The Gift Within- Unraveling Bhaja Govindam by Adi Shankara

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The words Bhaja Govindam, at first glance, suggest one more devotional work, in the line of the numerous stotras or pacans of worship that Shankara composed. One would think that Shankara wrote this in praise of Vishnu or Krishna.

Not very odd for Shankara to sing praises of Vishnu, though we know him as a staunch shaivite. Shankara had installed and consecrated temples for worship of Vishnu and also sung in his praise. But, Bhaja Govindam cannot be read as a mere stotra, a prayer or a devotional work that appeals to the heart. Its base remains scriptural, a sastra, one that analyses the truth of our lives, touching our intellect. The serious reader may even find each of its verses, every sutra, to be a technique for liberation.

If anything captures the essence of Vedanta briefly, it is Bhaja Govindam. In a mere thirty odd verses, Shankara tears apart the unreality of the temporal world we live in. He helps us glimpse the advaita philosophy that he founded. Scholars call this work of Adi Shankara as the Moha Mudgara, or the destroyer of illusion, because each of its verses shatters the illusion of what we perceive to be the reality of the world around us.

Legend has it that Shankara composed these verses in Varanasi. As he walked one day with his disciples along the banks of the river Ganges, he came across an elderly scholar trying to memorise the rules of Sanskrit Shankara rebuked him for wasting his life in his twilight grammar. Years, calling him a fool. He advised him to focus on the name of the Divine instead.

**Contents and Sample Pages**