21/04/2026
ॐ श्रीवल्लभमहागणपति-शारदाम्बा-शङ्कराचार्यसद्गुरुभ्यो नमः
Today is Vaishaka-Shuklapaksha-Panchami which is celebrated as Shankara Jayanti. On this auspicious day we did special puja for Adi Shankaracharya in our temple and prayed for the blessings of Guru for all people in today's situtaion.
On this auspicious day we are also sharing what our Pujya Swami Dayananda ji has said about Shankara and his Jayanti.
Śankara as Īśvara
To talk on Śankara is to unfold what Īśvara, the Lord, is. We do not look upon Śankara as an individual. In fact we do not look upon any teacher as an individual. When he is not a person, there cannot be jayanti, birthday celebration either! We do not have Īśvara Jayanti. We do have Rāma Jayanti or, Rāma Navami and Krishna Jayanti or, Gokulāstami.
Even though Īśvara is in the form of Rāma and Krishna, the particular form of Rāma or Krishna has a history. These forms were born, as avatāras, at a given time and disappeared at a given time. Still they can be worshipped as Īśvara. Every form, no doubt, is Īśvara’s form. But Īśvara in the form of Rāma is someone with whom I can relate and at whose feet I can place a flower. The form can become an altar where I can offer worship etc. Krishna form and Rāma form are available for worship, for relating to as the Lord. That is why we celebrate Rāma Navami, and Krishna Astami.
In the Bhagavat Gītā, when Krishna uses the first person singular, it is only in the sense of his being as Īśvara. Īśvara who is limitless, vastu, taking this form, upādhī, becomes the avatāras. Similarly, the birth of Śankara is possible only from the standpoint of the upādhī. From the upādhī standpoint alone a jayanti is possible.
A guru is always looked upon as the very thing that he teaches. That is the difference between what Śankara taught and what any other teacher would teach. If a teacher teaches that Īśvara is Īśvara, jagat is jagat and, you are what you are, what will you feel after listening to such a teacher? Before you went to the teacher you knew this very well. This was your original feeling and then you went to this teacher and exposed yourself to the Upanishads. Afterwards, you go back with the same original feeling! You will definitely conclude that the teacher cannot be the vastu since he teaches that the vastu is different from you and even himself.
If the teacher says that you are the vastu, then the teacher is the vastu and you are also the same vastu. If the teacher is the vastu and he teaches you the same vastu, then there is only one vastu that is there about which he talks. Therefore he can be looked upon as the very vastu itself and that is why we say that guru in the form of vastu alone is Brahmā, that alone is Viśnu and that alone is Maheśvara. The Trinity is nothing but the same vastu alone. Not only the Trinity is the vastu; you are also the same vastu. So, one who teaches this is not separate from the vastu. You have an upādhī here talking about a vastu which is not, in any way, limited by the upādhī. The upādhī is limited by time, limited by place, limited by its own accomplishments. But at the same time the upādhī does not limit the vastu. An individual, who has understood this, is as good as Śankara.
Śankara as Upādhī Viśesha
There were many enlightened people in the world besides Vyāsa, who compiled all the Vedās and Brahma Sūtras and Śankara, who made the knowledge available to the common people. Why then, do we worship only Vyāsa and Śankara and not others? If some other teacher is talking about the same thing when he says “You are not separate from the vastu”, what is so special about Vyāsa and Śankara?
There are certain kings among the many who are remembered. There were a number of teachers. Some of them are remembered, not others. It is not because only they taught the vastu. There were many people who taught the vastu. But, a person is remembered because historically there was a significant contribution on part of that person which happens to be a blessing for the future generations. Therefore, that person becomes a very special person. This is upādhī viśesha.
Upādhī viśesha can also mean that a particular person has got some special features or, that person has a capacity that is miraculous. Generally, anyone having miraculous powers is praised. It is not considered as anything great, really. Hindu tradition does not have any value for miracles. If you look at the tradition you will find that all the asurās had miracles and they all performed a lot of tricks. We have been reading Mahābhārata for sometime now and we find that every asurā had miracles. In Rāmāyana, Mārica came in the form of a deer. Thus, one can assume another form.
Some individuals can be carried away by miracles but in the Hindu tradition, these types of miracles have no real meaning. Hindus are not miracle-mongers because everybody had miracles. It was very common. Every asurā had it. All of them were Niśācarās, moving in the night and Khecarās, moving in the sky. This is also called upādhī viśesha. We do not have anything to do with them. All the asurās were meant to be destroyed. If a miracle man has to be worshipped then asurās cannot be destroyed!
People of mediocre knowledge think of a great man only as a miracle man. Some of them will extol the story of Śankara who composed the Kanakadhārā Strotram and brought gold coins for the poor woman who gave him a berry when he went to her house for alms. But, when we praise Śankara, definitely this miracle aspect has nothing to do with it. There is a simple verse we generally repeat whenever we think of Śankara. This verse exactly tells how Śankara is upādhī viśesha.
श्रुतिस्मृतिपुराणानां आलयं करुणालयं |
नमामि भगवद्पादं शङ्करं लोकशङ्करं ||
śrutismrtipurānānām ālayam karunālayam
namāmi bhagavatpādam śankaram lokasankaram
I bow at the feet of the Lord in the form of Śankara, who is the blessing for the humanity, who is the abode of all the Vedās, the smrtis and the purānās, and, who is the abode of compassion.
In this verse, there is a statement of fact: Śankara is ‘śrutismrtipurānānām ālayam’. A shrine or a temple is called ālaya. A place where things abide is ālaya. Any place where a sacred thing is kept is an ālaya. Books are sacred so a library is called pustakālaya. If it is a treasure, that also can be considered an ālaya. Śankara was an ālaya – a pustakālaya. And, what are the books? ‘Śrutismrtipurānānām’. Śruti means all the Vedās – karmakānda as well as the last portion of the Vedās, known as Vedānta. The entire thing is called śruti. All the four Vedās can be called śruti. Smrti can be taken as works born of the mind. Śruti has come down to us through the rsis. There is no authorship for śruti whereas, smrti has got authorship. They are a spin off from the śruti statements, written by people who had status similar to what the rsis enjoyed; people like Parāśara, Āpastambha, Bodhāyana, etc. They knew about rituals, values, dharmas etc. All the Dharma Śāstras come under smrti. Even Itīhāsā is called smrti. It is half history and half poetry; not like modern history which is half history and half fiction! Purānā is a bigger canvas. Its topic is entirely different. There, Bhagavān’s avatāra is discussed. There are thus 18 purānās. All of them abide in the shrine that is Śankara. That means the upādhī in which all the subject matter of śruti, smrti and purānā are enshrined, is called ‘śrutismrtipurānānām ālayam’.
Then again, suppose there is a person in whom all this knowledge is enshrined, who is an embodiment of this knowledge and, that man of knowledge is walking up and down this country. And, at the same time he is a Maunibābā, a person committed to keeping silent. Then what will you get? There will be nothing for us and there will be no Śankara Jayanti. Of course, definitely some devotees will be there because anybody who does not talk in India is considered to be great! Thus non-talking persons, the Maunibābās are always respected in our country. If Śankara was a Maunibābā, he might have had a few devotees and one or two generations might have worshipped him.
But definitely we won’t be celebrating his jayanti. How do we know him? Fortunately, he was a karunālayam. He was not only an ālaya of this knowledge but there was karunā, compassion – flowing compassion, not a stagnant compassion but, a dynamic compassion. Compassion can be just stagnant in your own heart, it has no expression outside. But his was a dynamic compassion, always flowing. And this compassion made Śankara what he was. We celebrate his jayanti because of his compassion alone.
Not only did Śankara teach his disciples who were around, he also made sure that the teaching came down to posterity through his writings. In those days writing was not an easy job. There were no laptops; there were no computers; there were no typewriters, or even paper and pens. He had to write on palm leaf and every copy had to be handwritten. All the books were on palm leaves and there are hundreds and hundreds of such manuscripts in India today in spite of so many of them having burnt or lost. Still they are there. They are there in somebody’s house. People loved to enshrine this knowledge in their own homes. I do not think there is any culture other than Vedic culture that gives so much value for learning – whether it is scriptural or otherwise. He wrote not just a small little book but he wrote extensive commentaries, bhāsyās on Chāndogya, Brhadāranyaka, Īśa, Kena, Katha, Praśna, Mundaka, Māndukya, Taittirīya and Aitareya. All these bhāsyās were written to include pūrvapakśās, objections and arguments, and then unfolding of siddhānta, the main purport.
When writing bhāsyās, you have to give the anvayā, comprehensive meaning. Afterwards you should defend against any other possible meaning or any other meaning given by somebody. If one head can figure out in one way, there will always be another head to think in some other way. Therefore it has to be dealt with over a wide canvas. When you do not know your canvas, you always reserve. Many teachers do this. Then, there are people who are committed to certain schools of thought. These are different types of errors people make. There cannot be a different school of thought in arithmetic because one plus one is two. Where is the question of a school of thought in understanding Īśvara? To avoid any incompleteness, Śankara has discussed different topics, different contemporary ideas. When you are dealing with facts about the reality, it has got to be dealt with exactly as it is. There cannot be any ‘school of thought’. It is a silly thing to say there are schools of thought.
People say that there can be different points of view. There can be points of view only if the view is complete. When there is no vision, there can be no point of view. We give freedom to the people to hold their ideas. There is nothing wrong in that. But, there is no way of reconciling between what is right and wrong. What is right is right. There is nothing to reconcile. A wrong thing has to be said as wrong and understood as such. The other person has the freedom to hold a wrong idea. That is understandable. But you cannot accept it just because some nice man has got some wrong idea. You cannot have a charismatic approach in dealing with the reality.
Writing all this on palm leaves is not easy. How much karunā Śankara must have had to write. Compassion for spiritual up lifting of the mankind made him write all these books and finally, the Brahmasūtra Bhāùya. It is not an ordinary thing. This is the proof of what he has done, proof of his compassion. Therefore, he is called śrutismrtipurānānām ālayam karunālayam. Unto him I salute, who is considered Śankara, whose name is Śankara. He is śam karoti iti Śankara. He does mangalam, benevolence, the grand finale for the jīvā. Jīvā’s history has to end. When will it end? It is always a loose sheet. It is never bound because there is always a next birth. It is endless. It is always an unbound book. You put an end to this history and become history. One who brings about that mangalam is Bhagavadpāda Śankara, who is likened to Bhagavān. Unto him our namaskāra.
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