28 Jul 2025
[Prof. JSR Prasad asked:- Sashtanga namaskaram Swami, Shankara fell on the feet of the untouchable and praised Him as the preacher. What is the lesson we have to learn from this situation?]
Swami Replied: In today’s world, if we show any defect in any human being, he/she will immediately project false logic to not only defend oneself but also to find more faults in the opposite speaker. Even though the inner consciousness tells that the defect shown by the opposite speaker is correct, his/her ego will hiss like a beaten serpent. Scripture says that the fruit of knowledge is submissiveness and absence of ego (Vinaya). The incident of Shankara falling at the feet of an untouchable happened especially in the presence of all the disciples of Shankara. Nobody will tolerate such an insult in the presence of his students. Shankara propagated the path of knowledge (Jñānādeva tu kaivalyam). When the opponent speaker was finding fault with him, such an erudite scholar like Shankara could easily defeat the opponent speaker with the power of His tremendous logic, but, Shankara did not condemn the logic of the opponent speaker because He was very much convinced by the logic of the opponent and was equally convinced with the falsity in the logic of His own statement. Even though the opponent was an untouchable, Shankara crossed the ego of caste also and fell on his feet praising him as the preacher even for Him! Keeping the merit of the argument of the untouchable aside for some time, all of us must learn that the fruit of knowledge is submissiveness (Vidyā dadāti vinayam).
This incident itself shows that Shankara has the climax spiritual knowledge, which is perfectly ripened. Since He is the possessor of such ripened spiritual knowledge, He propagated that the path to reach God is only true spiritual knowledge. We must learn that when somebody points out some defect in us, we must do self-analysis at once and decide whether such defect is present in us or not. If such defect is present in us, our consciousness will tell the truth and we must immediately accept it. We must at least thank the other person for showing our defect since we are protected from fall in the future. At least the thankfulness must be expressed orally even though we may not fall on the feet of the opponent praising him as our divine preacher. In My view, this lesson is greater than the very argument of the opponent. Shankara while composing a prayer to God Vishnu, prayed God in the beginning itself to remove disobedience and ego (Avinaya mapanaya Viṣṇo – Ṣaṭpadī stotra). Shankara is God Shiva and the untouchable is God Dattatreya. This is the divine play of both the divine forms to preach to humanity the greatest lesson of submissiveness. In the end, when Shankara was walking in Himalayas, God Datta appeared and embraced Shankara appreciating "My brother! You have done a lot of My work on this earth". Saying so, God Datta dissolved Himself in Shankara during the embracement.
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