“Shri Manache Shlok” — Shloka/Verse 141 — a Dialogue With Our Mind
By: Shashi Kulkarni
Tags: Lifestyle, Ego, Life, Mindset, Spirituality

Introduction

Samarth Ramdas Swami teaches us how our mind is our friend, our enemy, and how it can be our Guru.

Note that this is focused on our own internal dialogue, with ourselves, with our mind, so wherever there are references of God, it will still apply to every human being, irrespective of religions and beliefs about God. Just replace the name of God with the one from your own religion, and if you don’t believe in one, talk with your mind.

Marathi Language Phonetics Transliteration

Refer to my article on the Marathi language phonetics transliteration — which is being used in these shloka explanation articles.

Shlok/ Verse # 141 from “Shri Manache Shlok”

Shloka in Marathi (Verse in the Marathi language)

म्हणे दास सायास त्याचे करावे।

जनीं जाणता पाय त्याचे धरावे॥

गुरू अंजनेवीण तें आकळेना।

जुने ठेवणे मीपणे ते कळेना॥१४१॥

Shloka/verse in English

Mhaṇe dāsa sāyāsa tyāce karāve

Janī jāṇatā pāya tyāce dharāve

Gurū aṅjanevīṇa te ākaḷenā

June ṭhevaṇe mīpaṇe te kaḷeṇā — 141

Meaning

Samarth Ramdas Swami says that we should offer our service to the wise person who knows the truth. We should bow down at their feet.

With our ego blinding us and preventing us from understanding the age old wisdom and the supreme reality, only a Guru can restore our sight — 141

Keywords and their meanings

म्हणे — Mhaṇe— says; दास —dāsa — servant (Ramdas); सायास —sāyāsa — service; त्याचे —tyāce — his; करावे — karāve— should do

जनीं — Janī— amongst the people; जाणता —jāṇatā — wise; पाय — pāya— feet; त्याचे — tyāce— his; धरावे — dharāve— hold (revere)

गुरू — Gurū— teacher; अंजनेवीण — aṅjanevīṇa— without collyrium; ते — te— that; आकळेना —ākaḷenā — does not understand

जुने —June — ancient; ठेवणे — ṭhevaṇe— wealth (eternal truth); मीपणे — mīpaṇe— due to egoism; कळेना — kaḷeṇā— does not understand

निरूपण — Explanation or conceptualization

In the last many shlokas, Samarth Ramdas Swami explained how our ego prevents us from gaining the knowledge about the supreme reality.

Now in this shloka, he is telling us the way to address that problem.

In this age of information overload, it seems that a lot of people are out there to provide their advice. It has become really hard to figure out what is the true information and what is not.

We cannot just believe in every information and advice we come across to solve our quest.

We need to find the real wise person/s, the saints, and make sure that they are the authority figure in their field. Of course, here we are talking about the spiritual aspects of life and understanding the eternal truth — the brahman — ब्रह्मन्.

Many think that they can get the knowledge on their own as there is a lot of information available online.

Reality is that, right from our childhood, we gathered every sort of knowledge from our parents, teachers, mentors, guides and professors. Then we put that into practice and gained the experience from our failures, kept improving and moving forwards.

Even the best of the best players like Sachin Tendulkar and Roger Federer had their coaches guiding them to continuously improve.

Some might think that the knowledge can be gained from reading the scriptures and the books. We need to remember that those scriptures and books were written by the great sages and knowledgeable, talented people. Hence those authors become our Gurus.

Other important point to note is that age is not a factor when it comes to who we should learn from. If we only believe that the older people have the capability to become a Guru, then we just need to remember that Saint Dnyaneshwara who wrote the Dnyaneshwari — explaining the Bhagavad Gita — was only 21 years young when he took his Samadhi; Swami Vivekananda lived only for 39 years, and that he was only 30 years young when he gave his famous speeches during the Parliament of the World’s religions in Chicago.

These days, we can find our Guru’s in the books many saints have written, in the YouTube videos where many Swamis explain the concepts from the scriptures, in various articles, as well as attend the events which they organize, including the video conferencing and live events.

An hour with the mentor is vastly more useful than wasting time in programs like Coffee with Karan or similar ones.

Once we identify the right Guru, then we should get their blessings and the knowledge from them.

In the Indian culture, the tradition is to bow down to the feet of the Guru’s (who are wise and knowledgeable) and also elderly people (who have more life experience than us), and get their blessings.

One of the reason for bowing down, is with that we are forced to leave our ego aside, and acknowledge that there are talented, wise and experienced people from whom we need to get as much knowledge as we can. If we keep on thinking that we are the best, nobody knows better than us, then we will not be able to improve and increase our knowledge.

There is a reason God gave us two eyes, two ears, two hands, two legs, but only one mouth. If we have to learn, then we need to do less talking and more listening, reading, grasping and put them into actions.

Have you ever been to the house of mirrors at a funfair or in an amusement park? It is also called हंसी घर — hansi ghar — meaning the house of laughs, where we try to get out of the maze by finding the correct route. Apart from having a maze of mirrors, there are also mirrors of different curves, convex, or concave in the glass, to give the us very unusual and confusing reflections of ourselves, mostly humorous but sometimes frightening too.

Our ego does exactly that.

Anywhere we see, we see ourselves everywhere, and think that the world is full of just ourselves, nobody else and that nobody else knows better. But the ego is providing us distorted images of ourselves.

Only a wise Guru will be able to help us get out of the maze and provide direction to get out of it.

Only a Guru will be able to give our blinded eyes a remedy like अंजन — Aṅjana — collyrium, which will cleanse our eyes — meaning cleanse our thought process and minds, and then help us go on the right path in order to understand the reality of the eternal truth.