Eight Stanzas in Praise of the Guru by Adi Sankara

[Guest guest]

Eight Stanzas in Praise of the Guru - by Adi Sankara

 

 

 

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 teaching applies his mind with constant zeal -

 

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

 

 

 

(translated by Swami Nikhilananda)

[Guest guest]

Peter,

 

Reading your posts of these stanzas, which you also posted about a year

ago on our dedicated Ramana-forum (http://acalayoga.suddenlaunch3.com

<http://acalayoga.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi> ), reminds me of a

cassette tape purchased in the Ashram book-depot in 1985.

 

As recordings go it would have been classed as 'Heath-Robinson': there

was the clattering of various implements somewhere in the background - a

child whining for something-or-other and various noises. And yet

somehow, the words came to haunt in a most enchanting way.

 

What made it so wonderful for me was the method of presentation: the

singer chanted a verse in English, and then after some intermediate

material, he went on to chant it in the Sanskrit tongue also, so that

after a few hearings the Sanskrit drone set itself up automatically in

the mind.

 

That cassette has long been lost with the passage of the years, and from

time to time I wonder all over again who the singer was, and whether the

cassette is still available.

 

I wonder if anybody knows..? ....

 

Thank for for bringing this to mind, and for setting up the drone again.

 

anbudan

 

John

 

Siva...Siva

RamanaMaharshi, "Peter" <not_2 wrote:

>

>

> Eight Stanzas in Praise of the Guru - by Adi Sankara

>

>

>

> 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)

..............................