Shankaracharya and the Man on the Road

Adi Shankaracharya was in Kashi. One morning he was returning from his bath in the Ganga with his students, and the lane was narrow.

A chandala was coming the other way, with four dogs.

The students called out, "Move aside. Clear the path."

The man stopped and asked, quietly:

"Whom are you asking to move? This body, or the awareness within it?

If the body — then this body made of food and that body made of food are the same clay. What separates one from the other?

And if the awareness — does the sun become two because one reflection falls on the Ganga and another on a gutter? You are the one who teaches that Brahman is one, everywhere, undivided. Then who is to move, and who is to ask?"

Shankaracharya stood still.

The Advaita he expounded in debate had walked up to him in a lane and become a question. He gathered his robes and bowed before the man.

Then and there he spoke five verses, known as the Manisha Panchakam. Every one of them lands on the same conclusion:

"Whoever has realised that all this is one consciousness — whether he is an outcaste or a brahmin, he is my guru."

Tradition says the chandala was Shiva himself, and the four dogs were the four Vedas.

Moral: A doctrine is unfinished until it comes down into the street and becomes conduct. Shankaracharya's greatness that day was not in winning the argument — it was in bowing.