Questions to sit with

These are not questions with right answers. Take one with you for a day.

1. Yudhiṣṭhira’s questions are very simple, after days of complex teaching. What are the simple questions underneath your own complicated ones?

2. Bhīṣma answers the last question first: what to recite. Why might a teacher begin with a practice, rather than with an explanation of who God is?

3. Kṛṣṇa stands silently beside Bhīṣma while he is praised by a thousand names. What do you imagine he felt? What does it say about him that he brought Yudhiṣṭhira there?

4. The names are gauṇa, born of qualities. If you had to describe the Divine with only three qualities, which three would you choose? Which names in the hymn come closest to them?

5. Some names are vast (Viśvam, the universe) and some intimate (Suhṛt, the friend). Which kind moves you more? Why do you think the hymn needs both?

6. Śaṅkara finds a new meaning every time a name repeats. Is there a word in your own life that has meant different things to you at different times?

7. The hymn names the singer, the song and the one sung to as the same Lord (Stotā, Stotra, Stavya). What would it mean for prayer if that were true?

8. The phalaśruti promises health, wealth and freedom from fear. Is it right to pray for such things? How does the hymn’s ending, with one Being holding the whole world, change the question?

9. One verse is enough. One name is enough. Then why a thousand?

10. Bhīṣma recited these names at the end of his life. Which name would you want to remember at the end of yours?