________________
119
The questions which you raised today are excellent, fit to be in the mouth of all those who are well-versed in the Sastras : aphoristic, pregnant with meaning, and they are such that the answers of them are fit to be known by all seekers after liberation.
When the student asked some questions* the teacher, instead of replying him directly and immediately, indulged in a long and exhaustive discourse upon the futility of mere discussions if they were not to be accompanied by an allout enthusiastic self-effort at raising oneself from one's own known inner deformities. This is no idle digression on the part of the teacher, but it expresses his burning concern that his disciple should not misunderstand and misuse the freedom given to him to ask questions, and get his doubts cleared. There are always in the society a set of wise-looking foolish disciples who misuse the freedom given to them, and prostitute their privilege of discussing with their teacher.
They, poor folk, have fallen in love with their own questions that they repeat them with a passion almost amounting to sheer lunacy !! In order that the student may not fall into this intellectual ditch and bury his own selfdevelopment, Sankara, by ten explicit stanzas, has warned the world of seekers. After concluding the digressions, he now comes to answer pointedly all the seven questions raised by the disciple.
In the stanza now under discussion, the master is complimenting the student at the intelligence of the questions and the beauty of precision that graces every form in which the questions had been framed. The glories that are enumerated here by the Guru are the perfections that should be when a chiseled thought is packed in any language and offered at the feet of True Wisdom. When a true disciple reaches his master's feet, he feels choked with admiration, reverence, devotion and love for the master, that he dares not disturb the divine atmosphere of tranquillity around the teacher with his thoughtless blabberings and empty talks.
* Ibid stanza 49—When the disciple asked
upon his burning doubts.
seven
short, pithy questions
