Eight Stanzas in Praise of the Guru

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Though your body be comely and ever remain in perfect health,

Though you name be unsullied, and mountain high your horded gold,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (1)

 

Even if fortune bless you with riches and a virtuous wife,

With children and their children, with friendship and the joys of home,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (2)

 

Though the lore of the Vedas take up its dwelling on your tongue,

Though you be learned in scripture, gifted in writing prose and verse,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (3)

 

Even if you be honoured at home and famed in foreign lands,

Given to pious deeds, and ever averse to wickedness,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (4)

 

Though you become, at last, the emperor of the universe,

Though you possess for servants the mightiest of the kings of earth,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (5)

 

Even if every nation resound with your beneficence,

Yet if the mind be not absorbed in the lotus feet of him

By grace of whom, alone, everything in this world is won,

What will it avail you? What, indeed, will it all avail? (6)

 

Though you pursue no pleasures, derive no joy from wealth or wife,

Reject the powers of Yoga, and scorn the fruits of sacrifice,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (7)

 

Even if you be ready to dwell in forest as at home,

No more attached to work, untrammeld by an ugly form,

Yet, if the mind be not absorbed in the guru's lotus feet,

What will it all avail you? What indeed will it all avail? (8)

 

Of novices and monks, or rulers and of wordly men,

That noble soul who ponders these verses in the guru's praise,

And to the guru's reaching applies his mind with constant zeal -

He will attain to Brahman, the treasure coveted by all.

 

(translated by Swami Nikhilananda in "Self Knowledge: an English translation

of Sankaracarya's Atma Bodha")