30 p.m., He was administered an intramuscular injection of morphine. Soon, He lapsed into a state of semi-torpor. Giridhara Sastry, the then Administrator of the Sringeri Math, and I were seated on the floor by the side of His Holiness as He rested on a simple wooden platform. Though hardly conscious of what He was saying, His Holiness softly uttered a verse ending with the words, ‘mati-kr̥ta-guṇadoṣā māṁ vibhuṁ na spr̥śanti – The meritorious and faulty doings of the intellect do not touch me, who am all-pervading (by virtue of, as per Vedānta, being present everywhere, at all times, and being the basis of the existence of everything, just as gold is of a golden ornament).’ Who else but a jīvanmukta could have affirmed the Truth even while experiencing pain and being only semiconscious?

In August 1989, a month before His Holiness discarded His body, I asked Him, ‘Over the years, has intense anger, worry or grief appeared in Your Holiness’s mind unaccompanied, even for a while, by the awareness of its falsity.’ His Holiness replied, ‘No, never. Even during excruciating pain, there has been the clear awareness that it pertains only to the illusory mind and that I am the changeless witness of the nature of pure consciousness. All this is solely due to the grace of my Guru and God. Else, where was the question of even one so ordinary as I becoming unswervingly established in Brahman and functioning in the world as I was directed to by my Guru?’

His Holiness admiringly affirmed about His Guru’s exposition of Vedānta: ‘My Guru had the conviction that every single word of Bhagavatpāda is immaculate and significant. He took into consideration every word of Bhagavatpāda and, having analysed it, brought out its true purport. He expounded the scripture strictly in accordance with the commentary of Bhagavatpāda. He effortlessly integrated into His teaching of Vedānta pertinent points from Nyāya, Mīmāṁsā, and Yoga. When the Vedānta-śāstra is taught, one way is to explain a text line by line; another is to expound the lines integrated with one’s experience of the Truth. The latter characterized His teaching – it gave great joy. When He delineated scriptural intricacies in a vidvat-sadas (assembly of śāstra-scholars), such as when He expounded the Ānandamayādhikaraṇa of the Brahma-sūtras at Mysuru, all the scholars were struck with awe. Even though my Guru was a consummate scholar, He did not have the slightest egoism.’ Everything that His Holiness said about His Guru applies fully to His own exposition of Vedānta – a fact directly known to those who have had the good fortune of attending His classes, His one-on-one expositions, and His public discourses; eminent scholars from all over India were enthralled by His eloquent and articulate exposition of the profundities of Nyāya and Vedānta, as well as by His elucidatory interventions in every vidvat-sadas.

Here is an instance of His exposition of scriptural passages. Lord Kr̥ṣna’s profound instruction in the Bhagavadgītā, concerning complete absorption of the mind in the Ātman, in samādhi, for the dawn of the liberating realization of the non-dual Truth, is: ‘ātmasaṁsthaṁ manaḥ kr̥tvā na kiñcid api cintayet – Having established the mind in the Ātman, one should not think of anything whatsoever.’¹ Bhagavatpāda has elucidated this in His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya as follows: ‘atmasaṁstham ātmani saṁsthitam ātmaiva sarvaṁ na tato ’nyat kiñcid api asti ity evam ātmasamsamṣtham manaḥ krtvā na kiñcid api cintayet / eṣa yogasya paramo vidhiḥ – Making the mind ātmasaṁstham, established in the Ātman, seeing that the Ātman alone is all, that there is nothing at all that is other than It, one should think of nothing whatsoever. This is the highest instruction of Yoga.’² His Holiness highlighted to me, on two occasions in private³, the exactness and aptness of Bhagavatpāda’s pointing out that the prescribed establishment of the mind in the Ātman is through discerning that the Ātman is all. The following is a paraphrase of what He told me in Chennai, in January 1982, a little after He had, at my request, delivered a public anugraha-bhāṣaṇa on meditation:

‘When the Lord says that the mind should be established in the Ātman, the inevitable question that arises is how, according to Him, this is to be done. Were the Ātman something other than oneself, one could think of It as one would think of, say, an image of Viṣṇu that one has seen sometime or read a description of. However, the Ātman is not something objective; It is one’s very nature and, as such, is never unknown. Nevertheless, owing to avidyā, it is misconceived. Thus, not distinguishing between the Ātman and the body, Arjuna baulked at the thought of killing Bhīṣma and Droṇa; Kr̥ṣṇa had to point out that only the body is perishable, not the Ātman. Identifying oneself with the body–mind complex, one regards oneself as a doer; the Lord states that the Ātman is not a doer. The dispelling of all false notions is vital for freedom from all bondage. The true nature of the Ātman has been explicitly and elaborately taught by the Lord Himself prior to this portion, and that teaching is clearly very pertinent here. He has, for instance, said that It is avināśī – indestructible; yena sarvam idam tataṁ – that by which everything is pervaded; aprameya – indeterminable by means of knowledge such as perception; sarvagataḥ – omnipresent; avyaktaḥ – not manifest, not capable of being objectified; and avikāryaḥ – changeless.¹ He has also stated that an enlightened one knows that his Ātman is the Ātman of all (sarvabhūtātma-bhutātmā),² that every entity, right from Brahmā to a clump of grass, is in the Ātman, and that It is non-different from the Supreme (bhūtāny aśeṣāṇi drakṣyasy ātmany atho mayi).³ That the Ātman is none other than the Supreme Brahman is discernible even from His referring to the Ātman and to Brahman in the same breath, and saying: “bāhya-sparśeṣv asaktātmā vindaty ātmani yat sukham / sa brahmayoga-yuktātmā sukham akṣayam aśnute – With his mind unattached to external objects, he attains the bliss of the Ātman; with his mind absorbed in samādhi on the Supreme Brahman, he attains undiminishing bliss.”⁴

‘As for anything that is subject to change, it is unreal, inasmuch as it is not apprehended as distinct from its material cause, and since it is not perceived before its origination and after its destruction. That, on the other hand, which is real, remains ever the same. The Lord teaches this by defining the unreal and the real thus: “nāsato vidyate bhavo nābhāvo vidyate sataḥ / ubhayor api ḍr̥ṣṭo ’ntas tv anayos tattvadarśibhiḥ – That which is unreal (such as the body, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, and their causes) has no being; that which is real (the Ātman) has no absence (as It is ever the same everywhere). The nature of both these (the unreal and the real) has been discerned by those who have realized the Truth (Brahman).”¹ It may be understood from this that the world, which is subject to change, is unreal or illusory, whereas the Ātman, which is changeless and pervades all, is what is real. Moreover, what is illusory has no existence apart from its substratum, which pervades it – just as mirage-water has no existence apart from desert-sand wherein it is seen. The Lord says: “prakr̥tiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya saṁbhavāmy ātmamāyayā – Subjugating My prakr̥ti I take birth by My Mayā.”² It may be inferred from this that prakr̥ti, the changeful, inert material cause of the world, is but the Lord’s power, Māyā, and as such, its existence and functioning are wholly dependent upon Him. As for the Ātman, the Supreme and It are, as made known by the Lord, intrinsically one.

From all that the Lord Himself has made known prior to His instruction that one should establish the mind on the Ātman, it is clear that one’s Ātman is changeless, all-pervasive, the Ātman of all beings, and none other than the Supreme Brahman. Further, all else, being subject to change, is illusory; prakr̥ti, the changeful, primordial material cause of the world, is itself but the Supreme’s power, Māyā, and has no existence apart from, and depends on the Supreme. It is this Ātman, which is one’s very nature and never unknown, that is misconceived due to avidyā. Moreover, there is no possibility of the Ātman ever being unknown, for It is of the very nature of consciousness, needing no light to illumine it; the Lord has indicated this by saying that the light of the enlightened one is only within – antarjyotir eva saḥ. Hence, it is only the removal of all misconceptions that is to be done, and not the making of an unknown Ātman known. Realizing the Ātman’s true nature as the non-dual Supreme Brahman, apart from which there is nothing whatsoever, is the means to liberation taught by the Lord. The fixing of the mind on the Ātman is unquestionably for the dawn of such liberating enlightenment. Therefore, it must necessarily be the fixing of the mind on the Ātman’s true nature, and not on the Ātman as coloured by any misconception. Bhagavatpāda’s statement that the fixing is by seeing that “ātmaiva – the Ātman alone” is “sarvaṁ – all” encapsulates what the Lord has taught about the true nature of the Ātman – that there is no world apart from the Ātman, no second Ātman, and that It is none other than Brahman. As the Ātman is changeless, there is no question of Its actually transforming into the world. Thus, what seeing “The Ātman alone is all” involves is seeing, as Bhagavatpāda unequivocally points out, “na tato ’nyat kiñcid asti – There is nothing whatsoever apart from It.”

‘Once the mind is established on the Ātman through a clear recognition of the nature of the Ātman as the non-dual Reality, no thought of anything external or of body–mind complex should be entertained, for that would only disturb the complete absorption of the mind in the Ātman. Likewise, further reflection on the Ātman in any way or the repetition of any thought of the Ātman – such as, “I am the Ātman” – is uncalled for once the mind fully abides in the Ātman. Hence, the Lord has said that, having established the mind on the Ātman, “na kiñcid api cintayet – one should not think of anything whatsoever.”

‘Mere stilling of the mind will not result in liberating enlightenment. Nor will the abidance of the mind in the Ātman with the understanding that It is changeless, omnipresent and pure consciousness – as accepted by the dualistic Yoga school – but without the crowning knowledge made known only by Vedānta, that It alone is, with neither the world nor another Ātman apart from It. Thus, the effective implementation of what the Lord teaches in this verse presupposes hearing the non-dual Truth from the Guru – Lord Kr̥ṣṇa here – and gaining firm certitude about it. The sāmadhi that results is characterized by perfect tranquillity, with the mind thoroughly abiding in the Ātman, as correctly understood. Its practice nullifies the past tendencies of false knowledge – which impede the realization of the Truth – and culminates in liberating enlightenment.’

‘That the Lord’s view is that the mind should be established on the Ātman through the recognition that the Ātman alone is all – that there is nothing whatsoever distinct from the Ātman – is confirmed by what He proceeds to say. He declares that this yogin whose mind is perfectly tranquil in samādhi realizes his identity with the Supreme Brahman and attains the supreme bliss, which is the very nature of the Ātman: “praśāntamanasaṁ hy enaṁ yoginaṁ sukham uttamam / upaiti śāntarajasaṁ brahmabhūtam akalmaṣam – Utmost bliss comes to this yogin whose mind is perfectly tranquil, whose rajas (in the form of the defects such as delusion) has been eradicated, and who has become identified with Brahman.”¹ The Lord then points out that he who has attained samādhi and realizes everywhere the oneness of his Ātman with Brahman sees all beings in his Ātman: “sarvabhūtasthaṁ ātmānam sarva-bhūtāni cātmani – He whose mind is merged in samādhi and has the vision of the identity of the Ātman and Brahman everywhere sees his Ātman in everything and all beings in the Ātman.”¹ Moreover, He says later: “jñāvān māṁ prapadyate / vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti – The man of mature knowledge attains Me, realizing, ‘Vāsudeva (Brahman, the Ātman) is all.”² ‘The Br̥hadārāṇyaka-upaniṣad teaches, “sarvam ātmānaṁ paśyati – He sees all as the Ātman,” and then declares, “vipāpo virajo ’vicikitso brāhmaṇo bhavati – He becomes sinless, taintless, free from all doubt, and a knower of Brahman.”³ That is, he becomes a jīvanmukta. In His Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad-bhāṣya, Bhagavatpāda explains, “sarvam ātmānaṁ paśyati – He sees all as the Ātman” thus: “sarvam samastam ātmanam eva paśyati, nānyad ātmavyatiriktaṁ vālāgramātram apy astīti paśyati…yogi bhavati, jāgrat-svapna-suṣuptākhyaṁ sthānatrayaṁ hitvā – He sees all as the Ātman alone, does not see anything whatsoever, not even to the extent of the tip of a hair, as existing apart from the Ātman. He becomes a yogin, having transcended the three states of waking, dream, and deep sleep.”⁴ What the Lord prescribes here and Bhagavatpāda’s elucidation of it are in full accord with this teaching of the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad and Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya thereon. The Chāndogya-upaniṣad also teaches: “ātmaiva idam sarvaṁ – The Ātman is indeed all this”⁵ – and then glorifies the one who realizes this and becomes liberated.

‘How precise and perfectly apt is Bhagavatpāda’s elucidation of the Lord’s words – containing not a word more or less than what is needed to bring out fully the Lord’s instruction concerning the establishment of the mind on the Ātman – based on what the Lord has taught before and confirmed by what He declares thereafter. Direct experience confirms that the practice of what the Lord has instructed and what Bhagavatpāda has immaculately elucidated culminates in the nirvikalpa-samādhi in which the non-dual Truth is realized.’

The exquisiteness of His Holiness’s explanation of the Lord’s instruction, His bringing out the excellence of Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣya on that instruction, His corroborating both the instruction and the bhāsya with what is declared in the Upaniṣads, His pointing out the limitation of the dualistic Yoga school, and His confirmatory reference to direct experience all bear testimony to His being a perfect teacher of Vedānta.

Here is one more instance of His captivating exposition of the scripture. When Arjuna was overcome with distress and despondency and voiced this comprehensively to Lord Kr̥ṣṇa: ‘tam uvāca hr̥ṣīkeśaḥ prahasann iva bhārata /…aśocyān anvaśocas tvam…gatāsūn agatāsūṁś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ – O Bhārata (Dhr̥tarāṣṭra), while laughing, as it were, Hr̥ṣīkeśa (Kr̥ṣṇa) told him, “You grieve for those who are not to be grieved for… The wise (the enlightened ones) do not grieve for the departed or for the living.”’¹ The portion ‘prahasann iva, while laughing, as it were’ has not been explicated by Bhagavatpāda in His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya. Touching upon it in a discourse in Kannada at Bengaluru on 1 November 1979, and elaborating upon it in an allied context in a private conversation, His Holiness tellingly clarified – what He said in His discourse and in His private conversation has been combined and paraphrased here – ‘A person overcome with unhappiness seeks a Guru. Suppose the Guru keeps an expressionless face or, worse, a melancholic look and says, “Sadness is unwarranted.” Would this not be a little like a doctor coughing miserably while telling a patient who has come to him for relief from a nagging cough, “I have at hand a medicine that will promptly relieve you of your cough”? The disciple, like the patient, would not be enthused. On the other hand, suppose the Guru is unmistakeably seen to be an embodiment of tranquillity and smilingly tells the despondent disciple, “Do not worry. There is no reason to grieve.” The contrast between the disciple’s state and that of the Guru becomes apparent to the disciple who then experiences a sense of confidence. Arjuna’s discriminative insight, as Bhagavatpāda has pointed out, was overpowered by his grief and delusion. Kr̥ṣṇa knew perfectly well the remedy for this and that He would uplift Arjuna; for His part, Kr̥ṣṇa was ever beyond delusion and established in absolute bliss. Kr̥ṣṇa’s speaking with a smile revealed His freedom from sorrow and indicated to Arjuna that He was fully able to and would free Arjuna from all that was burdening him. His telling Arjuna that he was grieving for those who ought not to be grieved for was meant to draw attention to the fact that his emotional upheaval stemmed from a misapprehension, not to make fun of him and thereby add, even for a moment, to his dejection. Therefore, He – with a countenance that was reassuringly cheerful – straightaway set about putting Arjuna’s distress to rest by imparting right knowledge in detail. Bhagavatpāda has stated in His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya that when Arjuna expressed to the Lord that he was stricken with fear on beholding the Lord’s cosmic form (viśvarupa), the Lord immediately withdrew it even before He began to calm Arjuna with sweet words (arjunaṁ bhītaṁ upalabhya upasaṁhr̥tya viśvarūpaṁ priyavacanenāśvāsayan śrībhagavān uvāca).¹ Being so deeply solicitous of Arjuna, the Lord would surely not have delayed dispelling Arjuna’s despondency by first mocking Him. His joyful countenance was a reflection of His innate bliss and transcendence of all sorrow; it served to cheer and hearten Arjuna as He began to teach him in depth and strike at the very root of Arjuna’s misunderstanding and sorrow.’ What a striking contrast between His Holiness’s explanation – which accords with Bhagavatpāda’s expressing in His Chāndogya-upaniṣad-bhāṣya that the knower of Brahman has a smiling face and is free from all worry (prahasita-vadanaś ca niścintaḥ)² – and one offered in a sub-commentary where the Lord is said to have seemingly mocked Arjuna, and in a gloss, where it is said that He apparently immersed Arjuna in an ocean of shame.

His Holiness ensured, even in special ways, that disciples clearly grasped His teaching of Vedānta, regardless of whether they were learned or novices. After he opted for voluntary retirement, Anantarama Seshan came with his wife, Vaikuntham, to Sringeri in 1963, intending to settle down there. During the cāturmāsya that year, His Holiness expounded, in chaste Sanskrit, the Vedānta-paribhāṣā – an authoritative, technical primer on Advaita-vedānta – to the couple, several scholars, and a saṁnyāsin. After the first day’s class, the lady approached Him in the evening and said, ‘I am blessed to attend Your Holiness’s class. However, unlike the others, I am not knowledgeable in Sanskrit and so am unable to comprehend Your Holiness’s exposition.’ Blessing her, He compassionately responded, ‘You will be able to grasp the text.’ Much to her own amazement, she found that from the very next day onwards she was able to follow His exposition – and, that too, without any difficulty. Even the portion of the text that had been covered in the first class became clear to her. Later, His Holiness began expounding the Pañcadaśī, a classic work on Advaita-vedānta, to the couple. Though He taught it in Sanskrit, she could clearly follow His exposition. After covering a portion of this text, He told them that they could continue reading the book by themselves and that it would be clear to them. That indeed came to pass. I received this information decades later from the lady herself. She even demonstrated to me her understanding of His Holiness’s exposition of the Vedānta-paribhāṣā and Pañcadaśī by correctly conveying to me, in Tamil, the import of certain portions of these texts that I read out to her in Sanskrit.

That His Holiness was the very embodiment of unconditional compassion was evident to everyone who had any contact with Him. Countless incidents bear testimony to this. For instance, Smt. Susheela of Erode narrated: ‘Once, when His Holiness was camping at Salem, I went for His darśana. He made compassionate enquiries about our family business, which was then going through a rough patch. When I told Him that we had had to sell our house and move to a rented one, His Holiness consoled me. I then made a humble submission to Him: “I understand that Your Holiness’s next camp is at Coimbatore and that there will be no camp at Erode this time. If Your Holiness passes through Erode without visiting our house, my grief will be unbearable. I pray that the sacred dust of Your Holiness’s feet may sanctify my house.” As I made this prayer, I burst into tears. His Holiness said kindly, “Do not worry. That will happen.” On His way to Coimbatore, His car entered the colony where our rented house was situated and stopped before our compound gate. His Holiness got out, removed His pādukās, and started walking barefoot. I was anxious, wondering why He had removed His pādukās, as the place was full of sand and sharp stones. His Holiness walked slowly and, when He entered the house, I saw the dust from His feet forming distinct footmarks on the floor. He then looked at me with His characteristic smile and said, “See, I have come. Are you happy now?” Only then did I realize that He had, in letter and in spirit, fulfilled my prayer of gracing my house with the dust of His feet. Choked with emotion, I apologized, “Just to have my wish fulfilled, I have committed the sin of making Your Holiness walk on sharp stones.” His Holiness said, “It was no problem at all. I am quite used to such terrain.” ’

Thus, the seventh verse describes His Holiness as the ‘deśika-rāja (the king of Gurus)’ who dwells in Sringeri and makes known the Truth to disciples, and thereby presents Him as an extraordinary jīvanmukta-guru with thorough mastery over the scripture and boundless, causeless compassion.

The first seven verses begin with the first seven syllables – a, bhi, na, va, vi, dyā, and tī – of the revered name of His Holiness – ‘Abhinava-vidyātīrtha’. There is, however, no word in Sanskrit that begins with rtha, the eighth and final syllable of His Holiness’s name. This difficulty is ingeniously overcome in the eighth verse, which opens with the phrase rtham apūrvaṁ. This phrase, meaning ‘rtha preceded by a,’ yields the familiar Sanskrit word ‘artham’ – the accusative singular of artha – whose import is ‘meaning’. In the second invocatory verse of His authoritative commentary on the Viveka-cūḍāmani, His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Candraśekhara-bhāratī Mahāsvāmin employs the phrase cūḍāmaṇiṁ vivekādiṁ, which means ‘cūḍāmaṇiṁ preceded by viveka’ and yields the compound ‘viveka-cūḍāmaniṁ,’ the accusative singular of the title of the text being expounded. This verse is: ‘jñānasvarūpe vāgdevī bhagavatpāda-pūjite / cūḍāmaṇiṁ vivekādiṁ vyākuruṣva mukān mama – O Goddess of speech (Goddess Śāradā, the presiding deity of the ‘Sringeri Sharada Peetham’), whose very nature is consciousness and who was worshipped by Bhagavatpāda, expound the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi through my mouth.’ The formation of the word artham in the eighth verse is similar to that of viveka-cūdāmani in the second invocatory verse of His Holiness Jagadguru Śrī Candraśekhara-bhāratī Mahāsvāmin’s commentary on the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi.

Bhagavatpāda states at the start of His Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya: ‘sa bhagavān …marīcyādīn prajāpatīn…pravr̥ttilakṣaṇaṁ dharmaṁ grāhayāmāsa vedoktam /…sanakasanandanādīn…nivr̥ttilakṣaṇaṁ dharmaṁ jñānavairāgyalakṣaṇaṁ grāhayāmāsa / dvidho hi vaidiko dharmaḥ pravr̥ttilakṣaṇo nivr̥ttilakṣaṇaś ca –The Lord induced the Prajāpatis such as Marīci to adopt the pravr̥ṭti-dharma enjoined by the Vedas (the path of dharma marked by rites and duties). He induced the sages headed by Sanaka to follow the nivr̥ttidharma characterized by knowledge and dispassion. Vedic dharma is twofold: that characterized by action and that characterized by renunciation.’¹

An acārya is defined thus: ‘ācinoti ca śāstrārtham ācāre sthāpayaty api / svayam ācarate yasmād ācāryas tena cocyate – Because he comprehensively grasps the purport of the śāstra, establishes others in the prescribed righteous conduct and personally practices it, he is termed an ‘ācārya’.² Thus, he is not one who only has comprehensive knowledge of dharma but one who also fully embodies it in his life and effectively induces others to follow it. His Holiness was an ideal ācārya, perfectly fitting this definition. This is highlighted in the sequel through instances of His grasp and exposition of dharma, His dedicated efforts to facilitate and encourage its observance, and His own punctilious observance of it.

His Holiness has, for easy comprehension, elucidated important aspects of scripturally prescribed conduct through parables of His own conception and through scriptural narratives. Here are some examples concerning the dharma of truthfulness culminating in His narration of an episode from the Mahābhārata, wherein Lord Kr̥ṣṇa enlightens Arjuna and Yudhiṣṭhira on the subtle aspects of truthfulness.

A person stole some goods. He was apprehended and made to take an oath that he would answer truthfully. He said, ‘As long as there is life, I shall speak the truth.’ He was then cross-examined and flatly denied that he had stolen anything. On the basis of his testimony, he was let off. A friend of his, who had participated in the vile act, asked him, ‘Why did you utter falsehood so brazenly in spite of the oath that you took?’ The man nonchalantly replied, ‘I did not lie. All that I had said was true. I promised to speak the truth as long as there was life. I had an insect in my hand. Before I began answering, I crushed it to death. Hence, my statement, “I shall speak the truth as long as there is life,” continued to hold.’

This is an example of sophistry. When a person has something in mind but makes equivocal or misleading statements so as to cause the listener to understand something else, he is guilty of deviating from the truth. To speak the truth as enjoined by the scriptures one’s words must be in accord with one’s thoughts. It is said: ‘manasy ekaṁ vacasy ekaṁ karmaṇy ekaṁ mahātmanām / manasy anyat vacasy anyat karmaṇy anyat durātmanām – The great have oneness of thought, speech, and action; the wicked think one thing, say another, and do yet another.’¹

The śruti enjoins: ‘satyam vada – Speak the truth.’² The smr̥ti clarifies this thus: ‘satyaṁ brūyāt priyaṁ brūyān na brūyāt satyam apriyam / priyañ ca nānr̥taṁ brūyad eṣa dharmaḥ sanātanaḥ – One should speak the truth; one should speak what is pleasant; one should not speak what is true but unpleasant; one should not speak what is pleasant but false. This is the timeless dharma.’³ The Purāṇas, through stories such as that of Hariścandra, illustrate that by adhering to truth even in trying circumstances, one acquires merit, the reward of heaven, and fame;⁴ they thereby inspire people to firmly follow the dharma of truthfulness.

A person decided to fool a friend of his. He went to his friend and said excitedly, ‘Are you not aware that you have won ten lakhs in a lottery? How can you sit here so calmly?’ The friend was dumbfounded. When his amazement subsided a little, he began to build castles in the air. In the meantime, the prankster left. Finally, the friend picked up a newspaper to have the pleasure of seeing his lottery number there. When he could not find it, his exultation gave way to utter dejection. This is an example of a pleasant untruth.

One should not irresponsibly utter a distressing truth. Following a massive heart attack, a person was convalescing in a hospital. One day, his son was involved in a road accident and died. A person who had witnessed the accident rushed to the hospital and exclaimed to the patient, ‘Do you know what has happened? Your son has died.’ The patient, who was very fond of his son, could not bear the terrible news. As his heart was already weak, he breathed his last. The conduct of the person who conveyed the bad news was unvirtuous.

To sum up: one should speak the truth; further, one’s words should be pleasant and beneficial to others; distressing truths ought not to be uttered thoughtlessly; and words should not be framed so as to mislead others.

Once, three persons were proceeding to heaven in a celestial vehicle that had come to take them. On their way, they chanced to behold a snake that was just about to swallow its prey – a frog. One of the three exclaimed, ‘O serpent! Have you no compassion for the frog? For heaven’s sake, spare its life.’ The irritated snake pronounced a curse: ‘How dare you deny me my food? May you go to hell!’ Sad to say, the man went to hell. The second man, who was bewildered at what had happened, supported the snake’s stance and said, ‘The frog is but your natural food; you may surely eat it.’ Now, the frog became angry and retorted, ‘How dare you suggest that I be eaten! You have no kindness. May you suffer the tortures of hell!’ At once, the man fell from the celestial vehicle. The third man, who remained silent, reached heaven. This story illustrates that, on certain occasions, remaining silent is better than saying something, even if it be true.

After the death of Droṇa, Karṇa became the commander-in-chief of the Kaurava forces. In an encounter with Karṇa, Yudhiṣṭhira, Nakula, and Sahadeva were worsted and injured. Humiliated and in great pain, Yudhiṣṭhira withdrew from the battlefield to his tent to take some rest. The battle raged on. After a while, being anxious about Yudhiṣṭhira, Arjuna wanted to see him. So, leaving the Pāṇḍava forces under the control of Bhīma, he asked Kr̥ṣṇa to take him to Yudhiṣṭhira’s tent.

When Kr̥ṣṇa and Arjuna came to pay their respects, Yudhiṣṭhira wrongly assumed that Karṇa had been killed by Arjuna. He sought to know the details. Arjuna explained to him that up to that point he had not been successful in putting an end to Karṇa’s life. He averred that he would definitely do so.

On hearing Arjuna’s words, Yudhiṣṭhira felt greatly dissatisfied and gave way to wrath. He severely censured Arjuna, saying, ‘Unable to defeat Karṇa, and moved by fear, you have left Bhīma in command of the forces and come away here. Had you told me long ago that you would not fight Karṇa, I would have taken my decisions in a different manner. You promised that you would kill Karṇa but have not fulfilled your promise. Your chariot has been fashioned by Viśvakarma and on it, there is a flag with the symbol of Hanumān. You have the Gāṇḍīva bow with you. Kr̥ṣṇa Himself is your charioteer. Still, out of fear of Karṇa, you have run away and come here. Give away your Gāṇḍīva to Kr̥ṣṇa. Let Him do the needful by killing Karṇa. Alternatively, give your Gāṇḍīva to somebody else. You are unfit to have it. Shame on you! Shame on your prowess! Shame on your Gāṇḍīva!’ Yudhiṣṭhira’s rebuff stung Arjuna deeply, making him lose his temper. He started to pull out his sword. Seeing this, Kr̥ṣṇa asked him, ‘What is it that you are trying to do? There are no foes here. Why do you want to pull out your sword?’ Arjuna said, ‘I am going to kill Yudhiṣṭhira. I had secretly vowed that if anyone were to tell me, “Give away your Gāṇḍīva,” I would certainly slay him. Now, in fulfilment of my promise, I am going to murder Yudhiṣṭhira, for he has insulted me by asking me to give away the Gāṇḍīva to another and regarded me as unfit for wielding it.’

Kr̥ṣṇa said, ‘Shame on you, Arjuna! No one who knows the true nature of dharma would behave as you intend to. Upholding the truth is most exalted. However, the nature of truth as upheld by noble persons is not readily comprehensible. There are occasions when a person may tell a lie without incurring sin. For instance, one can utter a falsehood to save one’s life or to protect oneself from complete ruin or for the well-being of a holy one. By doing so, one does not become guilty of unrighteousness. There are also occasions when by bluntly speaking the truth one incurs not merit but sin.’

Kr̥ṣṇa then narrated the story of a man named Kauśika who was not very learned but who wished to be truthful. He was well-known as a speaker of the truth. One day, when he was seated, some people ran past him. A short while later, he saw a gang of dacoits. They approached him and asked him about the whereabouts of the persons they were chasing. Deeming utterance of truth to be priceless, Kauśika indicated where those persons had gone. The dacoits resumed their pursuit and finally massacred them. Kr̥ṣṇa then explained that by virtue of his factual speech, Kauśika not only did not acquire merit, he incurred sin. The Lord said that in the circumstances, Kauśika should have remained silent. Alternatively, if his silence itself would have been a hint to the effect that the persons had run in that direction, he could have misled the dacoits.

Kr̥ṣṇa clarified to Arjuna that Yudhiṣṭhira was in great pain and had been humiliated by Karṇa. Karṇa had attacked Yudhiṣṭhira even after the latter had stopped fighting. Thus, Yudhiṣṭhira was in a sad plight when he censured Arjuna. Further, by his sharp words, he sought to exhort Arjuna to bring about the death of Karṇa, for he knew that Arjuna had the requisite capacity. The Lord explained that since Yudhiṣṭhira was a noble person who deserved to be venerated by Arjuna and since his words could be satisfactorily justified, it would be thoroughly improper for Arjuna to slay him; such an act would be a gross violation of ahimsā, which is paramount.

Arjuna requested Kr̥ṣṇa to unequivocally specify what he should do; for, on the one hand, it was wrong for him to assassinate Yudhiṣṭhira, and on the other, he had to fulfil his vow. The Lord said, ‘When extreme opprobrium is inflicted on a great, highly-respected person, he dies, as it were. The Atharva-veda teaches that speaking disrespectfully to an august elder is tantamount to slaying him without extinguishing his life. Taking recourse to this scriptural pronouncement, fulfil your vow by insulting Yudhiṣṭhira. Then fall at his feet and seek forgiveness. Being pious and understanding, he will excuse you.’

As instructed by Kr̥ṣṇa, Arjuna began to reproach Yudhiṣṭhira rudely: ‘You have escaped to this place that is far removed from the battlefield and are fully dependent for your safety on the prowess of your well-wishers. What a contrast there is between you and the heroic and powerful Bhīma! Unlike him, you are quite unfit to find fault with me. You are addicted to gambling. Because of you, we lost our kingdom and had to face severe hardships,’ said Arjuna.

As he finished his tirade, he was overcome with remorse. Once again, he drew out his sword. Seemingly surprised, Kr̥ṣṇa asked him, ‘What is the problem now?’ Arjuna said that he intended to get rid of his body with which he had behaved in an unbecoming manner towards his elder brother who was truly worthy of being worshipped by him.

The Lord stopped him saying, ‘Think of how terrible it would have been if you had slain Yudhiṣṭhira. It was only to avoid that unrighteous act that you spoke rudely to him. Why, then, are you drowned in grief? You wish to commit suicide, but that is something that wise men never do. If you kill yourself, the sin you incur will be greater than the one you would have incurred by assassinating your brother; you will experience overwhelming agony in hell. Self-glorification is on par with suicide. Therefore, eulogize yourself and thereby commit the equivalent of the self-killing you intended.’ Arjuna then began to boast: ‘With the sole exception of Lord Śiva, the wielder of the bow Pināka, there is none who is a match for me in archery. I can single-handedly destroy the entire world with its inhabitants. I was the one who earlier defeated the kings ruling in the various directions and made them subservient to you. I have now destroyed half the Kaurava forces.’ Having been saved by the Lord from the sins of breaking his vow, slaying Yudhiṣṭhira and committing suicide, Arjuna paid obeisance to his brother and begged to be forgiven.

Having propitiated Yudhiṣṭhira, Arjuna readied himself to return to the battlefield. ‘My life is for doing what is pleasing to you,’ he asserted. In the meantime, Yudhiṣṭhira, who had earlier listened silently to Arjuna’s stinging rebuke, became dejected and felt that he was despicable. He said, ‘I am a vile sinner who has caused all of you so much trouble. I deserve to be killed. Bhīma is fit to rule and should become the monarch, not I who am impotent. I shall depart for the forest.’

Yudhiṣṭhira got up from his cot to leave but Kr̥ṣṇa fell at his feet and pleaded, ‘Arjuna could not falsify his vow to kill anyone who asked him to give the Gāṇḍīva to another. Hence, in keeping with my advice, he spoke disrespectfully to you and thereby fulfilled his promise. We seek refuge in you. Prostrating before you, I beseech you to forgive our transgressions. You desired the death of Karṇa. Today, he shall be slain, and the earth shall drink his blood.’

Thoroughly appeased, Yudhiṣṭhira lifted Kr̥ṣṇa up and said to Him, ‘Arjuna and I were deluded and would have drowned in the ocean of calamity and sorrow. You have saved us. Your wisdom is the boat that has enabled us to safely reach the shore.’

The following was narrated by Venkatappa Yajnanarayana (who became Śrī Jñānānanda-tīrtha after saṁnyāsa). ‘As I was fortunate enough to accompany His Holiness during His tour of Andhra Pradesh, I was able to witness numerous incidents that underscored the faith He had in the Vedas and the regard He had for vaidikas. Whenever He visited a village or a town in Andhra Pradesh, He posed the question, “Is there any agnihotrin (a maintainer of the ordained fires and performer of the agnihotra rite every day at dawn and dusk) living in this place?” If the answer was “Yes,” He expressed His wish to pay a visit to the house concerned. Whenever He visited any such house, He praised the agnihotrin for his faith in performing such rites and specially blessed him and his family. He also advised the people who accompanied Him to such places to be sincere in the performance of their nitya-karma.

‘During His camp at Tenali, He heard about a sincere agnihotrin and decided to visit his house. The person concerned was informed about His Holiness’s proposed visit and he was, naturally, delighted. When His Holiness came to his place, He asked him to take Him to the place of his agnihotra worship. The house he lived in as also the shelter where he performed agnihotra were in a dilapidated condition. Appreciating his strict adherence to his dharma despite his penury, His Holiness instructed the officials of the Math to construct a new house at the expense of the Math and offer it free of cost to the sincere agnihotrin. We were all moved at this compassionate gesture of His Holiness. Within months, the house was ready for the agnihotrin to occupy.’

His Holiness established Veda-pāṭhaśālās at numerous places. He started the Veda-poṣaka-sabhā for facilitating the teaching, study and propagation of the Vedas. Through it, He encouraged Vedic scholars by providing them financial assistance, honouring them and presenting them with cash awards. The Veda-poṣaka-sabhā has been doing this every year, without fail. It also conducts Veda examinations; students from pāṭhaśālas all over the country have been taking these highly valued examinations. The successful students receive certificates and cash awards. Vedic scholars are honoured on other occasions too.

His Holiness presided over the conduct of several Atirudra-mahāyāgas (in which the Vedic Śrīrudra-praśna is collectively chanted 14,641 times and offerings are made into the sacred fire), Sahasra-cāṇḍī-mahāyāgas (in which the Devī-māhātmya is chanted a thousand times and offerings are made into the sacred fire), koṭi-kuṅkuma-arcanas (in which arcana is done to śrī-cakras, chanting the names of the Divine Mother from the Lalithā-sahasranāma) and homas, such as the R̥gveda-saṁhitā-homa (in which the hymns of the R̥gveda-saṁhitā are chanted and offerings made into the sacred fire), Yajurveda-saṁhitā-homa and Sāmaveda-saṁhitā-homa. All these were conducted for the welfare of all.

Not only did He teach, induce and enthuse people to follow the path of dharma, but He Himself led the way with dedication. For instance, He was ever truthful, never thought, even in passing, of causing so much as an iota of unhappiness to anyone and never minded putting up with even inordinate strain to uplift others. In keeping with what is prescribed for a saṁnyāsin, He unfailingly performed aḥnika three times a day, each time preceded by a bath. He worshipped God with utmost devotion, feeling the presence of divinity in the idols worshipped. Many a time, when His Holiness stood next to the sanctum sanctorum of Goddess Śāradāmbā in Sringeri, His lips moved and it was discernible that He was conversing with Her. When He read, in the course of His worship of Lakṣmī-narasiṁha every year on Narasiṁha-jayantī, the chapter in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa about the Lord’s manifestation, He invariably became overcome with emotion. His Holiness’s performance of pūjā was, throughout, a feast for the eyes. He performed arcana in such an exquisite manner that the flowers that He gently threw up from His seat to the Candramaulīśvara-liṅga placed on the top step inside the pūjā-maṇḍapa often formed a pretty pattern. When He performed arcana with plenty of dark maroon roses one night in Chennai, the flowers offered formed a neat, thick garland around the liṅga. The gathering of devotees that witnessed this even forgot the normal decorum and started clapping spontaneously.

His Holiness has said that when you view Rāma as an ideal human being and contemplate on His life, your heart is stirred to follow steadily the path of dharma that He upheld unwaveringly, even amidst storms that would break the strongest. He accepted every trial – exile, separation and battle – with unshakable steadfastness. Not once did He falter. Not once did He deviate from righteousness. By contemplating His amazing life, you gain the courage to face your own challenges with dignity, strength and serenity; and to tread the path of dharma with dedication.

His Holiness has further said, ‘If you look upon Rāma as God – the All-compassionate Lord residing in every heart – your heart becomes filled with devotion. Offer your actions to Him, be deeply devoted to Him, meditate upon Him, surrender to Him; He will take you to enlightenment and liberation. Both visions are beneficial – seeing Him as the ideal human and as the Supreme Divine. Properly adopt and profit from both. Did not Lord Kr̥ṣṇa tell Devakī and Vasudeva at the time of His birth: “Think of Me as your son – and as the Supreme Brahman”?’

In this stotra, His Holiness is presented as both an exalted jīvanmukta-guru, perfect to look upon as an inspiring ideal, and as the Supreme Brahman and Īśvara. This dual vision is not merely fitting; it is a profound blessing. For through it, the seeker is uplifted in two ways: inspired to live nobly in this world, and drawn – through devotion and right understanding – beyond the world’s limitations, to the Highest Truth itself.