Every time I encounter something written by Shankaracharya, I am awed. He has created works of seemingly contradicting philosophies such as non-dualism and deity worship at the same time. But he has done them with equal amount of poetic mastery, philosophic profoundness and cute description of the beauty of the deity or the nature or anything that he is describing.
In works from as simple as Achyustashtakam or Shiva Panchakshar mantras to his inventive Saundarya Lahari or Moh Mudgar (Bhaja Govindam), his unbelievable grasp of the Vedic philosophies, a notion of bodily as well as spiritual beauty, idea of emancipation etc are vividly illustrated.
He describes as easily the ideas of Brahma and Emancipation as he does the beauty of a female's body or, for that matter, of any deity or a work of nature. See the way he describes Mahadev in Shiva Panchakshar or Krishna in Achyushtakam, utmost combination of easy verses with profound description of beauty and devotion.
In Moha Mudgar, he describes travails of a worldly, family life as well as that of a ascetic. He vividly describes the beauty of a human body while also lauding the life of renunciation.
I was watching the video by Sri M (Soundarya Lahari | Part 1/2 | Sri M) on Saundarya Lahari and there the scholar describes how Shankaracharya constructs the profound idea of beauty, bhakti and even the tantric tool of Sri Yantra through his exquisite verses.
Seeing all this while also noting that he passed away in a prime young age of 32, one can't imagine him as any ordinary human being but an incarnation of the divine himself.
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