Saturday, April 18, 2009

Maneesha Panchakam - Part 1 out of 8

మనీషా పంచకమ్

Dear Friends and Relatives,

It is a very long time since I last met you on this blog of mine. My son's wedding function, pressure of work and many other excuses kept me away in communicating with you on this platform, though I really enjoy doing this. Many well wishers of mine have given me gentle reminders to restart the posts on this blog and urged me to do this as soon as possible.

Now, we will have every week one post as usual, coming to you. I am starting afresh with a master piece from Jagad guru Sri Adi Sankaracharya. It is called 'Maneesha Panchakam'. After a brief introduction, we will go slokam by slokam to try and assimilate the meaning of each. If all of us follow the central meaning of this great preaching, the whole world will become a much better place to live than what it is today.

Maneesha Panchakam has total 10 slokaas - 5 slokaas to build up the scenario and then five more important slokaas of instruction on the fivefold understanding of our inner sentient energy or chaitanya. These last five are succinct, instructive verses by Lord Sankara himself. I shall give here the first slokam (the scenario part) and explain it using word to word meaning of the Sanskrit words interpreted in English. This will be followed by the substance in English text. However, a detailed narration of these can be seen as a short video provided at the end of this post.

The Slokam
సత్యాచార్యస్య గమనే కదాచిన్ ముక్తి దాయకమ్,
కాశీ క్షేత్రమ్ ప్రతి సహ గౌర్యా మార్గే తు శంకరమ్

Satyaachaary asya gamanae kadaachin mukti daayakam,
Kaasee kshaetram prati saha gouryaa maargae tu Sankaram,

सत्याचार्यस्य गमने कदाचिन् मुक्ति दायकम्,

काशी क्षेत्रम् प्रति सह गौर्या मार्गे तु शंकरम्,

Interpretation
Asya = In that
Mukti daayakam = Sacred and fulfilling
Kaasee Kshaetram = pious city of Varanasi,
Kadaachin = once upon a time
Satyaacharya = a sacred & learned man
Gamane = was on a stroll.
Prati = opposite to (the man)
Maargae = on that very street
Saha Gourya = along with Gouri devi
Sankaram = Lord Sankara (had come)
tu = but (continued in next slokam)

Purport or Substance

Once, a great godly man is on a stroll in the famous, heavenly place – the Varanaasi. During his walk after his ritualistic, sacred and purified bath he came juxtaposed to two people – a man and his consort walking opposite to him almost bumping into his way. The strange couple were none other than The LORD SIVA and PARVATHI. But .... (continued in next verse)

I urge all of you to try and see the video as it is a lucid audio visual presentation of the topic, in which you will be able to view and listen by clicking the 'play' button of the media player given below. It will take a few minutes (depending on the speed of your Internet connection) for the video stream to be buffered. Please click 'play' and after a few seconds click 'pause'. Once it is completely buffered, you can play it as you like. Please give your feedback. Those of you, who are more computer savvy, can even save this video on your computer hard drive by using special software. Pl write to me in case you need this.

Bye till next week,

With Regards

Dr Sarma

2 comments:

CNNR said...

The word by word explanation given by the erudite commentator is great. He has done a laudable work in publication of one of the greatest works of Lord Sankara on YouTube.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much . Totally appreciate your explanations with sanskrit break up .