Adi Shankara Quotes and Sayings

1. When the senses are favourable it is happy, and when they are not it is unhappy. So happiness and suffering are its attributes, and not those of the ever blissful self.
    
2. It is the nature of great souls to act spontaneously for the relief of the distress of others, just as the moon here of itself protects the earth parched by the heat of the fierce rays of the sun.
    
3. An illness is not cured just by pronouncing the name of the medicine without drinking it, and you will not be liberated by just pronouncing the word God without direct experience.
    
4. A mind directed towards the senses dwells with imagination on their qualities. From imagining finally comes desire, and from desire comes the way a man directs his activity.
    
5. Undergoing the pangs of birth again and again, passing through the throes of death again and again, lying in the mother's womb over and over again, this process of samsara is hard to cross over. Save me from it, Oh merciful Lord !
    
6. Oh, Fool! give up your insatiable desire for earthly possessions; be sensible and develop serenity and contentment. Be satisfied and happy with whatever you may earn by the sweat of your brow and whatever has destiny marked for your lot.
    
7. The company of the good weans one away from false atttachments; when attachment is lost, delusion ends; when delusion ends, the mind becomes unwavering and steady. An unwavering and steady mind is merited for Jeevan Mukti ( liberation even in this life).
    
8. As long as you are fit to make an earning, so long will your kith and kin be solicitous about you, but no sooner your limbs become infirm and your earnings cease, none will care for you, not even your own home-folk.
    
9. The guru should be one who knows the scriptures, is blameless and a supreme knower of God. He should be at peace in God, tranquil as a fire that has run out of fuel. He should be a boundless ocean of compassion and the friend of those who seek his protection.
    
10. Clad in stray rags, treading the path beyond good and evil, caring for neither earning merit by taking to good deeds nor stooping to do any evil, and lost in meditation the yogi revels in the Supreme always, lost to all outward norms and decorum -- his behaviour may look prankish like that of a child or may be even queer like that of a lunatic.
     
11. Homeless he is; his back is bent down with age. His body has lost its heat and he has to warm himself before a fire or in the sun. Tree is his only shelter; he lives by begging and by the crumbs thrown into his palms by others; in the night he sleeps by holding his chin on his knee ( because the back is bent and he cannot stretch himself and lie down). Yet, he does not let and allow the grip of desires on him loosen even a bit.