Portrait of Guru In a departure from his other works, the greatest preceptor; Adi Sankara, speaks in the voice of his own Self.  voice of his own Self. - Swami Iswarananda Giri

Adi Sankara is known through his famous commentaries or Bhashyas and so is referred to as Bhashyakara, the commentator. Yet, in the Bhashyas, he never speaks about himself and seldom uses the first person, except perhaps to say, "Now we are going to comment upon this."

Contrary to this, in the Maneesha Panchakam, it is all in the first person. "This is my considered opinion" is the strain that goes on repeating itself through the slokas. It is the burden of the whole song. Here the acharya gives his own considered opinion of what a guru is. Since the acharya is himself a world-teacher, we can take this to be his self-description. So, here we have not only a definition but a self-portrait of a guru.

In this poem, we have, instead of the philosophy of Sri Sankara, his own state of consciousness. Instead of the words of the guru we have the guru himself. This is the samvit approach. In it we do not deal with concepts, we enter into experience. We do not work out equations, we go for realization. He is the guru, for whom duality has vanished like a magician’s trick. That is what the world of duality is.

© "Tattvaloka" (September, 2003) published by Sri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Mahaswamigal Education Trust, Abhinav Centre, # 4 (Old # 19), Co-operative Colony, Chennai 600 018. Website: www.tattvaloka.com. Reprinted with permission.

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