Bhaja Govindam

Meaning:Worship Govinda, worship Govinda, worship Govinda, O foolish mind! When the appointed time of death draws near, the rules of grammar (Dukrn-karane) will not save you at all.

Meaning:O fool, give up the thirst for amassing wealth; cultivate right thought in your mind, free of craving. With whatever you obtain through your own honest deeds, content your mind.

Meaning:Seeing a woman's body, do not fall prey to delusion and infatuation; reflect again and again that this is but a modification of flesh and fat.

Meaning:Life is as fleeting as a drop of water trembling on a lotus-leaf. Know that this whole world is consumed by disease, pride and grief.

Meaning:As long as you can earn wealth, so long is your family attached to you; afterwards, when the body grows frail, no one at home even asks after you.

Meaning:As long as breath dwells in the body, those at home ask after your welfare; once the breath departs and the body falls, even your wife dreads that very corpse.

Meaning:The child is absorbed in play, the youth in his beloved, the old man in worry — but no one, alas, is absorbed in the Supreme Brahman.

Meaning:Who is your wife? Who is your son? Utterly strange is this samsara. Whose are you? Whence have you come? O brother, ponder that truth here.

Meaning:From the company of the good comes non-attachment; from non-attachment, freedom from delusion; from that, the changeless Truth; and from the changeless Truth, liberation-in-life.

Meaning:When youth is gone, where is lust? When the water dries, where is the lake? When wealth is lost, where is the family? When the Truth is known, where is samsara?

Meaning:Take no pride in wealth, people or youth; Time snatches them all away in an instant. Renouncing this whole illusory world, know and enter the state of Brahman.

Meaning:Day and night, dusk and dawn, winter and spring come round again and again; Time sports on, life ebbs away — yet the gale of desire never lets go.

Meaning:Why this anxiety over wife and wealth, O frenzied one? Have you no one to guide you? In all three worlds, the company of the good alone is the boat to cross the ocean of existence.

Meaning:This complete teaching, told in twelve verses (the Dvadasha-Manjarika), was given to the grammarian by the venerable, knowledge-perfected feet of Bhagavan Shankara.

Meaning:One with matted locks, one shaven, one with plucked hair, one decked in ochre robes — the fool, though seeing, does not see; these many guises are donned merely for the belly.

Meaning:The body worn out, the head grey, the mouth toothless; the old man walks leaning on a staff — yet even then he does not let go the lump of desire.

Meaning:Fire in front, the sun at his back; at night crouched with knees to chin; alms in his palm, dwelling at the foot of a tree — yet the noose of desire does not loosen.

Meaning:One may journey to Gangasagar, keep vows or give in charity — yet, devoid of knowledge, by all these creeds one does not gain liberation even in a hundred births.

Meaning:Dwelling in a temple, the bare earth for a bed, a deerskin for clothing — renouncing all possession and enjoyment: whose dispassion does not bring happiness?

Meaning:Engaged in yoga or in enjoyment, in company or in solitude — he whose mind delights in Brahman, he rejoices, he rejoices, he truly rejoices.

Meaning:He who has studied even a little of the Bhagavad Gita, sipped a drop of Ganga's water, and worshipped Murari even once — with him Yama (death) holds no argument.

Meaning:Birth again, death again, again to lie in a mother's womb — this samsara is so hard to cross. O Murari, save me by your boundless grace!

Meaning:Clad in a quilt patched from rags of the street, walking a path beyond merit and demerit, the yogi with mind absorbed in yoga sports like a child or a madman.

Meaning:Who are you? Who am I? Whence have I come? Who is my mother, who my father? Thus reflect, and seeing this whole world as essenceless, like a dream, give it up.

Meaning:In you, in me and everywhere there is but the one Vishnu. In vain, impatient, you grow angry with me. If you would soon attain Vishnu-hood, be even-minded toward all.

Meaning:Make no effort to quarrel with or befriend enemy, friend, son or kinsman. Seeing the Self in all, give up everywhere the ignorance of difference.

Meaning:Renouncing desire, anger, greed and delusion, one sees the Self as 'I am That (So'ham).' Fools devoid of Self-knowledge are tormented, trapped in hells.

Meaning:The Gita and the thousand Names are to be sung; the form of the Lord is ever to be meditated upon; the mind is to be led into the company of the good; and wealth is to be given to the needy.

Meaning:Pleasure is enjoyed readily — but afterwards, alas, disease afflicts the body. Though death is the end of all in this world, still one does not give up sinful conduct.

Meaning:Reflect ever that wealth is calamitous; in truth there is not a particle of happiness in it. The wealthy dread even their own sons — such is the way of things everywhere.

Meaning:Breath-control, withdrawal of the senses, discrimination between the eternal and the transient, and the practice of samadhi joined with japa — perform these with great care and heedfulness.

Meaning:Devoted wholly to the lotus-feet of the Guru, become quickly freed from samsara. Thus, through discipline of the senses and mind, you shall behold the Deity dwelling in your own heart.

Meaning:A certain dull-witted grammarian, engrossed in the study of grammatical rules, was set right and his understanding purified by the disciples of the venerable Bhagavan Shankara.

Meaning:Worship Govinda, worship Govinda, worship Govinda, O foolish mind! For crossing the ocean of existence, we see no means other than the remembrance of the Lord's Name.