Sri Guru Gita
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About this ebook
Shanti Mandir presents a new translation of the classic Indian scripture Sri Guru Gita (Song of the Guru), with Devanagari, transliteration, translation, and a glossary included for each of the 182 verses. This edition features introductory comments by Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda.
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Sri Guru Gita - Swami Nityananda
Copyright © 2020 Shanti Mandir
ISBN 978-1-7321420-4-6
ISBN 978-1-7321420-8-4 (e-book)
Shanti Mandir
51 Muktananda Marg
Walden, NY 12586, U.S.A.
Tel: +1 (845) 778–1008
www.shantimandir.com
With this translation of Śrī Guru Gītā,
we seek to preserve the wisdom and interpretation of
Ācārya Shyamsundar Jha from Shanti Mandir Magod.
Mahāmandaleshwar Swami Nityānanda
Baba Muktānanda taught us to chant Śrī Guru Gītā every morning. He sat facing us, and we sat men on one side, women on the other. We held our book in one hand, the other hand on our knee in what is known as abhaya mudrā, the lion posture. We were supposed to follow the verses as we chanted. Baba did many things during the chant. He’d yell at somebody for sleeping. He’d throw something at somebody for doing this or that. He’d yell at us for being late to the chant. In the midst of all this chaos, we had to stay focused on our chanting.
When one is little—and of course even as an adult—the tendency is to look, observe, and wonder, Who’s he yelling at? Who’s getting the fire?
But as soon as we looked away from our book, we’d be the next target: Who told you to look? Why are you looking? Look at your book!
Truly, what this taught us was to ignore Baba and his play and to remain focused on what we were doing. This is how he taught us to become established within ourselves.
We chant the Guru Gītā to bring ourselves to the experience of limitlessness. We don’t chant it to praise any individual being or person, or to please the deity or the divine principle to which we sing. That divine principle is Consciousness, and it dwells in its own perfection. We chant so we who find ourselves in a state of ignorance can experience that principle. Through practice, we can perfect this understanding, this awareness. Through practice, we can make everything in life go well, go smoothly.
Many scholars can quote from the great philosophies, but one thing is lacking: their own direct experience of that which they have studied. Baba emphasized over and over that practice is what will lead us to the experience of divinity. Sometimes the mind may say, Not today,
but I think it is very important to perform your practice each and every day.
To this day, one of the things we wake up to is our Guru singing the Guru Gītā. That way, our mind wakes up with the thought of God, with the feeling of the spiritual. It doesn’t instantly become filled with whatever is happening in the outer world. The peaceful practice of chanting focuses the mind on God, setting the atmosphere for our day.
A few variations of the Guru Gītā exist—some with fewer and some with more verses. Different people have adapted the text over time. Similarly, on our personal path of evolution, our understanding grows, and so we see the same verse differently today than we did ten or twenty years ago. And we will see it differently again ten years from now.
If chanting is new for you, just enjoy the feeling. As time goes on, start to look at the words and discover their meaning. In this volume, you can study how the words are broken up and what each Sanskrit word means. Try to see how the verses apply in your daily life, what their meaning is for you.
To understand the Guru Gītā, you must first understand what the Guru is. If you don’t understand what the Guru is, you can’t understand his song, which expresses your relationship with the Guru. It is your great fortune that you have a relationship with the Guru—that is, with the Guru principle. The Guru principle is not something that exists outside you. It is something you carry within you at all times. Therefore, understand and realize this relationship.
The Guru Gītā is not about anyone else but your own Self. There is no Guru who is other. There is no Śiva who is other. There is no Pārvatī who is other. It is all you—your Self. Śiva is within you. The Goddess, as Pārvatī, is within you. The conversation between Śiva and Pārvatī is really occurring between the Lord within you and that divine energy within you, the Guru within you.
~ Mahāmandaleshwar Swami Nityānanda
TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
vyañjana (consonants)
kaṇṭhya (gutturals)
pronounced from the throat
tālavya (palatals)
pronounced with the middle of the tongue against the palate
TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
vyañjana (consonants) (continued)
mūrdhanya (cerebrals)
pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth
dantya (dentals)
pronounced with the tongue against the teeth
oṣṭhya (labials)
pronounced with the lips
antaḥstha (semivowels)
ūṣma (sibilants)
mahāprāṇa (aspirate)
special conjuct consonants
avagraha
LIST OF ABBREVATIONS
Note. For students’ ease in using this word-by-word translation to learn about the Guru Gītā, words are listed in the glossary in their altered forms (due to sandhi or Sanskrit combination rules) rather than their original forms.
oṁ asya śrīgurugītā-stotra-mantrasya
bhagavān sadāśiva ṛṣiḥ.
nānāvidhāni chandāṁsi
śrīguru-paramātmā devatā.
haṁ bījaṁ. saḥ śaktiḥ. kroṁ kīlakam.
śrīguru-prasāda-siddhyarthe jape viniyogaḥ.
The eternal Lord Śiva is the sage of the mantras in this hymn, the Guru Gītā. It has various types of meters and its deity is the Guru, the supreme Self. Haṁ is its seed mantra. Saḥ is its power. Kroṁ is its shield (which protects against negative forces). This practice of mantra repetition is done for the sake of obtaining the Guru’s grace.
Note. The term śrī has multiple meanings, including, beauty, radiance, abundance, auspiciousness. It also can be used to indicate reverence for a deity (śrīnātha), for the Guru (śrīguru), or for a scripture (śrīgurugītā). In such cases, the word has no direct equivalent in English; thus, it is translated here simply as the
to reflect acceptable common usage.
oṁ: Oṁ, the primordial sound
asya (n. gen. sg.): of this
śrīgurugītā (in comp. śrī+guru+gītā): the Guru Gītā
stotra (in comp.): hymn
mantrasya (m. gen. sg. mantra): of the mantra
bhagavān (m. nom. sg. bhagavat): Lord
sadāśiva