Goldspot

Poli Solludhal

2012-01-31T09:51:00.000-08:00

To prove a point, we do substantiate by different means. We give examples, we compare and contrast by similies, metaphors, we extrapolate things so on and so forth. Giving examples is one of the most common ways to prove a point. To prove this, I do not have to give an example though :-). "Comparing" is also a very effective means, especially in our scriptures.

In thamizh, we use the word "uvamaanam" to refer to "comparisons". Strictly speaking, this is not a pure thamizh word as it has Sanskrit origins. The exact thamizh word though is called "Poli Solludhal". It is called so because the word "pola" itself means "like that". When one says, "Avan singatha pola veeram kondavan", it means "He has great valor like that of a lion. "Idhai pola adhu" is the basic format for comparison. So, this comparison process is actually called "poli solludhal".

Singam pola veeram kondavan

In the example above, lion is the object that is used for comparing a brave man and so the lion is technically called a "poli". Likewise, if one say, "Aval poovai pole menmaiyaanaval" , meaning, she is very soft natured like that of a flower, the flower is the "poli" there.

Like many other words and phrases, this one also has lost its true meaning. People started to use the word "poli" and started to associate with "duplicate" because they lost the essence of the word. So in the previous examples, the person who is compared to a lion or a flower, they were thought upon as one that can never equal a lion or a flower, the original object that had the highest quality of valor or softness in their basic constructs of comparisons. So, since they cannot never have the valor of a lion or a softness of a flower, they were construed as "duplicate lion" or a "duplicate flower" that tries to mirror the original but cannot match up. This kind of thought made people to associate the word "poli" with "duplicate", which is not right in the first place. "Poli Solludhal" simply means "to compare" by saying "avan singathai pola" or "aval poovai pola".

Soft Flower

But, though people misuse the phrase "poli solludhal", it is true in one way, when the phrase is used with Lord Sriman Narayanan. Let me explain. We all know that our Lord is full of "audaryam" or "vallal thanmai". This is the quality of the Lord by which HE gives us anything and everything in infinite measures. To prove this point or to make this quality understandable, people use "Lord is like a dark rain bearing cloud" or "Perumal karu megathai pola". This is an example of "Poli Solludhal". In this case, the cloud is the "poli", both literally and figuratively. A dark rain bearing cloud will pour all the rain it had impregnated and will become white at some point of time when it does not have any more rain to pour. But Perumal, can HE or will HE ever stop giving anything or everything to everyone? He gives whatever people ask HIM, from aishwayram, kaivalyam and bhagavam HIMSELF. Can there be something in this universe that we can use to compare the "audarayam" of Perumal? Or for that matter any other quality of Perumal? Certainly no. So the cloud is really a duplicate in this sense. For that matter, anything that we think we use to compare Perumal's quality can only be a "poli" and not the original. So people, unknowingly, are correct, if they describe Perumal's qualities, even when they use the word "poli" in a wrong fashion.

Arulala Perumal Emberumanar Vaibhavam

2011-12-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha!!!

Sri Dhayabala munayE namaha!!!

Sri Thathacharya GuravE namaha!!!

Who was Yagyamurthy?: During the period of Swami Ramanujar, there lived a great "Advaitha" proponent named 'Yagyamurthy' near a place called "Vinjimoor" in the plains of Tirumala hills in the present Andhra Pradesh state of India. He was an extremely erudite scholar who won over many battles over his peers in "Tarkha Vaadham" or "Tarkham". Tarkham refers to the art of debating, making counter points to disprove an already established theory or practice. A lot of analytical skills are needed to do tarkha vaadam. Yagyamurthy, the great intellect, was highly successful in tarkha vaadam as a result of which he made his oppoents embrace "Advaitha" philosophy. In those days, when an opponent accepts defeat in an argument, he should and he would embrace the philosophy of the winner at once.

Yagyamurthy becomes popular: As days progressed, his victories grew by leaps and bounds. Yagyamurthy started to go to different places near and far to win over his contemporaries and bolster the roots of "Advaitha". But how far could he go and how could he? Just because he went on converting loads of folks to Advaitha, would it mean that "advaitha" is the right way of interpreting Vedas? The answer is definitely a "NO". Universal and eternal truth is one and that is the one which stands the test of time. Advaitha came into this world to counter the soonyavaadhis mainly who advocated the concept of "nothing". It was successful in that aspect and just that; it was not comprehensive in any way but was good enough to attack on Vedas by some miscreants to Sanathana dharmam (Hinduism). So we do recognize that Yagyamurthy should be and will be corrected at some point of time. But during those times, who could have dared to face Yagyamurthy in tarkha vaadam? Who can put an end to this invincible scholar? The simplest answer to the toughest task was obviously our great Jagadaacharyan, Sri Ramanujar who did the task deftly.

Swami Ramanujar

Tarkham between Yagyamurthy and Swami Ramanujar: Lord Sriman Narayanan planned for their meet at Srirangam as a part of his leela. As usual, the rules of the debate were laid clearly before it began. Swami Ramanujar was certainly very confident about our Sri Vaishnava Sampradhayam, but is now going to undergo a stern test in the form of Yagyammurthy. The debate started and both these great philosphers started to argue in their stand. Attacks, counter attacks and defenses ensued from both parties. At one point it looked that the battle would never end. Yagyamuthy challenged Swami Ramanuja on a key point for which Swami could not retaliate immediately. The day's battle was regarded as "Over" and was set to continue the following morning. Swami was very worried about how to win and establish Vishitadvaita. He closed his eyes and prayed to his "Aaradhana Perumal –Varadarajan" (AruLaLa perumal at Thirukachi also known as Kaanchipuram). He pleaded to Him, "If the great Vishitadvaita sampradhayam which was nurtured and propelled by the likes of Swami Nammazhwar, Naadhamunigal and Sri Aalavandhar would have to come to an end because of an ignorant person like him (Swami Raamanuja), then what a disgrace he had caused to Vishitadvaita philosophy". He felt very bad for himself and believed that his "PerAruLaLan" would always come to his rescue. And sure HE did. The same night, AruLaLa perumal came in Swami Ramanujar's dream and pointed out some of the arguments he could use for winning over Yagyamurthy. Specifically, HE suggested to take excerpts from "Maayavaandha Kandanam" chapter from Swami Alavandar's Sidhithrayam.

Battle continues the next day: Next day Swami Ramanujar looked gleeful right from the beginning. As usual, he finished his bath and had 12 urdhva pundrams. He was resplendent with "Tejas"and proceeded to the debate with so much confidence that upon just seeing him, Yagya murthy realized that Ramanujar has got some solid arguments prepared to win. So, he prostrated before Swami just on seeing Swami's roopam. To everyone's delight, Ramanujar won the debate and was happy that Vishitadvaita sampradhayam will flourish no matter what the size and nature of obstacles that come in its way. Yagyamurthy accepted defeat and became an ardent disciple of Ramanujar from then on.

Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar

Swami Ramanujar gives daasya naamam to Yagyamurthy: When Peyazhwar conquered Thirumazhisai azhwar who wandered across various philosophies, the latter puts it, "Sakhiyam katrom samanam katrom sangaranaar aaki vaitha aagama nool aaraaindhom paakiyathaaal sengat kariyaanai cherndhom". Translated loosely it means that Thirumazhisai azhwar was into various religions and philosophies like Jainism, shaivisim, etc but all those did not answer the one basic question. The basic question is "What is the One Thing that if we catch hold of will get the answers to everything?. Is there a one Supreme being that is the causeless cause by Itself and IT is the cause for all other things? Thirumazhisai azhwar was given the answer in Sriman Naarayanan by Peyazhwar. Yagyamuthy felt exactly like how Thirumazhisai azhwar felt when he was corrected. Since Swami Ramanujar had won this debate with the help of Arulala Perumal, he gave Yagya murthy the name 'Arulala Perumal Emberumanar', (by combining Perumal's and his own name). From that day on, Yagya murthy was known by 'Arulala Perumal Emberumanar'.

Confusion in names between Emberumanar and Arulala Perumal Emberumanar: Ramanujar also established a separate mutt for Arulala Perumal Emberumanar. Once there were some strangers in Srirangam who wanted to visit Swami Ramanujar's madam. Since they were new to the place, they asked one of the locals "Where is Emberunar's mutt?". Immediately, the local person replied them, "which Emberumanar mutt are you guys talking about? Is it the one of Swami Ramanujar who is also known as Emberumanar/Ethirajar/Udayavar/Godhagrajan OR Swami "Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's mutt"? While this conversation was going along, Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar accidentally happened to listen to it. He wept terribly hearing that his mutt had caused confusion in the minds of people to an extent that they may believe there is another Swami. In Srivaishanvic parlance, when we say "Swami", it can refer to only one person. He is none other than Swami Ramaujar himself. Just like when we say "kovil" it refers to Srirangam, when we say "Swami", it is our Ramanujar only. But Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar now was very upset that he went ahead and tore down his mutt and came to live in Swami Ramanujar's mutt itself from then. This is why they say "thesu poli matan thannai sidhaithittan vaazhiye" in his vaazhi thirunamam. Such was his devotion.

Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's Kainkaryam: Swami Ramanujar gave various kainkaryams to his disciples. Swami Mudaliandan and Swami Koorathazhwan's main duties were to take care of the literary works like SriBashyam by disseminating its substance to the masses. Another task was for them to go and take care of "vaadham" with scholars from other philosophies. Likewise, Kidambi Achan was given the task of "thaligai kainkaryam". A small story why he was given this task.

Kidambi Achan gets the kainkaryam of making food for Swami Ramanujar: Thirukotiyoor Nambi, was one of the five acharyas of Swami Ramanujar He lived in Thirukoshtiyur divyadesam and he was the one who gave Swami Ramanujar the Thirumanthraartham. Once, a group of people had decided to kill Swami Ramanujar, by poisoning his food. Hearing this, Thirukotiyoor Nambi immediately rushed to Srirangam to protect Swami Ramanujar. Swami Ramanujar along with his sishyas, met his acharayan Thirukotiyoor Nambi on the banks of River Cauvery, on a hot afternoon. On seeing his Acharyan, Swami Ramanujar immediately prostrated before him right on the burning hot banks of the river. Thirukotiyoor Nambi wanted to test something there. He did not ask Swami Ramanujar to get up. He was keeping mum and this continued for sometime. Due to heat, Swami Ramanujar's body turned red in color. Swami Ramanuja being an emodiment of Acharya anushtaanam, did not get up and lay there till Thirukotiyoor Nambi asked him to get up. But Thirukotiyoor Nambi continued staying silent. Along with Swami Ramanuja, there were a few sishyas. One sishya by name "Swami Kidambi Achaan" was mad at Thirukotiyoor Nambi and went lifted up Swamy Ramanuja and question Tirukkotiyoor Nambi saying “What is it you are doing? Don’t you see that our acharyan's thirumeni has turned red!!? What do you gain from making my guru like this? Thirukotiyoor Nambi was all smiles now and he said "I am happy now. I was searching for a person like you who could take care of Swami Ramanujar. Since you were the sishya who could not tolerate any wrong happening to your acharyan's body, I want you to take care of Swami Ramanujar's "thaligai". So from that day on, Swami Kidambi achan was given the kainkaryam of doing "thaligai" to Swami.

Kainkaryams of few other sishyas: Anandhaazwan was given the kainkaryam of making Thiruvengadam a nice place to worship by cleansing the area near temple. We all know about "Pillai Urangaa Villi Daasar" story. Swami Ramanuja made Lord Ranganathar to show "Pillai Urangaa Villi Daasar" HIS divine eyes. Earlier, Pillai Urangaa Villi Daasar" was very much fond of his wife's eyes. But from that point when he saw Lord Rangantha through Swami Ramanujar, he denounced everything and became a ramanuja dasan. For him, the kainkaryam that was given was to take care of the procession whenever Namperumal goes for Veedhi purappadu. Likewise, there was a task assigned to each of his sishya. For Arulala Perumal Emberumanar the kainkaryam given was special. We saw that he had a debate with Swami Ramanujar and at the end of it Swami was victorious. Arulala Perumal Emberumanar became a Srivaishnava. Initially, he was living in his mutt, but later he destroyed and joined Swami Ramanujar's. Swami Ramanujar gave him a very special kainkaryam of doing 'Thiruvaaraadhana" to his pEraRuLaalan. Arulala Perumal Emberumanar was very delighted and followed his acharyan’s orders to his utmost satisfaction.

Arulala Perumal Emberumnar serves as acharyan: When Anandhaazwhan and some other persons caught the lotus feet of SriRamanujar for the first time, the latter asked him to go to Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar and seek refuge under him. Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar could not say no since it was his acharyan's order again. But he told them that "I am doing this because my Swami had asked to do so. Even though you surrender to me, there will be only one acharyan to you, to me and to the whole world. He is Swami Ramanujar. So, He will take care of you just like he takes care of me".

Literary Works and its purport: Arulala Perumal Emberumanar has written two wonderful Tamil granthams called "Gnyana Saaram" and "Prameya Saaram". He is the first acharya to write in Tamil. Sri Manavala Mamunigal has written vyakhyanam for these granthams. From his granthams it is clear that he was a strong believer that Perumal and thayar is fond of us like how a cow would be towards its calf; that Perumal and thayar would love us even with our many apachaarams like how a cow would clean its new-born calf with its tongue without anything else in mind. These granthams are so great, that great acharyas like Nampillai and Periyavachan Pillai also followed these principles. The great Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's thirunakshathiram is Karthigai Bharani, that is on Dec 08 2011.

Thaniyan: This is the thaniyan about Arulala Perumal Emberumanar:

Ramanuja padhamboja samsaridham gunavarithim!!!

Dhayabaalamunim vandhe vedantha parinishtithim!!!

Dhaybalana devaya gyana sara pradheyine!!!

Prameyasaaramthu thathe namosthu premasaaline!!!

Yathiraja dhayapathram ethipankthi vibukshanam!!!

Dhyabala munim vandhe desikaakrecharam sadha!!!

Ramanujaarya sathchsihyam veda saasthraartha sampadham!!!

Chathurthaasrama sampannam devarajam munim bhaje!!!

Kaarthige Barani Jaatham Yathindraashramaashraye!!!

Gyana Premeya saaraapihi Vakthaaram Varadham Munim!!!

Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's descendants: Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar was one among the 74 Simhaasanaadhipadhis. established by Sri Ramanujar. He had a son by name "Alankaara Venkatavar" who also caught hold of the lotus feet of Sri Ramanujar who appointed him as one of 74 Simhaasanaadhipadhis. Alankaara Venkatavar's son was "Swami Thaathacharya" who was born in the month of chithra, under the star of "Thiruvonam" – the very same star of Thiruvenkatamudayaan. Swami Thaathacharya's maternal grandfather was "Periya Thirumalai Nambigal" who was one of the acharyas of Swami Ramanujar himself. Swami Periya Thirumalai Nambi lived in Thiruvenkatam doing kainkaryam to Thiruvenkatamudayan. He used to finish his daily kainkarya duties for Thiruvenkatamudayaan and rush downhill near Thiruchaanoor where Swami Ramaujar stayed and conducted discourses on Sri Ramayanam. We may wonder why would an acharyan would ever do this to a sishyan? The reasons is that Swami Alavadhar, before he left this materialistic world had ordered his sishya "Swami Periya Thirumalai Nambi" to be one of acharyas for Swami Ramanujar and impart the deep meanings impregnated in Sri Ramayanam. Inorder to fulfill his acharyan's order and to get the sambandham of Swami Ramanujar and with the magnanimous thought that all the people in this world should be liberated by Swami Ramanujar's grace, he happily imparted all the knowledge that he had accrued about Ramayanam to Swami Ramanujar. That is the greatness of Swami Ramanujar. Even, his achayan had yearned for his sambandham. Periya Thirumalai Nambi would boast of his connection with Swami Ramanujar. All that we should want is his sambandham (connection) and there is no thought about if it is his acharya or sishya. As a side point, all the great acharyas before the time of Swami Ramanuja are regarded as his "Thirumudi" sambandham and all others after him are his "thiruvadi" sambandham. As years passed by, ""Periya Thirumalai Nambi" grew old but he did not stop his service to his Thiruvenkatamudayan for a single day. Swami Thaathachaaryar (paternal grandson of Aruulala Perumal Emberumaanar) learnt all shastras from his father "Swami Alankaara Venkatavar" and also from his maternal grandfather "Periya Thirumalai Nambi". One fine day, when Periya Thirumalai Nambi was doing kainkaryam, he had filled his vessel with water to offer the same for Perumal. While he was doing pooja, Thiruvenkatamudayan disguised himself in the form of a small boy. He looked at the vessel from Thirumalai Nambi's behind and drank it fully without any trace. Periya Thirumalai Nambi was astonished to see the vessel empty. When he turned himself, he saw that little boy was running rounds by calling "thaatha, thaatha" and finally went inside the sanctum sanctorum and merged with Perumal. Periya Thirumalai Nambi realized then that his grandson is none other than an avathaaram of Thiruvenkatamudayaan Himself. Since He had called "thaatha, thaatha" (thatha means grandfather in thamizh), he gave the name of "Thaathaacharyan" as the thirunamaam to his grandson and thus the latter was quite famous in the later days . All the descendants came to be known as "Arulaala Perumal Emberumaanar Vamsam: or "Thirumalai Vinjimoor Vamsam" or "Swami Thaathacharyaar paramparai".

Vaazhi Thirunamam:

Arulaala Maamunivan adiyinaigal vaazhi!!!

Arai amar sendhuvarudayodu ani yundhi vaazhi!!!

Arulaarum angayodu mukkOlum vaazhi!!!

Ani vadangal purinoolodu aagamadhu vaazhi!!!

Therulaazhi sangamodu thirutholgal vaazhi!!!

Thirukananinnai naamamadhu sernudhalum vaazhi!!!

Porulaaru narkalaigal pugal naavum vaazhi!!!

Pongezhil thoomaalaipunai porkunji vaazhi!!!

Thiruvaazhun thennarangam sirakavandhom vaazhiye!!!

Thenarulaalar anbaal thirundhinan vaazhiye!!!

Tharuvaazhum yathiraasan thaazh adaindhon vaazhiye!!!

Thamizh gyana premaya saaram thamarkuraipon vaazhiye!!!

Therulaaru madhurakavi nilai thelindhon vaazhiye!!!

Thesu poli madandhannai sidhai thitaan vaazhiye!!!

Arulaaala maamuniyaam aariyan thaazh vaazhiye!!!

Arul kaarthigai baraniyon anaithoozhi vaazhiye!!!

Important Points that should be remembered about Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar:

Arulala Perumal Emberumanar belongs to the cream of the cream, elite league of bhagavathas who have revered their acharyan as everything. This state of mind is popularly known as "Charama Parva Nishtai" that includes the likes of Andal, Madhurakavi azhwar, Shathrugnanan and Vaduga Nambi. This point can be seen in one of the "Vaazhi Thirunamam" lines above namely, "Therulaaru madhurakavi nilai thelindhon vaazhiye".
Arulala Perumal Emberumanar, who regarded Swami Ramanujar as everything, restated and bolstered this point of "Acharyabimanam" as the crux of his works namely "Gyana Saram" and "Prameya Saram",
Arulala Perumal Emberumanar was Advaithi in his poorvaashramam, lost the verbal intellectual duel against Swami Ramanujar, became his one of his important sishya and performed thiruvaradhana kainkaryam

Arulala Perumal Emberumanar has sannidhis in Srivilliputtur and Pandavadoodhan shrine(near Kanchipuram). For more information on the sannidhi at Srivilliputtur, you can visit the site: http://arulalaperumal.tripod.com/srivilliputtur/

Adiyen feels very honored to be a part of this glorious paramparai, by having him as our acharyan and to get the samashryanam done by Sri. U.Ve. Vinjimoor Venkatachariar Swami in Kuppaniyengar mandapam in Srivilliputhur.

Azhwar Emberumnar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Kaisika Ekadasi

2011-12-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

Ekadasi: Ekadasi is the 11th day after a full moon / new moon day in a lunar cycle. "Eka" is 1 and "dasa" is 10 in sanskrit and hence the meaning of the word. There are many ekadasis that come in a year. There are two that stand out from the rest. One is Vaikunta Ekadasi that occurs during the month of margazhi (either late December or early January). There is a lot of significance to this that it deserves a separate blogpost by itself. We shall now focus on the second one that is known as the "Kaisika Ekadasi" that comes during the month preceeding margazhi namely "Karthigai". This typically occurs in late november / early december , depending on the stars. Today, Dec 5 2011 happens to be Kaisika Ekadasi (going by the Pacific time calendar). There is a story behind its history and we shall see it in this blog. The whole story was from Sri.U.Ve. Velukudi Krishnan Swamy's Upanyasam on Thirukurungudi Mahaatmiyam. The 18 points listed here are from Sri U.Ve. Elayavilli Srinivasa Bhuvarahachariar Swami's writings.

Story: Long long ago, there lived a great Srivaishnavite who was fondly called "Nampaaduvan" in Thirukurungudi, a town located near the Southern tip of India, near Thirunelveli. He was born in a very low caste chandala clan, however that was the only thing that was low about him and which was totally inconsequential to a true Srivaishnavaite. He had an unparalleled bhakthi towards the Lord in Thirukurungudi who is known as "Nambi". Inspite of his great love for the Lord, since he was a chandala, and since he followed the shahstra, he never entered the temple at any point of time.

Thirukurungudi Temple Entrance

He just used to stand outside the temple premises, sing songs for his "Nambi" in a musical format known as "pann" and then take leave from there. This was his routine. Since his bhakti was bestowed upon him by "Nambi", the outpurings of it were also as sweet as the source of it. Nampaduvan used a lot of different raagas to sing Perumal's auspicious qualities.

Brahmarakshsas stops Nampaduvan: Nampaduvan used to observe fasting on all ekadasis. On a karthigai dwadasi day, Nampaduvan was as usual singing Perumal's glories and HIS valor and was proceeding towards the temple premises and thereby thought of ending his ekadasi viratham. Suddenly, a huge monstrous Brahmarakshasan stopped him. He threatened Napaduvan that he would eat him alive as he was starving for a long time. Nampaduvan did not get scared. He replied that he would visit the temple premise, finish the ekadasi vratham that he was observing and then return back as Brahmarakshasan's food. However, Brahmarakshasan was least convinced as he thought that who will come back and offer himself as food if he is set free. He did not leave Nampaduvan as he cluthced Nampaduvan's fist tightly.

Brahmarakshas threatens Nampaduvan

Nampaduvan wanted to convince him so badly that he would atleast allow him to finish his ekadasi viratham. That was his only motive to convince him and he was totally happy to be a food for Brahmarakshas because by this way he can end up the bonding with this world and can reach Srivaikuntam. In order to convince Brahmarakshas, he started to make a lot of promises like if he does not return, let this papam (sin) cast its wrath upon him etc. So he started to list a series of papams. Brahmarakshas was inshakaeable for the 17 papams that Nampaduvan had listed. The 18th one shook him off which made Brahmarakshas let Nampaduvan go. Let us see what are those and then see why Brahmarakshas was shell shocked on hearing the 18th one:

If I do not return as per my promise let me get the sin of a man who is a liar
Let me get the sin of a person who commits adultery, if I don’t return.
While eating in the company of a person if a man differentiates in menu (i.e. serving inferior or less quantity of food to the guest), he gets a great sin (Papam). Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
If a man donates a piece of an earth to a Brahmin and takes it back after some time he will certainly accrue sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
If a man enjoys the company of a woman during her youthful age and subsequently rejects her when she becomes old he is sure to get sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
Having performed ablution rite (Tharpanam) on Amavasya day and then recourse (physical relationship) to his wife the same day, he will entertain great sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
Having dined delicious dishes in the house of a host and then if a person showers heaps of abuse on his host, he is sure to meet with great sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
A man makes a solemn promise that he would give away his young daughter in marriage to a youth but later on breaks his promise, which would entertain sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
A man is prohibited from eating without taking bath on Shashti (the sixth day of both fortnight), Ashtami (the eighth day), Chaturdashi (the fourteenth day) and Amavasya (the fifteenth day of bright fortnight). Let me get that sin, if I don’t return.
A man promises to donate something to another man but he doesn’t keep up his promise. Let me get the sin of breach of promise if I fail to come back.
If a person tries to allure the wife of a friend who has helped him in manifold ways, he is sure of reaching hell. I will get that sin, if I fail to return.
If a person, afflicted by lust, enjoys the company of his revered teacher’s wife who is responsible for his salvation; and so also the company of the wife of a king who endows all worldly pleasure to him - he will be the worst sinner. I will suffer that sin by not keeping up my promise.
A man marries two girls without being impartial to both of them. If he evinces greater pleasure in the company of one rejecting the other, he is sure to accrue very great sin. Let me get that sin, if I don’t keep up my promise.
If a man divorces his wife who is very chaste and has no one to care for her, he will become a sinner. Let me be equated to him for not returning.
If a man causes obstruction to the cattle that are afflicted very much by thirst to drink water, he will get a sin. Let me also get that sin by breaking your faith in me.
Killing a Brahmin, addiction to liquor, stealing gold, breaking a vow are considered to be heinous crimes. Severe punishments are prescribed for a sinner, who commits all these crimes. Let me suffer all these punishments in case I fail to get back to you.
If some people worship only other deities and not Sri Vasudeva who is easily accessible to His votaries and is Omnipresent, they will get a great sin. Let me get that sin, if I do not return.
Sriman Narayana is the supreme deity. He is the inner soul for all created beings, both sentient and insentient. He is worshipped by all karmas (i.e. by all holy rites prescribed by the Shastras). He is to be meditated by all who are desirous of liberation. He alone has the ability to grant salvation. He is to be reached by all the liberated souls. Having understood the supreme qualities of the Lord, if a man equates Him to all other demi gods and angels who are bound by karma, He will be born in this world again and again. Let me get that sin by breach of this promise.

Brahmarakshas relieves Nampaduvan: The first 17 promises did not convince the Brahmarakshasa, but the 18th one totally convinced him about the certainty of Nampaduvan’s return. As a Srivaishnava, after surrendering unto HIM through an acharyan, we therefore have to understand that the last sin is the greatest sin of all sins. Hence it is to be meticulously avoided.

An old man interrupts Nampaduvan: Nampaduvan went to Thirukurungudi temple premises, sang about his Nambi. The last raaga in which he sang was the "kaisika" raaga. After finishing the viratham, Nampaduvan was en route to meet Brahmarakshas. On the way, he was stopped by an old man who asked Nampaduvan "Where are you going so fast"? Nampaduvan replied that he is going to offer himself as food for the Brahmarakshas to whom he had promised earlier.

An old man (leftside in the picture) stops Nampaduvan

The old man tried to convince Nampaduvan not to go to Brahmarakshas as he is a cannibal and can eat him alive. The old man was trying to test the resolve of Nampaduvan. Nampaduvan replied "I have no fear in being a food to Brahmarakshas. I have given him a promise and I need to stand up to the promise. So kindly let me go". The old man, who was in a disguise, was Lord Sriman Narayanan himself, let Nampaduvan go and meet Brahmarakshas.

The return of Nampaduvan: Nampaduvan came back and stood in front of Brahmarakshas. Seeing it, Brahmarakshas was taken aback because a man once held as a captive, when he comes back on his own accord and surrenders again, then he really knows no fear. Brahmarakshas started to realize the greatness of this great bhagavatha and thus he remembered the curse that he had in his previous birth. In his previous birth, he was born as Soma Sharma in a Brahmin family. He committed a lot of blunder in his yagam and other sacrifices that he had this curse inflicted upon him. Moreover, he developed a fatal disease towards the latter part of the yagam that he died without completing it. In order for him to get out of this sin, he was told that he would be liberated when he meets a great bhagavatha of a chandala clan. After saying this, Brahmarakshas begged Nampaduvan to give the merits of all the songs that he had sang for Nambi.

Brahmarakshas begs Nampaduvan to give the merits of his songs

Nampaduvan replied "I did not sing, expecting something in return. So I cannot give the merits to you". Then Brahmarakshas continued, "Can you please give me atleast the merit of half of the songs that you had song". Nampaduvan refused again. Finally, Brahmrakshas said "I want to get liberated. So can you please give me the merit of the last song that you sang in "Kaisika" raaga?. Nampaduvan thought for a while "If Perumal's wish is to liberate him through me, I cannot stop. Ok. Let me give you the merit of the last song that I sang in Kaisikia raaga".

Brahmarakshas' previous birth: On getting it, the Brahmarakshas was relieved of his curse. He was born in a Brahmin family in his next birth , at the end of which he attained Srivaikuntam. The viratham that Nampaduvan was observing was on ekadasi day and he broke the fast on the next Dwadasi day by singing in Kaisika ragam. So this ekadasi came to be known as "Kaisika" ekadasi. Observing fast during this auspicious day and thinking about Lord Sriman Narayanan is sure to get us liberated. All these incidents can be found in Varaha Puranam, that Sri Varaha Perumal Himself told to Sri Bhooma Devi.

Whole Story in Picture Format: Here are a few pics that adiyen saw in internet that gives the story in a pictorial format. Mangalasasanam to the bhagavatha who took those pictures.

https://picasaweb.google.com/b.senthil2002/KaisikaEkadasi#

Azhwar Emberumnar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Swami Ramanujar and Embar Incident

2011-12-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Araiyar Sevai: There are certain group of people in three places namely Srirangam, Srivilliputhur and Azhwar Thirunagari, who depict azhwar's dhivya prabandha pasurams using dance poses. These poses are known as "abhinayam" and the one who gives those poses is known as "Araiyar". They are descendants of the great poorvacharya Nadhamuni, who is known to have reclaimed the 4000 dhivya prabandha pasurams, when it was lost. He got it back after reciting "Kanninum Siruthambu" 12,000 times. Swami Nammazhwar appeared before Nadhamuni after 12,000th time and gave him the 4,000 pasurams that was lost from the time period between Thirumangai azhwar and Nadhamuni. He was very much ectastic to receive the lost treasure. Since he was blessed by the azhwar himself, who was in turn blessed by Sriman Narayana, nothing was impossible for him. He had tremendous bhakti for azhwars and their pasurams. He had an extraordinary talent in music as well that he organized the pasurams and even created tunes and dance poses so that people can easily get the purport. This knowledge was passed on from generation to generation that "Araiyar sevai" was one great experience for people watching it. The "Araiyars" perform usually in front of the Moolavar. Today, it happens only in the three aforementioned dhivya desams but history says that there were more than these 3 dhivya desams in which it was performed. Melkote is one abhimana sthalam in which it is performed even today.

Once during the times of Swami Ramanuja, "Araiyar Sevai" was happening in Srirangam. Swami Ramanujar was sitting in the first row, carefully watching the "abhinayam" of araiyar. The particular pasuram that was been enacted by Ariayar now was from "Maasaru Sodhi" padhigam in Thiruvaimozhi. To be more exact, the pasuram (5.3.6) was:

அன்னை என் செய்யில் என்? ஊர் என்சொல்லில் என்?தோழிமீர்!!!
என்னை இனி உமக்காசை இல்லை அகப்பட்டேன்

முன்னை அமரர் முதல்வன் வண் துவராபதி

மன்னன் மணிவண்ணன் வாசுதேவன் வலையுளே!!!

annai en seyiil en? oor en sollil en? Thozimeer!!!
ennai ini umakaasai illai agapatten

munnai amarar mudhalvan vann thuvarapathi

mannan manivannan vasudevan valaiyule!!!

The overall meaning of the pasuram is that Nammazhwar, as Parankusa Nayaki, cries out to her mother and other folks from her town. She says "The lord of Dwaraka. The king of all devas! He has trapped me. So whatever you guys tell / advice me to stay away from HIM, it is not going to work. I have succumbed in his net, like how a fish would fall in a net.

Araiyar, when he was giving abhinayam to the word "net", he was trying to demonstate a net by cris crossing his fingers in both hands so that it looks like a net. Ramanuja was watching this with rapt attention in the front row. Embar was watching from behind as he just entered. Seeing this dance pose of araiyar and the nammazhwar pasuram, Embar, from the back, alluded araiyar by showing and pointing toward his eyes. Araiyar understood the purport that Embar was trying to convey. So the second time, when Araiyar gave abhinayam for this same word "net", araiyar assumed himself to be Sriman Narayanan and then showed the classic dance pose of revealing the beautiful eyes.

Araiyar giving abhinayam (dance poses)

This was the actual intent in which Nammazhwar had sung, meaning he has fallen at the beauty of Perumal's lotus like eyes and nothing else. Looking at this particular abhinayam of araiyar, Swami Ramanujar who was sitting in the front row exclaimed without even turning back, "Did Embar enter the hall now?". He said so because he knew only Embar would have interpreted this in a very beautiful manner. Wow. What can we say. Whom shall we praise? Sriman Narayanan for His beautiful eyes? or Swami Nammazhwar who sang about Perumal's beautiful eyes? Or Embar who suggested araiyar for an awesome abhinayam or the araiyar who picked up cue from Embar and enacted it beautifully or finally Swami Ramanujar who knew how each people would interpret and judged correctly? Adiyen has no words for the glorious poorvacharyas in our "Emberumaanar Darisanam", their deep anubhavam on azhwar's works, their knowledge about it and the way the lead the life as prescribed by the elders.

Azhwar Emberumanar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Beautiful eyes of Pundareekaakshan

Azhwars' phrases with respect to parts of the body

2011-11-16T12:29:00.000-08:00

Sriman Narayanan

Azhwars’ poetry has always been impregnated with multitude of layers of meanings. On the periphery, it would be something that a common man could perceive, digest and appreciate. However, when one delves deeper into the sea of azhwars’ works using acharayas’ explanation as the tool, he can unearth plenty of gems in it. To give an example, azhwars refers to various parts of the body like eyes, ears, hands, legs, waists and breasts in their pasurams. When it is used to refer that of Sriman Narayanan’s, everything is conotated with a beautiful “Lotus”. Nammazhwar says “kann paadham kai kamalam” in his magnum opus Thiruvaimozhi to describe that Perumal's eyes, feet are all each individually akin to a freshly blossomed lotus. But when those same parts of the body are used in a context of jeevathma (everyone apart from Sriman Narayanan), it would mean something else. That something else could be construed differently depending upon the depth we go into the pasuram’s vyakyanam.

We know that Paramathma Sriman Naarayanan is respite with kalyana gunams. Andal captures this in “katru karavai kanangal pala”. There is a finite group of cows. Likewise, there is a finite number of finite groups of cows. There is an infinite number of these finite groups of cows, which actually means that the number of cows is infinite. This is similar to counting the kalyana gunams of perumal, then at one point stop and bundle it, create more bundles, stop and create more bundles of it, only to realize at the end of it that He cannot be realized. “Aprameyoho Hrishikesaha” is what Vishnu Sahasranamam says. “Prema” is mind and “Apremeyo” is that which cannot be thought about with our mind.

Jeevathma has a finite number of gunams each with its own boundaries and capacities. To illustrate a few: Gynanam, bhakti, vairagyam, tejas, virakthi, shanthi, madham, krodham, kaamam, so on and so forth. It is very interesting to see that all these gunams are associated with our body parts in our azhwars’ works. While there is only one Purushothaman, all jeevathams are philosophical females, though gender differences on the exterior are for differentiation in this material world.

On these lines, let us first take the words “mulai” and “kongai” that refers to breasts since these are the ones that can easily be misconstrued. We shall see the peripheral and philosophical differences now. When azhwars refers to “kongai” or “mulai’, they always refer to “bhakti” as the ulterior meaning. Paraasara bhattar’s Thirupavai thaniyan says ‘nila thunga sthana giri …”. This thaniyan is more or less a sanskrit version of “Kuthu vilakeriya” paasuram where Andal says “Nappinnai kongai mel vaithu kidandha malar maarba”. Sthanam is the Sanskrit word for breasts that signify bhakti. The meaning of this particular line of the thaniyan is that “let us sing mangalaasaasanam (glories) to Andal who had tied Lord Krishna between her mountain like breasts”. On the inner meaning it goes to say that “let us sing mangalaasaasanam to Andal who has tied Lord Krishna with her immeasurable “bhakti”. Bhakti is associated with breasts here that are described as “mountain like” when Parasara bhattar says “sthana giri”. In our sampradhayam, these 2 sthanas (breasts) are two mountains which are “Thirumaalirunjolamalai” and “Thirumalai”. These two are the malais/mountains

Now let us take a few more instances and look at the superficial meaning first, followed by the meaning that we get when we associated breasts with bhakti.

(1) Nachiar Thirumozhi 1,5

vAniDai vAzhum avvAnavarkku
maRaiyavar vELviyil vagutta avi
kAniDait tirivadOr nari pugundu
kaDappadum mOppadum Seyvadoppa
ooniDai Azhi Sa’ngu uttamaRku enru
unnittu ezhunda en taDa mulaigaL
mAniDavarkku enru pEccuppaDil
vAzhakillEn kaNDai manmatanE!

Andal wants to get married to Krishna only and no one else

Superficial meaning: Andal says “I am here destined for Sriman Narayanan. My breasts have always been on the lookout for my Krishna. If, even a talk arises that associates me with any other mortal being, I would not live anymore. This is akin to the situation when prasadam (havis) from a deva yagam is being licked and tasted by a wild fox.

Philosophical Meaning: On the inner meaning, she does not really mean breasts here. It is again bhakti. We all knew Periyazhwar had fostered bhakti in Andal’s heart right from the day she came in his nandhavanam. She knew only Krishna bhakti and nothing else. All the bhakti that she had was always for Krishna only. She says even if a talk arises about her marriage, she would not live any more. It is because once you marry you are supposed to be a pathi vrathai and have pathi bhakthi with the person that you got married to. She was born to be united with Sriyapathi and not any other pathis because her bhakti is an untainted towards the Highest namely Paramapurushan Sriman Naarayanan only and one one else. She says “unnithu ezhunda en tada mulaigal” to mean those breasts that have risen so high (her bhakti is so high) just waiting to be united and do nithya kainkaryam to HIM. They are waiting to be enjoyed by HIM, meaning He gets happiness in seeing the jeevaathama doing nithya kainkaryam with unmeasurable bhakti towards HIM.

(2) Nachiar Thirumozhi 12,4

am kait talattiDai Azhi koNDAn
avan mugattanRi vizhiyEn enRu
Sem kaccuk koNDu kaNNADai Arttu
Siru mAniDavaraik kANil nANum
ko'ngait talam ivai nOkkik kANIr
gOvindanukku allAl vAyil pOgA
i'nguttai vAzhvai ozhiyavE pOi
yamunaik karaikku ennai uyttiDumin

Andal yearns to be in banks of Yamuna where Krishna lived

Andal is suffering because she is not able to be united with Krishna. So, she becomes disinterested in anything else other than Sriman Narayanan. Whenever people who surround her, talk about worldly stuff, her breasts shrink in size. Whenever the talk is about Sriman Narayanan, it is growing in size. Equating breasts and bhakti here, the minute she hears about Emperuman, her bhakti grows and it shrinks to nothing when she hears about mundane stuff.

In this pasuram, Andal goes one step further, personifies and treats her breasts as a chetana object that can differentiate things. She says her breast has eyes. Since she is wearing a red color saree, she says these eyes are closed temporarily so that it does not have to see other stuff apart from Sriman Narayanan. But when HE comes before her with His beautiful chakram in His hand, those breasts automatically open up their eyes, grow bigger and go unto HIM only and no one else (govindhanuku allal vaayil poga).

(3) Nachiar Thirumozhi 13,7

veRRik karuLak koDiyAn tan
mImIdu ADA ulagattu
veRRa veRidE peRRa tAi
vEmbE Aga vaLarttALE
kuRRam aRRa mulai tannaik
kumaran kOlap paNait tOLODu
aRRa kuRRam avai tIra
aNaiya amukkik kATTIrE

Andal cannot wait any more to be united with Krishna

Andal scolds Yasodha here saying that she is the reason for Krisha’s misbehavior – be it in telling lies, stealing butter, not keeping up the words that He had promised Andal etc. Yasodha was the one who only raised HIM but not HIS real mother. She failed at her duty of raising a truthful boy. So, this Krishna who is there now is useless. All these scoldings are out of extreme love and not to be treated as scoldings as it might look in the exterior. She asks the mothers who are nearby to take her to Krishna and tie her breasts with HIS broad shoulder. She adds that she knows HE would not come on HIS own now and so requests people around to tie her breasts with HIM, i.e., tie her with HIM with her unsurpassable bhakti so that HE cannot escape afterwards.

(4) Nachiar Thirumozhi 13,8

uLLE urugi naivEnai
uLaLO ilaLO ennAda
koLLai koLLik kuRumbanai
gOvardhananaik kaNDakkAl
koLLum payan onRillAda
kongai tannaik kizhangODum
aLLip paRittiTTu avan mArvil
eRindu en azhalait tIrvEnE

Andal very dejected as Krishna did not come

This is an extremely strong pasuram in terms of outpouring pangs of separation. Andal is dejected deeply inside since Krishna did not come up for a long time. She says HE does not even care for her if she is alive or dead. So she call him “Evil kannan”, though people call him “Govardhanadhaari”. She goes on and adds, out of her extreme compassion for HIM, “All my body parts are useless since I am not able to see HIM, touch HIM, feel HIM. What is the use of this useless breasts of mine, if it cannot be with Krishna”. She exclaims “That evil liar Kannan is not going to come and show HIS face to me. If at all HE comes, I am going to pluck these breasts of mine from the roots and throw them at HIS chest. They are useless anyway”. Again, bhakti is the current that flows underneath. So again philosophically, she means that if her bhakti that she had gotten through her acharyan and father Periyazhwar is not able to make her unite with Emperuman, then what is the use of it. For that matter, what is the use of anything in this world if it is not taking us or putting us in the track of reaching the Highest? So out of sheer love for her Krishna, she feels she will do anything to be just with HIM.

Likewise, there are umpteen number of instances in other azhwar's works, namely Nammazhwar, Thirumangaiazhwar and Periyazhwar etc, where mulai and kongai is used. It always refers to bhakti. Similarly, let us take another body part and conclude so that we can extrapolate the meanings if we come across them later. “idai” refers to waists. The ulterior meaning though is “Vairagyam”. Vairagyam here refers to vairagyam in things other than emperumaan. We may be aware that the waist should be very slender and thin, accoding to Chamudrika lakshanam. Azhwars refer their girls (in penn bhavanai) as to ones who possess invisible idai, meaning the girls have no “vairagyam” in other stuff.

Similarly, eyes are associated with gyanam, so on and so forth. It is certainly interesting and fascinating to explore these deep divine meanings using our acharya vyakyaanam.

Azhwar Emberumanar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Andal Sametha Ranganathan Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Acharyan Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Kaalambra

2011-11-11T16:24:00.000-08:00

People sometimes use the word "kaalambra" in thamizh to refer to morning. This is a word that has been misinterpreted and used inappropriately sometimes. "Kaalambra" does not have to refer to "morning" necessarily. The original thamizh word is "kaalampera". "kaalam" refers to time and "pera" means "to get". So,"kaalampera" means before the next "kaalam" (time period) gets in". Typically, we have morning, afternoon, evening and night as our four widely established time periods. So, when some one says "kaalam pera andha velaiya mudichidu", he means to say "do that job as soon as the next period sets in". In other words, if he says " "kaalam pera andha velaiya mudichidu" during afternoon, he means he wants the other person to do the job before the next time period (evening in this case) sets in. So, "kaalampera" is a phrase to mean "quick" or "do it fast".

The reason why it is being associated with morning is because of the assumption that if someone wants something to be done quick, then he probably wants to do it very fast , like overnight. We know the popular saying "things dont happen overnight" to mean things dont happen quick. So, when the say "kaalampera", before the next time period (morning) sets in , the person wants the job to be done. So, the original phrase "kaalampera" has been used to mean "morning" predominantly, though you can call a person and say in the afternoon "kaalampera mudichidu velayai" to mean "finish it before evening". That is absolutely right. People in Thirukurugoor, a.k.a Azhwar Thirunagari , some of them use this phrase even today in the correct way. The time when the person who uses this phrases does not matter. Putting it simplym, it just means "quick before the next time period sets in".

The reason people in Azhwar Thirunagari use it in the right way is because Nammazhwar has used it and people just follow him. Nammazhwar uses this phrase in 4.1.1th Thiruvaimozhi to refer to "asap" when he urges people to go until the Lotus Feet of Sriman Narayana. The overall meaning of that pasuram is: Howmuch ever powerful a person may be, even the mighty and powerful kings, who once thought they are invincible, have been defeated in the war, lost their kingdom, struck with absolute poverty, went begging for food, got blind, got bitten by a black dog and did not know where to go. So Nammazhwar says even those kings have only one safest option and also an ordinary layman has that option as the safest way. No one is going to come to your rescue when you realize this changing fortune of yours.The wise are those who realize this and go and surrender until the Lotus Feet of Sriman Narayanan. Here is the Thiruvaimozhi that has that phrase.

ஒரு நாயகமாய் ஓட உலகுடன் ஆண்டவர்

கரு நாய் கவர்ந்த காலர் சிதைகிய பானையர்

பெரு நாடு காண இம்மையிலே பிச்சை தாம்கொள்வர்

திரு நாரணன் தாள் காலம் பெறச் சிந்தித்து உய்ம்மினோ

Swami Ramamujar has attributed this to Melkote, also known as Thirunaarayanapuram, though technically it does not come under the 108 dhivya desam. It is an abhimana sthalam.

Azhwar Emberumanar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam

Swami Pillai Lokacharyar

2011-11-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

Today is Swami Pillai Loka charyar's Thirunakshatram (Aipasi Thiruvonam). Today is also Poigai azhwar's thirunakshatram. A quick recap of Swami Pillai lokacharyar's history:

Birth Details: He was born in 1205 A.D in the month of "Aipasi" and in the star of "Thiruvonam".
Birth Story: His father was "Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai" (his acharyan who is there in guru paramparai also). Swami Nampillai asked Swami Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai's mother "Ammi" about her welfare. She told that all is well except that their family need an offspring for bhagavath and bhaagavatha kainkaryam. Since her son Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai is not interested in gruhasthraashramam, the continutation of the lineage might be hampered. On hearing this, Swami Nampillai asked her to bring Swami Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai unto him. He blessed him and asked him to indulge in gruhasthraashram to get children to spread the deep purports of "Emberumaanar Darisanam". Thus, with the blessings of Swami Nampillai, Swami Pillai lokacharya was born. His father gave him his acharya's name (took "Pillai" from Swamy Nampillai's name and added "Lokacharyar" that was Swami Nampillai's another name. Swami Nampillai, whose original name was "Namboor Varadarajar" was given the name "Lokacharyar" by Swami Kanthaadai Thozhappar.
Brother: After two years of Pillai Lokacharya's birth Swami Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai was blessed for a second time by Namperumal himself with a baby boy. He was named "Azhagiya Manavaala Perumal Naayanar". Thus Swami Vadaku Thiruveedhi Pillai had two sons, one through bhagavath kataksham and one throught bhaagavatha kataksham.

Incarnation of Kanchi Deva Perumal: Kanchi Deva Perumal incarnated as Swami Pillai Lokacharyar. A person was listening to rahasyartham in Kanchipuram due to the divine blessings of Kanchi Devarajan. Suddenly he had a bad luck of not listening to it any more for no reason. Later Kanchi Deva Perumal asked that person to go to Srirangam after sometime and continue the lectures. Upon reaching Srirangam after a while, he came to know about Swami Pillai lokacharyar. When he joined his kalakshepa goshti, the person was very much surprised to see that Swami continued exactly from that point where the person had stopped listening. He had an insight that Swami Pillai lokacharya may be Kanchi Devarajan Himsel. So the person went and asked Swami "Avaro Neer"? for which Swami replied "Aam. Sevadhu yen?", meaning "Yes. I am verily Devaraja Perumal. What can I do for you now? Thus, Kanchi Devarja Perumal is Swami Pillai Lokacharyar. Kanchi Devarja Peruamal, now born in Thiruvonam (Thiruvenkatmudayan thirunkashtaram) served in Srirangam and even protected Namperumal. The big 3 of our srivaishnava dhivya desams are all assembled here.
Sishyas:

Koorakuloththama dasar
Manarpakkam nambi
Kollikavala dasa (Azhagiya Manavala Perumal Pillai)
Kotturilannar and
Vilanjolai Pillai.

Works: He wrote 18 works that are known as "Ashtadasa Rahasyangal" that can be divided into three categories. The first category talks about Rahasya Thrayam: There are 8 such works in this category including:

Yaadrichikapadi, Sriyapadhipadi,Mumukshupadi ,Parandhapadi,Thani Pranavam,Thani Dwayam ,Thani Charamam and Sara sangraham
The second categroy talks about Thathva thrayam.These are 5 in number and include Thathva Thrayam,Artha Panchakam,Thathva Sekaram ,Premaya Sekaram and Archiradi.
The third category talks about the essence of Srivaishnavam. These are 5 in number and include Samsara Samrajyam,Navavidha sambandham,Navarathnamalai,Prapanna Parithranaam and Srivachanabushanam (the magnum opus and the most magnificient masterpiece)

Rahasyam Vilaindha Mann: Swami Pillai lokacharyar used to give discourses to his sishyas in "Kaatazhagiya Singar" mandapam in Srirangam. He wrote the aforementioned 18 works in this same mandapam. Swami Manavala Mamunigal referred to this place as "Rahasyam Vilaindha Mann" as this was the place upon which Swami Pillai lokacharyar sat and revealed the esoteric purports of Rahasya thryam and other grantham. Swami Maamunigal picked handful of sand and preserved it. It can now be seen in Swami Manavala Maamunigal sanndhi in Srirangam.
Thaniyan:

லோகச்சர்யாய குரவே கிருஷ்ண பாதஸ்ய சூனவே
சம்சார போகி சந்தஷ்ட ஜீவ ஜீவாதவே நம:

Vaazhi Thirunamam:

அத்திகிரி அருளாளர் அனுமதியோன் வாழியே
ஐப்பசியில் திருவோனத்து அவதரித்தான் வாழியே
முத்தி நெறி மறைத்தமிழால் மொழிந்தருள்வோன் வாழியே
மூதரிய மணவாளன் முன்புதித்தான் வாழியே
நித்தியம் நம்பிள்ள பதம் நெஞ்சில் வைப்போன் வாழியே
நீள் வசன பூடணத்தில் நியமித்தான் வாழியே
உத்தமமாம் முடும்பை நகர் உதித்த வள்ளல் வாழியே
உலகாரியன் பதங்கள் ஊழிதொரும் வாழியே

Reference in Upadesa Rathna Maalai: Swami Manavala Maamunigal had elaborately praised Swami Pillai lokacharyar's work from pasuram 53 to 59 in his Upadesa Rathna Maalai. He is awestruck with Sri Vachan Bushanam and says only few people can understand the majestic Sri Vachana Bushanam, only a very few people can practice (those selected by Lord's Nirhetuka Krupai). He feels sorry for those who does not know Sri Vachana Bushanam. It is everyone's duty to learn this and his other 17 rahasya granthams from their own acharyan (preferably) and try to practice them in our daily life. If we can follow at least 1% of it, a sea of good positive change awaits us very soon.

Attack on Srirangam: During his time, Srirangam was attacked thrice. During the last attack, Swami covered Periya Perumal's sannidhi with a big rock (kal thirai) and took Namperumal vigraham and proceeded towards Madurai. On reaching the outskirts, he hid himself in a place called "Jyothishkudi" (Kodikulam) and protected Perumal in a cave and did thiruvaradhanam to him. This place is now accessible to bhagavathaas and one should really go to this place to see how much Swami has struggled in his later days to protect Namperumal. It is at this place that he attained Paramapadam. Thus, he not only protected the Pramanams (scriptures that talk about Lord), he protected the prameyam (Lord Himself) as well.

Vaikunta Praapthi: He attained Paramapadm in 1311 A.D at Jyothishkudi. His sishya "Thiruvaimozhi Pillai" was his successor in the acharya guru paramparai.

Azhwar Emberumanar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam!!!

Swami Manavaala Maamunigal

2011-10-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

Today is Swami Manavaala Maamunigal Thirunkashatram. Let us remember and try to know some basic information about him. A quick 16 point tour about this great acharyan.

Birth Details: He was born in 1370 A.D in Azhwar Thirunagari, the birth place of Swami Nammazhwar.
Star: He was born in the month of "Aipasi" in the star of "Moolam".
Incarnation: He is another avatharam (punar avatharam) of Swami Ramanujar, and so he is also an amsam of Aadiseshan.
Father: His father's name was "Tigazhaakkidanthan Tirunaveerudaiya piran dasar annar".
Mother: His mother's name was "Sriranga Nachiar".
Original Name: His parents gave him the name of "Azhagiya Manavaala Perumal Nayanar". This is also the name of younger brother of Swami Pillai lokacharyar.
Sanyasam: Swami Manavala Mamunigal's acharyan was Swami Thiruvaimozhipillai. He then took sanyasam from Sri Satakopa jeeyar, also a disciple of Swami Thiruvaimozhipillai. It is a common misconception that Sri Adivan satakopa jeeyar of Ahobila matam initiated Swami manavala mamunigal into sanyasam.
Famous sishya: His famous sishya was Lord Ranganathan Himself, thereby closing the acharyan paramparai loop. Lord Ranganathan's words on His acharyan Swami Manavaala Maamunigal is: Srisailesa dhaya pathram dheebhakthyadhi gunarnavam Yatheendra pravanam vandhe Ramyajamataram munim that translate into "I offer my respects to Sri Manavalamamuni, the receptacle of Srisailesa’s (Tiruvaimozhipillai’s) grace. He is the abode of jnana, bhakti and all other good qualities, and is forever lost in meditation on Sri Ramanuja"
Commentaries: He wrote commentaries on:

Sri Vachana Bhushanam (Swami Pillai Lokacharyar's work)
Mumukshuppadi (Swami Pillai Lokacharyar's work)
Tathvathrayam (Swami Pillai Lokacharyar's work)
Acharya Hrudhayam (Swami Azhagiya Manavaala Perumaal Nayanaar's work)
Gnana Saaram (Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's work)
Prameya Saaram (Swami Arulala Perumal Emberumanar's work)
Periyazhwar Thirumozhi (Periyazhwar's work. He did commentary only for those pasurams that was lost and missing from the original Swami Periyavachan Pillai's work, as he had a great respect for Vyakyana Chakravathy Swami Periyavachan Pillai)
Ramanuja Nootranthadhi (Swami Thiruvarangathu Amudhanar's work)

Independent works: He wrote the following works himself (ofcourse "mayarvara madhinalam arulapetru):

Upadesa Rathna Maalai
Thiruvaimozhi Nootranthadhi (A four liner for every padhigam of Thiruvaimozhi. It had (a) andhaadhi format (b) azhwar's name in all the pasurams (c) the crux of the 10 pasurams of thiruvaimozhi).
Iyal Chaatru
Thiruvaradhana Kramam
Yathiraja Vimsathi (A collection of 20 slokams in Sanskrit)
Devaraja MangaLam
Sri Kanchi Devapperumal Sthothram
Aaarthi Prabhandham (his last work)

Pramana Thiratu: He wrote "Pramana Thiratu", a compilation of various pramanams categorized into these three poorvachaarya's work:

Eedu (Swami Nampillai's work)
Sri Vachana Bhushanam (Swami Pillailokacharya's work)
Tathvathrayam (Swami Pillailokacharya's work)

Famous 8 Sishyas: He also established "Ashta Diggajangal" who were his eight famous sishyas to spread "Emberumaanar Darisanam" in eight directions. They were:

Vanamaamalai Jeeyar
Paravasthu Bhattar Piraan jeeyar
Tiruvengada jeeyar
Koil kanthaadai annan
Prathivaadhi bhayankaram annaa
Erumbi appaa
Appillai and
Appillan.

Vaazhi Thirunamam: All his 8 famous disciples wrote laudatory verses known as "Vaazhi thirunaamams", Let us take a couple. This one was composed by Appillai is as follows:

இப்புவியில் அரங்க்கேசர்க்கு ஈடளித்தான் வாழியே
எழில் திருவாய்மொழிப்பிள்ளை இணை அடியோன் வாழியே
ஐப்பசியில் திருமுலத்து அவதரித்தான் வாழியே
அரவரசப் பெருஞ்சோதி அனந்தன் என்றும் வாழியே
எப்புவியும் ஸ்ரீசைலம் ஏத்த வந்தோன் வாழியே
ஏராரும் எதிராசர் என உதித்தான் வாழியே
முப்புரி நூல் மணிவடமும் முக்கோல் தரித்தான் வாழியே
மூதரிய மணவாள மாமுனிவன் வாழியே!!!

Naal Paatu: The following one is more commonly known as "Naal Paatu", composed by Swami Ponnadikaal Jeeyar (also known as Vaanamaamalai Jeeyar). It is as follows:
செந்தமிழ்  வேதியர்  சிந்தை தெளிந்து  சிறந்து  மகிழ்ந்திடுநாள்
சீருலகாரியர்  செய்தருள் நற்கலை  தேசு பொலிந்திடுநாள்
மந்தமதிப்புவி மாநிடர் தங்களை  வானில் உயர்த்திடு நாள்
மாசறு ஞானியர் செரெதிராசர்தம்  வாழ்வு முளைத்திடு  நாள்
கந்தமலர்பொழில் சூழ் குருகாதிபன் கலைகள் விளங்கிடுநாள்
காரமர்மேனி அரங்கனகர்க்கிறை  கண்கள்  களித்திடுநாள்
அந்தமில் சீர் மணவாள முனிப்பரன்  அவதாரம்  செய்திடுநாள்
அழகு  திகழ்ந்திடும் ஐப்பசியில் திருமூலமது எனுநாளே!!!
Other Names: He is commonly referred to as the "Vichadha Vaak Sikaamani" due to his truthful and unparalled commentaries. He is also known as "Varavara muni" and "Jeeyar". When people say "Azhwar Emberumanaar Jeeyar Thiruvadigale Saranam", "Azhwar refers to Nammazhwar, Emberumanaar refers to Swami Ramanujar and Jeeyar is Manavalaa Maamunigal".
Vaikunta Praapthi: He attained paramapadham on 1443 A.D.

Sangu Thangu Munkai Nangai

2011-10-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Sangu Thangu Munkai Nangai" is a phrase used by Thirumazhisai azwhar in his 57th pasuram in Thiruchandha virutham. He uses it to describe Periya Pirati Sri Mahalakshmi. The whole Thiruchandha virutham is ebullient with energy.

Pasuram:

சங்கு தங்கு முன்கை நங்கை கொங்கை தங்கல் உற்றவன்

அங்கமங்க அன்று சென்று அடர்த்து எறிந்த ஆழியான்

கொங்கு தங்கு வார்குழல் மடந்தைமார் குடந்தை நீர்

பொங்கு தண் குடந்தையுள் கிடந்த புண்டரீகனே

Meaning:
Sangu - valayal (bangles). Sangu has lot of meaning and one of them is "bangles"
Thangu - to stay
Munkai - front part of the hand (referring to the part where ladies wear their bangles)
Nangai - a lady with all auspicious characters present in the maximum order

Story: Once upon a time, there was businessman in a town. He was married recently. A week after his marriage, he called upon his wife and told "I need to go out of station for a couple of months. I shall be back after 2 months". The wife, who was wearing a lot of bangles in her hand, was so sad to hear this news from her husband. Upon hearing this, she began to thin out . Her hands began to shrink in size due to her fear of separation from her beloved husband. She was actually wearing a dozen (12) bangles. After this news, since she started to thin out, the bangles could not stay in her tender hands that almost half of them started to fall down and shatter into pieces. She somehow managed to save the remaining half. Seeing this, the husband was excited to see the love the wife had on him. He immediately thought and replied "Okay. Either, I shall not go or shall take you with me". The wife could'nt believe that. It took a few moments for the good news to sink in to her mind. She immediately began to grow . The hands that was shrunk enormously, now started to fatten out. It grew to an extent that, all the remaining 6 bangles was too tight for her stout hand and because of that it broke away and fell into pieces in the ground. So, the concept of separation made them grow or shrink in size, which was the love they had in olden times. This is one of the common ways of describing separation (pirivu aatraamai) in literature.

So, the point in the story is that, there was a concept of "separation" for a husband and wife due to which the bangles stay or break away. But, the concept of separation does not hold good in the case of Periya Pirati, Sri Mahalakshmi. This is why they say the bangles stay on her hand forever because her hands are not going to shrink in size because her Husband Sriman Narayanan is not going to get separated from her, nor He is going to announce afer a while (like in the story above) that He will come back after sometime so as to make her hands overgrow and still break. This will not be the case for the dhivya dampathis as she stays forever with HIM, though in the epics, she appears to get separated from HIM, for a much broader cause with deeper sampradhayic purports. Thirumazhisai azhwar says Ravanan tried to separate this divine lady, the lokshamaatha Seetha, who is a "sangu thangu munkai nangai" and the rest was history. While the fact of matter is that there is no separation between them forever, they appeared to us as separated for illustrating various key points and take aways in our sampradhayam, which could not have been possible, had both of them stayed in the forest and returned to Ayodhya at the end of 14 years. Swami Nammazhwar says this "agalagilen irayumendru malarmel mangai urai maarba" in his famous "Ulagamunda Peruvaaya" padhigam in Thiruvaimozhi 6.10.9. This "sangu thangu munkai nangai" is used by Swami Periyavachan Pillai in his Pasurapadi Ramayanam, taking this exact phrase from Thirumazhisai azhwar.

Meaning of Kaaguthaa - One of the names of Lord Rama

2011-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

One of the numerous names of Lord Rama is Kaakutsa. The thamizh equivalent of this is "kaaguththan". Azhwars have used this name in many of their pasurams. Swami Sri.U.Ve.Velukudi Krishnan explains this very clearly.

Ikshawaku was a glorious king in the times of yore. He was the son of Manu. Ikshwaku was very righteous and he led by example. He was one of the foremost in "Surya vamsam" that had many great kings in the likes of Raghu, Bhagirathan, Dasarathan and the one and the only Lord Rama. This clan is also called as "Ikshawaku kulam". The kings in this clan were mighty powerful that whenever there was a war between the devas and the asuras, the devas would often times seek out the help of the kings in this clan. They were very much renowned for the valor, righteousness and honesty.

Once upon a time, much before the times of Dasarathan, there broke a fierce war between the devas and the asuras. Indra, the chief of the devas, came and requested the help of the then king in that solar dynasty. The king agreed to help Indra and devas, upon a condition. The king told Indira, " I am ready to come and help out you guys, if you take a form of a bull, where by I could sit on top of you in the hump area and do war with the asuras". Indira agreed to the request of the king happily and he transformed himself to a bull . The king sat on the hump of the bull and fought the war for Devas and earned them victory.

The hump part of the bull (or any cattle) is referred to as "kakuth". The thamizh name for this place of the cattle is called "thimil". Since the king made the "kakuth" part of the cattle as his place ("sa") in the war, he was referred as "kakuthsa". The suffix "sa" connotates to "place", "be with" "in place together", as we see in names like "Srivatsa" that means "Sri, who lives in the chest of Perumal as her place forever". When this suffix "sa" is preceeded by "t", we need to pronounce it properly. In some parts of India, people mispronounce this name by swapping the position of "t" and "s" and say "Srivasta" or "Shrivasthava" etc, which is not right and not the original intent of the name. Sometimes, people also say "Usthavam" and not "Uthsavam". "Kaakuthsa" should end and rhyme with "uthsa" as in the word "uthsavam".

So, back to our story, the king was then called "kakuthsa". Since, Lord Rama came in the same dynasty as the king, he was been referred to as "kaakuthsa". The "thamizh"ised equivalent of this is "kaaguththan". A couple of Nammazhwar's pasurams we can enjoy that has this name of Lord Rama :

(a) From "kangulum pagalum" padhigam about Srirangam in Thiruvaimozhi (7.2.3)

வட்கிலள் இறையும் மணிவண்ணா! என்னும் வானமே நோக்கும் மையாக்கும்

உட்குடை அசுரர் உயிரெல்லாம் உண்ட ஒருவனே! என்னும் உள்ளுருக்கும்

கட்கிலீ! உன்னைக் காணுமாறு அருளாய் காகுத்தா! கண்ணனே! என்னும்

திட்கொடி மதிள்சூழ் திருவரங்கத்தாய்! இவள்திறத்து என் செய்திட்டாயே?

vatkilaL iRaiyum maNivaNNaa! ennum vaanamE nOkkum maiyaakkum
utkudai achurar uyirellaam uNta oruvanE! ennum uLLurukum
katkilee! unnaik kaaNumaaRu aruLaay kaaguththaa! kaNNanE! ennum
thitkodi mathiLchooz thiruvarangaththaay! ivaLthiRaththu en_ cheydhittaayE?

(b) This one is from Thiruvaimozhi 5.4.3, "Oorellam thunji" padhigam:

நீயும் பாங்கல்லைகாண் நெஞ்சமே! நீளிரவும்

ஓயும் பொழுதின்றி ஊழியாய் நீண்டதால்

காயும் கடுஞ்சிலை என் காகுத்தன் வாரானால்

மாயும் வகை அறியேன் வல்வினையேன் பெண் பிறந்தே

neeyum baaNGgallaikaaN nenchamE! neeLiravum
Oyum pozhudhinRi oozhiyaay neendathaal
kaayum kadunchilai en kaaguththan vaaraanaal
maayum vagai aRiyEn val vinaiyEn peN piRandhE

Saranagathis in Sriramayanam - Why did and why did'nt they succeed

2011-10-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

In Sriramayanam, there are 6 places in which different people have done saranagathi. To put it in simple words, "Saranagathi" is the act of recongizing that one does not have anything in himself, one has renounced everything and has taken the Lotus Feet of the Lord as the lone protector". Every alternate saranagathi is a success and so every other one is a failure. We shall see what those are and then delve into why some were successful and some were not. Here is the 6 saranagathis. This is entirely from Sri.U.Ve.Velukudi Krishnan's swami's Pasurapadi Ramayanam upanyasam. Anything wrong here is due to adiyen's ignorance in understanding and anything good is swami's and acharyan's krupai.

1) Devas perform to Lord Sriman Narayana: This is when all the Devas and other demi gods went to Lord Sriman Narayanan to protect them from the wrath of Ravana. This was successful as the Lord himself incarnated as Rama in Tretha Yugam.

2) Dasaratha performs to Parasurama: On the way back from Mithilapuri to Ayodhya, Parasurama threatened Rama that He had broken just the shiva dhanush and that He needs to break the Vishnu Dhanush. If only can Rama do it, Parasurama would allow them to go, otherwise a war was in the cards. Dasaratha did saranagathi to Parasurama, but that was not successful as Lord Rama Himself has to intervene as Parasurama did not pay any heed to Dasaratha's words.

3) Lakshmana performs to Rama: When Rama decided to go to the forest for 14 years, Lakshamana wanted to join them as well. But Rama initially refused it. Later Lakshmana did saranagathi under the Lotus feet of Rama. Rama yielded to his request and hence all 3 went to the forest. This saranagathi was successful.

4) Bharatha performs to Rama: On hearing the news that his brother Rama had gone to forest, Bharathat wanted to bring HIM back to Ayodhya and wanted to hand over the kingdom to Rama. In order to do that, Bharatha went to Chithrakootam, did saranagathi to Rama. However, still Rama refused. We shall see why later.

5) Vibishana performs to Rama: Vibishanan did saranagathi at Thirupullani Sethu karai in Southern Tamil Nadu. He abandoned everything and seeked refuge under Rama. Rama gladly accepted him, though he was from the opposite army.

6) Rama performs to Samudra Rajan: In the same Thirupullani shore, Rama did saranagathi to the King of Ocean (Samudra Rajan) for 3 days. It was not successful as Samudra Rajan did not yielded to Rama's request.

So, on what factor does the success of a saranagathi depend? There are three main factors that we need to understand to comprehend it. They are (a) Quality of the person who does saranagathi (b) Quality of the person to whom sarangathi was done and (c) Lord's discretion. We shall go in to each one of these in detail

(a) Quality of the person who does saranagathi: In order to do saranagathi, a person who does it (saranagathan) should not have any qualification. In other words, "Lack of any qualification" is the only qualification of a saranagathan. He should not have anything left in him like a little bit of karma yogam, little bit of gyana yogam, little bit of bhakti yogam etc. He should not have anything with him and should reliquinsh everything he had. Our poorvacharyas have coined two terms to describe the lack of qualification. (1) Akinchanyam and (2) Ananya gadhithvam. Akinchinyam is the lack of any principal, lack of anything (kai mudhal illamai) that we can take it as a prerequisite for attaining moksham. Anaya Gadhithvam is the lack of a place where one can take refuge except Sriman Narayanan (veru pugal idam/ veru gathi illamal irupadhu).

(b) Quality of the person who accepts saranagathi: This person is known as the "Saranyan". "Saranyan" should have 2 qualities for him to protect the person who does saranagathi. They are (a) Parathvam and (b) Sowlabhayam. "Par" is boundary and "Para" is transgressing or crossing boundaries. It signifes that there is no one greater than Him, nothing stronger than Him, nothing invincible for Him, nothing that is beyond His knowledge, nothing that He cannot create, nothing He cannot protect and nothing He cannot destroy. So these parathvam qualities talk about the highest and the infinite. The second category is "Sowlabhyam" qualities that glorifies the great qualities of making oneself available, approachable and to be able to easily mingle with one and all. To remember the word "Sowlabhyam" easily, remeber that it means "ease". We know that "sulabham" means easy in Thamizh. One who is easy or sulabham is known as "Sowlabhyan" and thus that quality of his is "Sowlabhyam". It is this quality that is of utmost importance to a saranagathan, because if not for this, there is no way a saranagathan can love a saranayan. If not for this, a sarangathan can, at the most have a respect for saranyan and may be a fear towards a saranyan, but certainly not love. However, the "Parathvam" qualities are also important because if not for it either, He cannot protect us in the first place.

(c) The act of Saranagathi itself and His independent wish: This is a tricky clause because though the four qualities of a saranagthi ("Aakinchanyam" and "Ananya Gadhithvam" for a sarangathan and "Parathvam" and "Sowlabhyam" for a Saranayan) are exactly in place, at the end of the day, it is Perumal's thiruvullam (wish) to grant success. He is independent (swanthran) and is not controlled by anything and anybody. He can act to His whims and fancies.

With these three facets of saranagathi, if we analyze the aforementioned six saranagathis in Ramayanam, we can get answers as to why three failed and why three succeeded. We shall list:

1) Devas perform to Lord Sriman Narayana: Devas were troubled to an extreme extent that they did not have anything left in them other than to seek the Lotus Feet of Sriman Narayanan. Brahma and Siva gave a boon to Ravana that made him very close to inconquerable. So Devas, not only did they have anything in their hand to protect them , they cannot go to anyone else to ask for protection. So, saranyan had the two qualities of Aakinchanyam and Ananya Gadhi thvam to the fullest. Similarly, saranagathan Sriman Narayanan is the only one who has both Parathvam and Sowlabhyam.

2) Dasaratha performs to Parasurama: It was unsuccessful as Dasaratha was a mighty warrior himself to protect a whole kingdom. Parasurama was an incarnation of Sriman Narayanan, however He was known just for the Parathvam and Sowlabhyam was missing completely. So, this saranagathi failed miserably.

3) Lakshmana performs to Rama: Lakshmana had both qualities of a saranyanan. Though he is a great warrior, he always was aware of the fact that there is nothing for him to be proud about it, because he does not possess those powers. It was given unto him by his great brother Sri Rama. This was successful as Rama had the complete quality of a saranagathan and also there would be nothing stopping in pursuing His ulterior objective of Ramayanam.

4) Bharatha performs to Rama: This is an interesting one because both saranyan (Bharatha) and saranagathan (Rama) had the qualities in the fullest extent possible. This is when the third factor comes into picture. The third factor is nothing but the act of saranagathi itself that deals with when it was done and subsequently Sriman Narayanan's independent wish. Bharatha performed sarangathi and want to reroute Rama to Ayodhya. Rama was on a mission to meet and protect the rishis in the forest, meet Jatayu, Sabari, Sugreeva, Hanuman, Vibishana and finally kill Ravana. Rama was on a roll to let the story flow so that the world would know the importance of Sita, the universal mother, her sacrifices and the messages that she imparted to the world. Bharatha, though he was a complete saranyan with full "aakinchanyam" and "anaya gadhi thvam", he performed in the wrong time for the reasons we saw above. So Rama did not yield to his request and asked him to go back to Ayodhya, after giving His "paadhukai". So, it is the Lord's wish totally because, if this is not, then it becomes a contract or a business, wherein, a saranyan goes ahead and says to Sriman Narayanan "I have shed everything. I do not have aakinchanyam. I am not going to anyone else apart from you. So you need to make sure this saranagathi of mine is successful right now and grant me moksham instantly". This is akin to a person who wanted to store water. He dug many deep holes in his back yard but complained "I have been doing a lot of hard work of digging holes to save water. I dug the holes very deep yet there is no rain when I finished it. This is not fair". So, it is the duty of a saranagathan to do saranagathi. The time of saranagathi and Lord Sriman Narayanan's ultimate wish depends if it will be successful now or later.

5) Vibishana performs to Rama: This is a very complete saranagathi and does not need any explanation as to why it succeeded. Azhwars celebrate Vibishana as "selva vibishanan", meaning "prosperous Vibishana" only after renouncing the worldly luxuries in Lanka and seeking the eternal luxury of being at the One and the Only Sriman Narayanan.

6) Rama performs to Samudra Rajan: As a saranyan, Lord Rama did not have "aakinchanyam" and "ananya gadhi thvam" and neither did the Samudra Rajan as a saranagathan. The King of Ocean is nothing compared to Rama. So, there is no wonder this saranagathi failed.

Meaning of Saapatu Raman and Anjaneyar

2011-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

Saapatu Raman: It is quite common to refer those who eat a lot as "Saapatu Raman". I never knew that there would be a story behind it until my wife told about it after she listened to an upanyasam of Sri.U.Ve.M.A.Venkatakrishnan Swamy. So, just wanted to share it, just in case you did not know it earlier. Lord Sri Rama after defeating Ravana in Sri Lanka, was en route to Ayodhya with Sita, Lakshmana, Vibishana, Sugreeva and the whole army of monkeys and bears. Before proceeding to Ayodhya, He stopped at Bharadwaja maharishi's ashramam and want to have the great rishi's darshan.Time was really ticking away for Rama because Bharatha had earlier promised Rama that if Rama does not come and see him the day after the 14th year, he would create a fire and will kill himself by jumping in it. Rama knew that Bharatha would stand up to his words and so He thought that He would just stop at Bharadwaja maharishi's ashramam for a few moments as a sign of respect and then take leave to Ayodhya as fast as He could. But Bharadwaja maharishi, on seeing the victorious Rama asked Him to stay there for that night and leave the next day after performing Thadeeyaaraadhanai (afternoon lunch, Thadee means followers of Vishnu, aka Bhagavathas and offering lunch to their satisfaction is called Thadeeyaaraadhanai). Now Rama was in a dilemma. He could not disobey maharishi's words nor He could let Bharatha loose his life. So He thought for a while and told "Ok Swami. I shall stay this night here and proceed the next morning and send Hanuman in the meantime to let Bharatha know that he would be late, but is on the way."

Bharadwaja maharishi was very happy. Next day,everyone sat for lunch as per the rishi's request. Rama being the one whose honor the whole event was being hosted only sat in the last batch. Hanuman returned to Rama after letting Bharatha know of the situation only after Rama had also sat down. As there was no place for Hanuman, Rama called Hanuman, a.k.a Anjaneyar and asked him to sit at the other end of the plantain leaf. Now, Rama and Hanuma were sharing the same plate, same leaf rather. Rice and vegetables were served in the plantain leaf. Since Hanuman was a monkey, he mainly eats vegetables and fruits. So Rama knew that very well and hence made a demarcation in the middle of plantain leaf and grouped all vegetables in the other side of the leaf, so that Hanuman, who was sitting in the other side, can have quick access to those vegetables. This is why we have a demarcation in the middle of the plantain leaf and vegetables are served on the other half of the leaf. Since HE stayed overnight and had saapadu (food) the next day, even before going to Ayodhya after a gap of 14 years, with Bharatha waiting and threatening to immolate himself, people say in a jocular fashion "Saapatu Raaman".

Meaning of Anjaneyar: Rama always selects Hanuman to do the role of a messenger. He selected Hanuman now to reach out to Bharathan. During the search for Sita, the whole monkey and bear troops were sitting in the forest and thinking who should go in which direction. Hanuman was thinking to himself, "Well, I really do not understand why a person like Rama should fall for His wife and be immersed in a world of sorrow forever. What is so great about her? Rama understood Hanuman's inner feelings and thought "Yes. Now I know to whom should I give my ring (kanaiaazhi)". He called Hanuman out of a crore vanara sainyam (monkey troops) and asked him to go south towards Sri Lanka, because Rama wanted Hanuman to have a dharsan of Sita first, which would change his opinion about her forever. This is why Hanuman was selected. "Aaanji eduthadhanaal aanja neyar". "Aanji" and "aaindhu" both mean "to cull out" or "to cheery pick", or "to discard the rest and choose the best". "Neyar" means a "viewer" or "observer" or "audience". Since Hanuman was the viewer / observer who was cherry picked by Rama to find Sita, Hanuman is often known as Anjaneyar. The more common reason for that name is that since he is the son of Anjani (Anjani putra), he is known as Aanjaneya. But this is also one of the reason for his name.

"Hanu" is the southern end of the chin. When Hanuman in his childhood went to eat sun, thinking that it is a fruit, Indra gave a small blow in his face with his Vajrayudham to protect the sun. Baby Hanuman fell down in ground. His "Hanu" got hurt and slightly dislocated and hence the name of Hanuman

Srivaishnava Parlance

2011-08-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

There are some words and phrases that are unique to srivaishnavam. These are indeed in thamizh/sanskritized thamizh. Here, I am just trying to list down alphabetically some of the common ones for reference. Please add/edit this list by emailing your thoughts to me. I shall add it.

Aazhwar - 12 srivaishnava poets who were bestowed with divine grace by Lord Sriman Narayanan himself to sing 4,000 pasurams (poems) that are called Nalayira Dhivya Prabandham extolling the Lord , His leela, His kalyana gunam and many more esoteric purports of the Srivaishnava sampradhayam. This word "aazhwar", also could refer to Swami Nammazhwar, who is the representative of all the 12 azhwars.
Aazhwar Goshti - Men
Abhimana Sthalam - Not part of the 108 Srivaishnava sthalams (See Dhivya Desam), but those places which our acharyas have regarded in high esteem and close to their heart that they even associate selected pasuram in Nalayira Dhivya Prabandham to this place. Example - Melkote (Thirunarayanapuram)
Abhaya Hastham - It is a posture of the divine Hand of Perumal, whereby all HIS fingers of the right hand are up and facing the sky, suggesting that "Do not be fearful of the wordly sorrows. Take refuge at my Lotus feet. I shall make sure that you are without any fear" (Bhayam is fear and abhayam is lack of it; Hastham is hand).". Namperumal of Srirangam is seen in Abhaya Hastham.
Ahvana Hastham - It is a posture of the divine Hand of Perumal, whereby HE folds his middle two fingers of HIS right hand in an effort to call HIS devotees unto HIM. HE calls them to surrender at HIS lotus feet. This can be seen at Thiru Koodal (Madurai).
Acharya - Group of People who served as the gurus in Srivaishnava lineage and those who are highly esteemed for their works/ behavior. All of them follow what their gurus have prescribed them which is nothing but the teachings of the azhwars.
Achith - All those entities that does not have consciousness (chaithanyam)
Adiyen - This is a short form of "Adiyen Iraamanusa daasan", or "I who is the servant of Swami Ramanujar" literally. People use this to refer / mean "I".
Adikudil - House of the common people. How much ever palatial one's house may be, srivaishanavas are supposed to refer it as a "small hut".
Akkara Adisil - A sweet made of milk, very little rice, lots of ghee, cashew, badam, raisin etc. Women
Amudhu seydhal - to eat.
Andal Goshti - Women
Ananya Seshathvam - Seshathvam is being a servant to our Master, Sriman Narayanan. "Anya" is other" and so "Ananya" is "no other than". So the phrase means, "Being a servant to none other than Sriman Narayanan and His adiyaars" . This is the crux of "Om" in Thirumanthiram.
Ananya Charanathvam - "Charanam" means feet, here refering to Lotus Feet of Sriman Narayanan. Continuing on the meaning of "Ananya" from above, this means "Accepting nothing / none other than the Lotus Feet of Sriman Narayanan as the sole refuge". This is the crux of the "Namaha" in Thirumanthiram.
Ananya Bhogathvam - Doing Kainkaryam to none other than Sriman Narayanan and his adiyaars. This is the crux of the "Naarayanaaya" in Thirumanthiram.
Antharyami - One of the 5 different forms of Lord Sriman Narayanan in which HE manifest HIMSELF inside each and every living and non living entity.
Archai/Archavatharam - One of the 5 different forms of Lord Sriman Narayanan in which HE manifest HIMSELF in a statue (moorthy/vigraham) form
Archiradhi Margam - The jeevathma that is liberated goes to Srivaikuntam through a path that is called "Archiradhi Margam". The is a one-way, meaning that the jeevathma reaches Paramathama Sriman Narayanan in Srivaikuntam and never travel back.
Araiyar - A group of people from Swami Nadhamuni's clan who are well versed in giving dance poses / abhinayam to Naalayira Dhivya Prabandham pasurams. Araiyars perform (Araiyar Sevai) in 3 places only that includes Srirangam, Srivlliputhur and Thirukurugoor (Azhwar Thirunagari).
Artha Panchakam - 5 main points. (1) jeevathma swaroopam - Knowing who are we, (2) Paramathma Swaroopam - Knowing who is Lord Sriman Narayanan (3) Upaya Swaroopam - Knowing what is the way to reach the Lord (4) Virodhi Swaroopam - Knowing the obstacles in that way and (5) Praapya Swaroopam - Knowing what will we do after reaching our final destination of Lord's feet.
Aruli Cheyal : The thamizh name for Dhivya Prabandham
Baddathma: People like us who have not yet liberated and so have not yet go moksham and so have not yet been there to Srivaikuntam. So it includes all who are there in this leela viboothi (see Leela Viboothi)
Bhagavan - Lord Sriman Narayanan and so matters pertaining to HIM are called "bhagavath".
Bhaagavathaal- Lord Sriman Narayanan's servants and so matters pertaining to them are called "bhaagavatha".
Bhattar- Generally it refers to an Archaka / Priest in the srivaishanva temple. It also refers to Parasara Bhattar, the son of Koorathazhwan.
Chaamaram - Similar to hand fan
Chakram / Sudarshana azhwar - Lord's divine discuss.
Changu / Paanchasanniyam - Conch
Charama Parva Nishtai - The concept of going to the Lotus feet of Lord through one's acharyan. In this approach, one regards his / her acharyan as everything. Reaching the Lord's feet is guranteed though that may be placed at a lower pedestal than one's acharyan himself.
Chith - All those entities that have consciousness (chaithanyam)
Dhivya Desam - A collection of 108 holy srivaishnava temples that have been sung by one or more than one of the 12 azhwars
Devareer - You / Esteemed yourself.
Dwadasa Namam - Dwadasa means 12 and so this phrase refers to the collection of 12 names of Sriman Narayanan including Kesava, Narayana, Madhava, Govindha, Vishnu, Madhusudhana, Thrivikrama, Vamana, Sridhara, Hrishikesa, Padmanabha and Damodhara.
Eeshwaran- Lord Sriman Narayanan. The word refers to the controlling nature of Sriman Narayanan. Since HE pervades through both living and non-living entities and controls them, HE is called "Eeshwaran" or the "One who controls"
Echarigai - Usually uttered in a gathering to alert the group to usually disassemble.
Ezhundhu Aruluvadhu - To be there for the occasion (yezhundhu) and bestow with goodness (aruluvadhu). In other words, this phrase means "present at the occasion" or "just being there". The two words "yezhundhu" and 'aruluvadhu", over a period of time changed to "yeluvadhu". So the original phrase would be "Perumal ezhundhu aruli irukiraar" and the colloquila phrase is "Perumal yelirukaar".
Guru Paramparai - Srivaishnava Acharya lineage
Jeeyar- Pontiff of a matam. In Thenacharya philosophy, the word "jeeyar" refers to Manvaala Maamunigal.
Kainkaryam - Etymologically, this word is formed from "Kim (what)" + "Karothi (to do)". So , a person who constantly asks what should I next do for the Lord, after finishing one particular task. The act by itself is called "kainkaryam" and the person is called "kainkarya parar".
"Kann valarndhu aruluvadhu" - to sleep. Kann - eye; valarndhu - to grow and aruluvadhu - to bless. Essentially this means "to sleep". Even the sleep of great acharyas is a blessing.
Kandu Arula Pannudhal - To offer whatever be the cooked/uncooked stuff to Perumal. Kandu is to see and Arula Pannudhal - means to bless. So, when we offer food for Perumal, He blesses us by looking at it, thereby we assume that He had it first before we can have it. As a srivaishnavite, we should never eat anything that is not offered to HIM. In cases that is not possible, atleast we should think in our mind that we offer to HIM first and then eat it.
Kariamudhu - Vegetables.
Kovil Azhwar - The shrine in which our house Perumal is kept.
Ksheer Annam - A sweet that is made of just milk (ksheer) and rice (annam).
Leela Viboothi - Collection of earth, solar system, milkyway galaxy, collection of galaxies and finally the whole universe in which we live. It is here where the Lord performs his leelai and so this place is called Leela viboothi. This looks big but it is just 1/4th. The remaining 3/4ths is Nithya Viboothi.
Mangalaasaasanam - To praise or sing the glories.
Mukthaathama - People who are born in this Leelaviboothi and then gets liberated and attain moksham and go to Srivaikunatam via "Archiradhi Margam" to stay there forever from then on.
Negizh Kariamudhu - Kuzhambu.
Nithyanusandhanam - Things or paasurams that we are supposed to do/recite (anusandhanam) daily(nithyam).
Nithya soorigal - Those who are there with Lord Sriman Narayana forever.
Nithya viboothi - Refers to Lord Sriman Narayanan's eternal abode of Srivaikuntam. This is the reamining 3/4th that was referred in Leela Viboothi.
Novu Saatri Kolludhal - Again, this is applicable for the great acharyas. This means that the great acharya has decoreated his body with disease. Essentially, it means, he is sick.
Para - One of the 5 different forms of Lord Sriman Narayanan in which HE manifest HIMSELF as Paramapadha Naadhan in Srivaikuntam. This is HIS eternal place.
Paramathma - Lord Sriman Narayanan
Periya Thiruvadi - Garudan
Prathama Parva Nishtai - The concept of going to the Lotus feet of Lord directly. As opposed to Charama Parva Nishtai, this is not a guranteed approach to reach the Lord, as the Lord, out of his independent nature may or maynot fulfill our wish. See Charama Parva Nishtai.
Poorvashramam - The life before sanyasam.
Ponnadi Saathudhal - When a common man invites an acharya to his house, he would ask "Could you golden feet adorn my house?". Pon (golden), adi (feet) and saathudhal - to adorn.
Poorvachaaryargal - Ancestral Acharayas
Prapatti / Saranagathi - State of mind that I, by myself cannot do anything on my own, surrender completely (leaving all my history) behind and take refuge under the Lotus feet of Sriman Narayanan to do kainkaryam for His happiness. The act of doing it is being referred as "Samashrayanam" / "Bharanyasam".
Prasaadham - Rice.
Purapaadu - Procession.
Pirati - Goddess.
Prapagam - Way / Means
Prapyam - Target / destination / goal
Saatramudhu - Rasam.
Sannidhi - Shrine
Sayanam - Sleep. Specifially it refers to the Lord's divine sleep. There are many types of it.

Bala Sayanam - Perumal gave HIS sevai (darshanam) to a rishi called Vyakrapadha Maharishi. Perumal initially gave the sevai as in Srirangam but since the maharishi was old and could not see the entire width of Perumal, Perumal shrunk Himself in size and presented a smaller form of HIM to him and so the name of "Bala" sayanam. (Concept of zip files being invented here :-))."Bala" refers to child/kid and since he became very small like a size of a kid, this is called "Bala sayanam". It can be found in Sirupuliyoor.
Bhoga Sayanam - Perumal sleeping on the serpent bed. HE is enjoying (bhogyam) something and so this posture is called "Bhoga sayanam". Bhogyam is the obect that is being enjoyed and Bhogam is the One who enjoys it. The Lord in Thiruchitra Kootam (Chidambaram) is the only one in this posture as HE is said to be in a reclining posture, enjoying the dance of Nataraja.
Bhujanga Sayanam - It is one of the reclining postures of Perumal that is the most common of all the reclining types. 20 out of 27 dhivya desams in which Perumal is reclining has "Bhujanga sayanam" types. The most famous example is that of Srirangam. Bhujangam refers to a snake. The word is from sanskit that means a reptile that moves with its shoulder in a zig zag manner. So Bhujangam sayanam refers to the reclining posture in which Perumal is seen on top of the serpent bed of Aadiseshan.
Dharba Sayanam - This can be seen in a place called Thirupullani, Southern Tamil Nadu. Dharba means sacred grass. Lord Rama, before crossing the ocean en route to Sri Lanka rested here on the grass for 3 days and observed penance. After 3 days, the presiding deity here known as Adi Jaganatha Perumal bestowed Lord Rama with success in the war against Ravana. There is a shrine inside the temple for Lord Rama in which He can be seen reclining on a dharbha.
Maanika Sayanam - Perumal is reclining with HIS face towards the south direcetion. He can be found in this sayanam in Thiruneermalai.
Prarthana Sayanam - A unique sleeping posture (Thirumogur): The main deity here is Kalamegha Perumal / Thirumoghur Aapthan /Vazhithunai Perumal / Maarga Bandhoo. In addition to His sannidhi, one can also find another sannidhi where the Lord is in ‘Prarthana Sayanam’, where Sridevi and Bhoodevi are seen praying, at the feet of the sleeping Lord. The sleeping Lord is said to be one before he took the Mohini Avataaram.
Sthala Sayanam - This is a type of reclining posture of Perumal, that people can have sevai in Thirukadanmallai (Mahabalipuram). "Sthalam" refers to bhoomi / ground / place. Perumal who usually sleeps in HIS serpent bed, in Thirukadanmallai, HE slept on the ground / floor. HE used the ground as HIS bed and HIS right arm as the pillow in this place and so the name "Sthala Sayanam". He reclines with four hands with HIS front two hands resting on the floor and pointing towards His Lotus feet. His right rear arm rest under HIS head and the left arm is in rising position as if to call the bhakthas. Perumal is without his changu / chakram, as HE appeared in this divya desam to appreciate a rishi’s devotion and not to kill any one. His wife (Pirati) is not with HIM and is in a separate sannidhi and is seated in the ground (Nilamangai thayar)

Uthaana Sayanam / Uthyoga Sayanam - Once upon a time, Thirumazhisai Aazhwar came to have a sevai of Aaraamudha Perumal at Kumbakonam Sarangapani temple. He was very much impressed by his beauty that he wanted to have a chat with HIM. So he prayed the Lord and after some time, the Lord wanted to answer his prayer and hence He lifted his head from the sleeping posture and started to get up. But, Thirumazhisai aazhwar didn’t want to disturb HIS sleep and hence requested Perumal not to get up and to remain in the same posture so as to bless each devotee visiting HIM. "Uthishta" refers to get up / stand up in sanskrit and so this sayanam is called "Uthana" sayanam. We request HIM to get up / wake up Perumal by singing "Kausalya supraja rama poorva sandhya pravarthathe, Uthishta narasardoola karthavyam daivamahnikam, Uthishtothishta Govinda uthishta garudadhwaja, Uthishta kamalakantha thrailokyam mangalam kuru". The posture of Aara Amudhan is called as Uthana Sayanam.
Vatapathra Sayanam - The Lord is seen in a reclining posture in a banyan leaf. Vata is banyan and pathram is a leaf. The presiding deity in Srivilliputhur is called Vatapathrasayee, or the One who is sleeping on a banyan leaf.
Veera Sayanam - Perumal is reclining with HIS face towards the east direcetion. He can be found in this sayanam in Thiru Indhalur.

Senai Mudaliyar - Vishwaksenar who is the commander in chief of the Lord's army.
Sevai (noun) and sevikaradhu (verb) - Literal meaning is to see; inner meaning to see the Lord and surrender unto HIM.
Siriya Thiruvadi - Anjaneyar / Hanuman
Srichoornam - Represents Pirati (Godess) and it is a part of the Thiruman that is a sign of Srivaishnavites that represent the Lord's Lotus feet and His consort in the middle.
Srisatakopam - Satari that they keep on our head in srivaishnava temples.
Swamayacharya: A set of people who can perform the samasrayanam and other rites, by himself to his family, and also to his sishyas.
Thaligai - Food.
Theertham - Water.
Then kalai / Thenacharya sampradhayam- A school of thought / philosophy expounded by Swami Pillai Lokachara and Swami Manavaala Mamunigal.
Thiru aala vattam - Hand Fan (Visiri). Thirukachi Nambigal is famous for doing Thiru aala vatta kainkaryam to Lord Devarajan at Kanchipuram.
Thiru kaapu - The box / compartment or a small room where we keep the Lord in His statue form (vigraham) in our house.
Thiru kaapu Neekudhal- To open the Thirukaapu.
Thiru kaapu Serthal - To close the Thirukaapu.
Thiru kannamudhu - Payasam.
Thiru maaligai - House of the the great, esteemed acharyas. How much ever small it may be, srivaishnavas refer the house of acharyas as a "great palace".
Thiru manjanam - Bathing.
Thirumanjana Cauvery - A conduit that is being used for Thirumanjanam.
Thiruman - Sign of srivaishnavites that represent the Lord's Lotus feet and His consort in the middle. Thiruman and Srichoornam together is being referred to as the Urdhva Pundram (that which grows upwards).
Thiruman kaanikai - Money or any other thing that we offer in a temple or in a procession or in a gathering of srivaishnavas for bhagavath / bhaagavatha kainkarrams.
Thirumeni paanga?- "Thirumeni" refers to body and "paangu" means in right order / condition. So, when common people inquire the great acharays, they are not supposed to say "unga udambu sowkiyama", rather they are supposed to ask "devareer thirumeni paanga?"
Thiru thuzhaai - Tulsi.
Thiruvalagu - Broomstick
Thiruvaaraadhanam - The collection of act of doing aaradhanam (to sing azhwar's paasurams that extoll the Lord), offer the Lord whatever we have cooked, removing all bad omen that might have cast upon Him and meditate on HIM.

Ubhaya Vedanti - One who is very well versed / scholar in both Thamizh and Sanskrit. This is why they put U.Ve. in front of people who are scholarly in both Thamizh and Sanskrit.

Udaiyavar - Refers to Swami Ramanujar for his ability (udaya) to grant mosham akin to the Lord Himself. He is also referred by Bhaashyakaarar, Ilayaazhwaan, Thirupavai Jeeyar, Godhagrajar, Permpoodhur Maamuni, Bhavishyaadhaachaaryar etc.

Upayam - Means / Way

Upeyam - Target / Goal / Destination

Vada kalai - A school of thought / philosophy expounded by Swami Vedantha Desikan.

Varadha Hastham - It is a posture of the divine Hand of Perumal, that is pointing towards HIS lotus feet, thereby conveying the message that "I am here to grant you whatever you ask for. Recollect the right hand of Srinivasa Perumal at Thiruvenkatam (Thirupathi).

Vibhavam: One of the 5 forms of the Lord in which He manifest HIMSELF through HIS incarnations.

Vyooha - One of the 5 different forms of Lord Sriman Narayanan in which HE manifest HIMSELF as "Ksheerabdhi Naadhan" in the milky ocean (Thirupaarkadal).

Ummachi

2011-08-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is something that I learned from my father in law last year, so just wanted to share it. Many people including srivaishnavas use the word "Ummachi" to refer to "God" in general. For example, they say "Krishna Ummachi" to refer to Lord Krishna and "Ramar Ummachi" to refer to Lord Rama and "Pillayar Ummachi for Pillayar. Though they equate "Ummachi" to "God", this equation / association is so wrong.

Going by its etymology, the word "Ummachi' breaks itself into "Uma" and "Pathi". One who is the pathi (husband) of Uma (Parvati). Technically, this would mean only Sivan / Rudran. Another school of thought is that "Ummachi" is a concatenation of "Uma", referring to Parvati again and "Shi", referring to Sivan. "UmaShi" transformed to Ummachi. One more connotation to this is "Umai aachi", just like when they say "Umayaal", they use "Umai aachi" to refer to Parvati herself. In all these schools of thought, the person referred to is Sivan/his wife and no one else.

With this background, it makes no sense whatsoever to say "Krishnar Ummachi" or "Ramar Ummachi". Especially srivaishnavas, when the say it, they should know whom are they referring to. This makes the most sense for all srivaishnava parents because many of them teach their children this word "Ummachi" as the synomym for God. Whatever is being taught in the childhood stays on forever. There are 1000s of names for Sriman Narayanan for us. So, please pick as many names from them as you want and tell them. Please dont go with the flow of the norms of the society here and stick to the point "I just use it refer to God and I dont want to know all these meanings and I dont care what it means. My kid is happy and so I am happy".

As a tangential point, the phrase "Ummachi kanna kuthum" (Ummachi will hurt our eyes) has been misappropriated and has been used as a threat for situations like if the kid does not eat or if the kid does not obey etc. Over a period of time, this creates a false illusion about Ummachi (going by their definition of Umachi as "God") and gradually as the kids grow, they develop a fear towards God. Sometimes, I tend to think why people say "I am God fearing". While God is there for everyone of us and for everyone to love Him, why would someone even think of creating a fear in the minds of young children. I am sure there would be many ways to handle a kid and threatening using God is definitely not a way by itself in the first place, leave alone if it is good or bad.

Triplets in Srivaishnava Sampradhayam

2011-08-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

There is something significant about the number 3 in Srivaishnavam. Some famous triplets in srivaishnava sampradhayam. Please add to this list and if there is anything that is not right, please let me know. I shall correct it immediately.

1) Rahasya Thrayam: Thirumanthram, Dwayam and Charamaslokam

2) Akshara Thrayam: Aa, Oo and Ma that form "Om"

3) Padha Thrayam: Om, Namaha and Narayanaya

4) Thaapa Thrayam: Aadhyaathmika (sorrows caused by oneself), Aadhibowthika (sorrows caused by natural calamities) and Aadhideivika (sorrows caused by Perumal). To mitigate the effects of this, they give theertham three times in Perumal kovil.

5) Thatthva Thrayam: Chit (living entities), Achit (non-living entities) and Eshwaran (Sriman Narayanan). This is why all Vishishtadwaitha sanyasis carry "thri"thandam (a set of 3 sticks put together) in their hand.

6) Karana Thrayam: Mind, Speech and Body. We can remember this by the popular phrase in Thirupavai 5ht pasuram "Maayanai Mannu". The phrase is Vaayinal paadi manathinaal sindithu thoomalar thoovi thozhudhu. Vaayinaal Paadi (Speech), Manathinaal Sindithu (Mind) , Thoomalar Thoovi Thozhudhu (Body)

7) Kaarana Thrayam: Nimitha kaaranam (cause of the cause, nimitham by itself means cause), Upadhana kaaranam (material cause, upadhanam means ingredient) and Sahakaarika kaaranam (ancillary or supporting cause). The most common example is of making a pot. There are three things/causes to make it happen. First a potter who knows how to make it (Nimitha kaaranam). He needs some clay to make it (Upadhana kaaranam) and then he needs a stick or rod to aid the process of making it. The stick / rod is just for support and so it is the Sahakaarika kaaranam.

8) Mandapa Thrayam: Koil (Srirangam = Bhoga Mandapam), Thirumalai (Thiruvenkatam = Pushpa Mandapam) and Perumal Koil (Thiruathigiri = Thyaga Mandapam)

9) Siddhithrayam: A work composed by Swami Alavandhar that has 3 parts to it namely (a) Atmasidhhi ,(b) Samvitsidhi and (c) Ishwara Siddhi.

10)Perumal in idol form talks to 3 persons: Perumal in his idol form (archaa murthy) had talked with just 3 persons only, one for each of the mandapas above. In Srirangam he talked with "Thiruvilaku Pichan, in Thiruvenkatam he talked with Thondamaan chakravarthy and in Thiruathigiri he talked with Thirukachi Nambigal.

11) Muni Thrayam: Sri Nadhamuni, Sri Yamuna Muni and Sri Ramanuja Muni. This can also refer to "Parankusa Muni, Ramanuja Muni and Manavaala Maamuni in Thenacharya sampradhayam

12 Gadhya Thrayam: Srivaikunta Gadhyam, Saranagathi Gadhyam and Sriranga Gadhyam. These were authored by Swami Ramanuja.

13) Dhivya Thryams: Dhivya Desam, Dhivya Prabandham and DhivyaSoorigal (Aazhwars)

14) Three Gunas: Sathva Gunam (sathvic), Rajo Gunam (activity) and Thamo Gunam (anger)

15)Three Vyapaka Manthras: These three manthras talks about the omniscience nature (vyaapithu irupadhu and thus the name) of Sriman Narayanan. They are the twelve lettered (dvadasaakshari) of "Om Namo Bhagavathe Vasudevaya", six lettered (shataakshari) of "Om Namo Vishnave" and the eight lettered (ashtakshari) of Thirumanthram.

16)Three Achamana Manthras: Om Achuthaya Namaha, Om Ananthaaya Namha, Om Govindhaaya Namaha

17) Three consorts of Sriman Narayanan: SriDevi, BhooDevi and NeelaDevi.

18) Three types of Chit / Jeevathmas: Baddhaathma (those who have not yet attained moksham), Mukthaathma (those who have attained moksham) and Nithyaathma (those who are forever in Srivaikuntam with Sriman Narayanan)

19) Three types of Achit (Non living entities / those that has no conscience): Prakrutham (nature), Aprakrutham (beyond nature) and Kalam (time)

20) Three temples where Pirati gets importance than Perumal: Thiruvellarai (Sridevi), Srivilliputhur (BhuDevi) and Thirunaraiyoor (Neela Devi)

21) Three forms of Swami Ramanuja: Thanaana Thirumeni (Ramanuja himself in Srirangam) , Thaan ugandha Thirumeni (Ramanuja's idol that was admired by himself - Sriperumpudhur) and Thamar ugandha Thirumeni (Ramanuja's idol that was admired by his bhaktas -Melkote/Thirunarayanapuram)

22) First 3 azhwars: Poigai azhwar, Bhoodathaazhwar and Peyaazhwar , who are often referred to as "Mudhal Aazhwargal"

23) Famous triplets of Swami Nammazhwar: "Poliga Poliga Poliga", "Kandom Kandom Kandom", "Matrum Matrum Matrum"

24) Three lines (adi) where Andal sings about Govindha: Koodarai vellum seer Govindha (27th pasuram), Kurai ondrum illadha Govindha (28th pasuram), Itrai parai kolvaan andru kaan Govindha (29th pasuram)

25) Three lines (adi) where Andal sings about Vamanan measuring the whole universe with His three steps : Ongi Ulagalandha Uthaman Per Paadi (3rd pasuram), Ambaram oodaruthu ongi ulagalandha (17th pasuram) and Andru Ivvulagam alandhaai adi potru (24th pasuram)

26) Three female states in which Azhwars sing in Naayika Bhavanai: Naayika or the heroine herself who is verily the azhwar themselves (thalaivi pasuram), naayika's mother (thaai pasuram) and naayika's friend (thozhi pasuram)

27) Three types of people who ask different things to Perumal: Aishwarya aarthi (who ask for earthly stuffs like wealth, health, kids, marriage, education etc), Kaivalya aarthi (who ask Perumal that they enjoy their own athmas) and Bhagavallaabha aarthi (who ask for Perumal Himself at Perumal).

28) Mummanikovai: This is one of Swami Desikan's works that was sung in praise of the dhivya dampathis at Thirvahindrapuram. As the name would suggest, this is a necklace that was made using Sthothra Rathnam , Manthra Rathnam and Purana Rathnam . The gem of all Puranas is called Purana Rathnam which is none other than Vishnu Puranam, the gem of all manthram is Dwaya maha manthram and the gem of all sthothras is the one that was composed by Swami Alavndhar's Sthothra Rathnam.

29) Swami Alavandhar's 3 wishes: Swami Alavandhar, when he left his mortal coil and went to the eternal abode of Sriman Narayanan in Srivaikuntam had 3 unfullfilled wishes. So, he had this 3 fingers left open. Swami Ramanuja on seeing them, understood the essence and took a vow to fulfill those, after which, the fingers themselves closed. Those were :
(29.1) To keep Parasara Bhagawan and his progeny's name to someone in Srivaishnava sampradhyam who is deserving and capable of bearing such a name. He kept the name to Koorathaazhwan's sons who were Sri Parasara Bhattar and Vedavyasa Bhattar.
(29.2) To expound Swami Nammazhwar's works and interpret its meaning correctly and spread it.
(29.3) To write commentaries for Brahmasutram, Upanishads and Bhagavad Geetha.

30) Three types of works of Swami Pillai lokacharya: Swami Pillailokacharya wrote 18 works that can be categorized into 3 broad types:

(30.1) That which talks about Rahasya Thrayam: There are 8 such works in this category including:

Yaadrichikapadi
Sriyapadhipadi
Mumukshupadi
Parandhapadi
Thani Pranavam
Thani Dwayam
Thani Charamam and
Sara sangraham

(30.2) That which talks about Thathva thrayam: These are 5 in number and include:

Thathva Thrayam
Artha Panchakam
Thathva Sekaram
Premaya Sekaram and
Archiradi

(30.3) That which talks about the essence of Srivaishnavam: These are 5 in number and include:

Samsara Samrajyam
Navavidha sambandham
Navarathnamalai
Prapanna Parithranaam and
Srivachanabushanan (the magnum opus and the most magnificient masterpiece)

31.Three types of Puranas: There are 18 puranas totally. They are classified into 3 types based on the gunas (Refer Point #9) namely Saathvika Puranas, Raajasa Puranas and Thaamasa Puranas.

(31.1) Saathvika Puranas: Characterized by purity/truth/softness.

Vishnu Purana
Bhagavatha Purana
Naradeya Purana
Garuda Purana
Padma Purana and
Varaha Purana

(31.2) Raajasa Puranas: Characterized by activity / passion etc.

Brahmanda Purana
Brahma Vaivarta Purana
Markandeya Purana
Bhavishya Purana
Vamana Purana and
Brahma Purana

(31.3) Thaamasa Puranas: Characterized by anger:

Matsya Purana
Kurma Purana
Linga Purana
Shiva Purana
Skanda Purana and
Agni Purana

32. Prasthana thrayam: Upanishad - Upadesha Prasthana (Sruti), Brahma Sutra - Nyaya Prasthana (Yukti) and

Bhagavad gita - Sadhana Prasthana (Smriti)

33. Three types of Kaadhal for Swami Nammazhwar as Parankusa Nayaki:

Peramar Kaadhal (5.3.4th Thiruvaimozhi from Maasaru Sodhi padhigam)
Pin Nindra Kaadhal and (5.4.6th Thiruvaimozhi from Oorellam thunji padhigam)
Kazhiya mikkadhor Kaadhal (5.5.10th Thiruvaimozhi from Enganeyo Annaimeergaal padhigam)

34. Three journeys that has a special place in Srivaishnava Sampradhyam:

Akroora Yaathrai: The expectations that Akroorar had when he was sent by Kamsan to bring Krishna
Thiruvenkata Yathrai: The expectations, the desire, dream and the desire associated with our journey to Thiruvenkatam and
Archiradi Gathi Yathrai: The journey when jeevathma attains moksham, when it leaves this physical body, transgress multiple worlds, taking a bath in Viraja river in Srivaikuntam, getting "aprakrutha" body, welcomed by one and all and proceed to sit on the lap of Sriyapathi Sriman Narayanan.

Govindha Govindha Govindha

2011-06-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Often times, people prefer to ignore and be lazy in unearthing the true meaning or the core substance of a matter. Partly it is due to their lazyness to learn, partly due to their ignorance and partly due to their sub-conscious liking for a funny misnomer and to go with the flow. There are lot of things that have consistenly being loosing their true meaning and have been a object of mockery.

Of late, due to our mixing of languages, there are lot of instances where the original/true meaning is lost and something totally crazy displaces it. Take this phrase for instance, "Avan assaultaa pannuvaan" to convey the meaning "He can do a job with much ease". I was wondering at the word "asaaultaa". Is that Thamizh or English or Tanglish? Certainly Tanglish I would presume. Please let me know if this is found in Thamizh lexicon. But why would one use it that way? "Assault" in English means to attack. So does that mean "He does things by attacking others"? Certainly no. It was not the meaning the guy wanted to convey in the first place. He wanted to say "He can do things with so much ease". This is one such instance where English and Thamizh have been mixed to mean a totally new thing. The word has lost the meaning in a differnt language. This has a bit of relevance to this blog which is about the name Govindha.

Examples like "assault" can be tolerated to an exten. But when people misconstrue names of God, it is really disheartening to see, especially the name "Govindha". It really saddens me when I listen to this name being construed incorrectly in cinemas and medias. Srivaishnava sampradhyam has literally tons of meanings for this particular name. Let us explore the beauty of this name and try to see why people misunderstand the name and what we can probably do about it.

Significance of Govindha: This is one of the 12 main names of Sriman Narayanan that include Kesava, Narayana, Madhava, Govindha, Vishnu, Madhusudhana, Thrivikrama, Vamana, Sridhara, Hrishikesa, Padmanabha and Damodara. Etymologically, "Go" in sanskrit means cow and "vindh" is to find. So "Govindha" means "one who finds the cow" literally. Govnidha also refers to "protector of "Govardhana" mountian from Indra. From this prefix "Go", a lot of names has been derived. "Gopalan (protector of cows), "Gokulam (the clan of the cowheards, also refers to the city where Krishna was raised). Apart from "cows", "Go" also means "vedham", "vaaku", and "king". The thamizh equivalent is "Ko", from which we get "Kovil" (the house (il) of the King - The Supreme Lord).

Govindha in Vrindhavanam: When we think about the name "Govindha", the next thing that strikes our mind is a beautiful scene in Vrindhavanam. Krishna bids good bye to His mother Yashodha daily and sets off to forest with His cattle herd to graze them. He takes care of His cows and buffalos with utmost care. Whenever they are thirsty, He takes them to a nearby pond, He bends Himself down and licks the water and teaches them to drink. The cows immitate their Master's action. Andal sings in her Nachiar Thirumozhi about this in "Ittamaana pasukalai inidhi marithu neer ooti vittu kondu vilayaada vrindhaavanathe kandome". The Supreme being, the creator of the whole universe has no need whatsoever to come down to this profane world, mingle with each and everyone, steal butter and get scoldings from all households. If you stop for a second and think why would He even do all this, it is just to show that He is not the One who is "never reachable" and "never approchable". Often times, we think of God as someone who is the "Highest, Omnipotent, Supreme, the most powerful , invincible and the most valorus". All the adjectives run into superlatives for Him. So, with all these qualities of Him in our mind, sometimes we get a doubt "If He is in that league, will a poor, ignorant human being like me be able to reach Him? Does all those superlative qualities of Him create a love for Him or just a respect for Him". So, to remove all these questions in our mind, the Supreme being had stepped down from His eternal abode "Srivaikuntam", entered each and every house, yearned and earned the name of a "thief" and at the same time was celebrated as their "special child". He is so approchable for everyone. Even if Krishna is not here as Krishna now, He is present in each and every thing, action, people and mind. The forms in which He manifests are different, but His presence is there in everything.

Parathvam: So all the superlatives qualities of Krishna that we saw above, can be categorized into one umbrella of qualities called as "Parthavam". "Par" is boundary and "Para" is transgressing or crossing boundaries. It signifes that there is no one greater than Him, nothing stronger than Him, nothing invincible for Him, nothing that is beyond His knowledge, nothing that He cannot create, nothing He cannot protect and nothing He cannot destroy. So these parathvam qualities talk about the highest and the infinite. There are some names that are associated with His "Parthvam". For example, Narayanan is one name that signifies that He is the one who supports and protects everyone, everybody, everything (living and non-living).

Sowlabhyam: The second category is "Sowlabhyam" qualities that glorifies the great qualities of making Himself available, approachable and to be able to easily mingle with one and all. It is this quality that is of utmost importance to us, because if not for this, there is no way we can love Him. If not for this, we can, at the most have a respect for Him and may be a fear towards Him, but certainly not love. However, the "Parathvam" qualities are also important because if not for it either, He cannot protect us in the first place. To remember the word "Sowlabhyam" easily, remeber that it means "ease". We know that "sulabham" means easy in Thamizh. One who is easy or sulabham is known as "Sowlabhyan" and thus that quality of his is "Sowlabhyam".
Day to day examples: To give an example of these two qualities in our daily lives, let us say I want to meet the Prime Minister of India, discuss all my problems in my city and get it solved. The reason I want to meet the PM is because only he has the authority to do it. But I cannot go, schedule and meet him as and when I like. He is not readily accessible. On the other hand, I can go and meet my neighbour easily, anytime of the day. But he is as hapless as I am. Though, he is available, the poor guy does not have any power to erect any change. Though the PM has power, he is not approachable. Translating this to the two qualities to sampradhayic parlance, the PM had "Parathvam" but no "sowlabhaym", whereas my neighbour had "sowlabhyam" but no "Parthvam". The one and the only place, these two qualites manifests itself in their highest order is with the Supreme Krishna.

Now, back to our Govindha name. This name is probably the best name that signifies sowlabhayam. Andal had sung this name three times in her 27th, 28th and 29th pasuram in Thirupavai. Andal has another name called "Godha". The name "Govindha" itself has "Godha" in it, take the first and last syllable of "Govindha", we get "Godha" (Kodhai in thamizh). "Godha" means one who shows us the Vedas, One who is the bestower of good speech (vaaku). In fact, Andal chooses "Govindha" name over His most prolific name "Narayanan", just because the name conjures up accessibility and protection by Him to us. She dismisses "Narayanan" name as a lesser name (siru paer). Going one step further would be to realize that more than the person who is being referred by "Govindha", just the chanting of name "Govindha" does more good than the real Govindha Himself. Draupadi got her sarees by chanting "Govindha". He is being referred as"Kurai ondrum illadha Govindha", which means "Blemishless Govindha" but now this name has been massacred by people and still continues to be the favorite object of mockery for many people.
Possible reasons for Confusions : "Govindha" also means that all our sins will be washed away and will be gone to a place of "no-return". I think this meaning was misintrepreted largely to mean that if we chant the name "Govindha", everything we have now will be gone forever, with "everything" referring to weatlh usually. Another reason for this misintrepretation is because of the prefix "Go" that has to do with "gone and not to be seen" connotation in English. This could be just a small factor but to create a confusion there is usually not one factor that stands out. Its a conjoined effort of many such factors. So, finally what is being left with people is the fact that "Govindha" is synoymous with "loser", "stuffs easily gone", "cannot get back". All the above three are true but that is true with sins (papas).

In Tirupathi, people tonsure their hair, offer it to God and become hair-free ("mottai" in thamizh). To the layest of laymen, Tirupathi, mottai, and Thiruman-srichoornam (or more popularly known as "naamam") is associated with loss of everything, starting from hair,wealth and thus their image. A person had hair before and did not wear anything on his forehead. He visits Thirupathi, does mottai and has naamam in his forehead. When he is seen like this, people ask "enna goindha goindha va? When something is being lost, people exclaim "enna pocha? Goindha Goindha va?" Also, when somebody cheats and steals money from people, the guy who is being cheated is asked the question "naamam potutaana"? Perumal Himself has manifested Himself unto us in Thiruman form. It is a mark that to keep reminding ourselves that we are His eternal servants, wearing a Thiruman is one of the most proud things that we can show off. We can definitely boasts ourselves that we are His servants and He is our Master. It is the basic lakshanam of a Srivaishnavite and we should be very happy that we got an opportunity to realize it and wear it.

The original meaning of the name was that He takes away all our sins, but we easily misintrepret to other non-sensical explanations and to make it worse, we stick to it. The worst part is that, people don't even care if there would be a real meaning to it, and even if they had, they are lazy enough to dig deep into its origin. So they just leave it the way it is and just enjoy the funny misnomers. On top of it, the cinemas and the medias, always make money by publicizing what is in vogue.

What we can do?: Finally what we have ended up now is with a shameless truth that a beautiful name is being spoiled continuously. Alteast, people who know it should stop using this name in a non-sensical way. Thats the least they can do. Going further, please educate people who are capable of learning and willing to change. Rumor, gossips and bad things spreads like a forest fire, whereas good-will, trust and hardwork takes a lot of time. So let us share it and spread the true meaning wherever we can and to whomever we can. If we understand the meaning then we would certainly not use it twice in a mocking fashion as in "Go-indha, Go-indha", rather we would be chanting His name thrice "Govindha, Govindha, Govindha", like how Andal did.

Sakshee Gopal

2011-06-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

Love Scene: Once upon a time, there lived a guy and a girl on the banks of a river in West Bengal. The guy was very poor and the girl was filthy rich. They were in love with each other and used to meet often in the river bank. Days passed by. One fine day, the girl’s father went to the nearby Krishna temple on the river bank. After finishing his prayer, he proceeded toward his house. But he could not move further. From foothills of the temple, he noticed the couple walking on the river sand. He was a typical rich father and called the guy immediately. The guy came running helter-skelter; shivering with anxiety as to what her father might say. The father told the guy that he will let him marry his daughter. Then he walked off without any questions. The poor guy was bewildered on one side but at the same time was on cloud nine. He was dancing his way to glory. After a few days, the poor guy went to meet his "would-be-father-in-law" to ask about his marriage. The girl’s father asked him who the hell is he and when did he agree to give her daughter to him. The poor guy replied "You had only told me some few days back". To this, the father replied "Did I tell you? Are you kidding me? Do you have any evidence for it"? The poor guy was shattered and had no clue for his evidence. He was pensive for a while and could not think of anybody who could have been witnessing the scene hitherto. So he was visibly upset and went to the river banks with a deep sense of dejection.

Krishna the lone protector for the guy

Entry of Krishna: Suddenly, something struck him. It was the fact that Krishna had seen this dialogue between these two and that he went ahead to ask Krishna if he could be his evidence. He went and asked Krishna "Oh! My Lord! I am in dire need of an evidence for the words that my sweetheart's father had given me. I believe, only you could have seen it. No one else was there around. So please come with me as my evidence to his house. Krishna appeared before him and told "Oh! My boy! Yes. I will come but on one condition. I will follow you towards his house. You walk front. I will follow you with a 10 foot distance between us. You should never turn back to see or check if I am following you or not. If you keep a check on me, then I would not come any further. If you agree, then I can be your evidence". The guy accepted it and was "leading" Krishna (Parthasarathy ke sararthyJ) Krishna used to wear something like kolusu (anklets) that made a jingling sound. He was following the guy from the footsteps. There were jingling sounds everywhere. Suddenly when they reached the river banks, it was full of sand. The sound of anklets was the only indication for the guy that Krishna is following him. But now since it was sand and that he could not hear the sound, the guy had a doubt if Krishna is following. But he tried not to turn back for quite sometime. But the question of insecurity overcame his belief in Krishna. So he turned back out of anxiety. To his astonishment he found Krishna still following. But Krishna was upset that the guy did not believe Him. So he stayed there itself as archa moorthy (statue form) and did not move an inch thereupon. The place where he stands is now a temple. The name of Krishna there is called "Saakshee Gopal".

Moral: The moral of the story is never to check if God will protect us or if God is really helping us. He is there for us (Naarayane namake parai tharuvaan). He will surely come with us. Sometimes it is evident that He comes with us and sometimes He follows us subtly and sometimes he follows us in a totally invisible way. But in any case, He will always be with us. If not for us, who is He going to be for, after all?

Animated Cartoon Movies on Krishna

2011-06-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

These three movies are about the tales of Krishna. It is taken so beautifully with wonderful animation. People of all ages can watch this. Kids will love this. Thanks to Parthasarathy and Gayathri who showed this to me. Just wanted to share it with everyone, in case if you did'nt know about these movies already.

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 1

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 2

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 3

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 4

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 5

Darling of Vrindavan - Part 6

The Legendary Warrior - Part 1

The Legendary Warrior - Part 2

The Legendary Warrior - Part 3

The Legendary Warrior - Part 4

The Legendary Warrior - Part 5

The Legendary Warrior - Part 6

The Wondrous Feats - Part 1

The Wondrous Feats - Part 2

The Wondrous Feats - Part 3

The Wondrous Feats - Part 4

The Wondrous Feats - Part 5

The Wondrous Feats - Part 6

Origin of Beauty

2011-05-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

Prelude: There is a place in Tamil Nadu called Mannargudi, also known as Raja Mannargudi. The name of the presiding deity there is called "Srividya Rajagopalan". The minute we think about Mannargudi and Srividya Rajagopalan, we think about the name "Gopalan", His cows, and His sowlabhyam (ability to mix freely with everybody and everything irrespective of species/caste/creed etc). The river in Mannargudi is called as "Haaridhra" that means “yellow”. Well, if the water is green like any other river, then why do people call this river as "Haaridhra"? This may be a common question. The answer dates back again to the dates of Krishna. Krishna came to this place sometime and played all sorts of games with the gopika girls in this very river. This would make the turmeric on their bodies fall inside the river. So the river would sport a yellowish tinge due to the divine touch from Peethambareshwaran (Krishna) and His girls.

Aruna Sairam's rendering about Krishna here

Gopikas’ game plan to win over Krishna: One day, the gopikas thought of an interesting game which everyone was thrilled to participate. The motive of the game was for everybody to shed off the clothes they wear except the ones needed for taking bath. They should take bath and comeback to the shore for dressing up. The person who finishes the bath first, comes back to the shore and dresses perfectly with all His/her clothes and ornaments will be crowned as the winner. Everyone including Krishna agreed to the rules of game. There were judges too for the game to oversee the eternal overseer Krishna.

Game kicks off: The judges gave a green signal for the participants of the game. The gopikas and Krishna kept aside their regular clothes and changed to their bathing robes. Immediately, they dived inside the river and were relishing their baths. One by one were coming back to the shore as soon as they can, to change to their regular attire. The first two leading contestants were Krishna and another girl who was very fast (may be she listened to “Elle ilankiliye” paasuram where Andal says "Ollai nee podhaai. Unakenna verudaiyai"?). In fact, the girl was too fast for Krishna. It appeared that, had one more minute passed by, the girl would have won. Krishna, as we all know is Maayan, Manivannan. He always wants to win, that too He always prefers to win by flattery. That’s our sweet Krishna!!! Even when people know that He is a cheater, He flatters, He tells innumerable lies, everyone craves for Him just about that. The girl was now a 30 second away from the victory mark. Krishna knew He can’t win any more. So He thought "If I don’t win this, then even she should not win".

Krishna’s plan: So He hit upon a plan. The last stages of decoration were adorning the face with ear rings. Krishna's ear rings were "Kundalam" that is exclusively for guys. The girl had a regular ear ring for girls (thodu). Krishna usurped one of her thodu from her pair and started to adorn Himself with that. So the girl now was left with one thodu only, which meant she cannot win the competition any more. Krishna started to wear His kundalam in His other ear. So now, He was seen with thodu in one ear and kundalam in His other. Krishna was expecting the girls would make merry of Him and would tease Him nicely for His acts. But everyone including the judge acknowledged Krishna as the winner. He was surprised and asked them "How can I be the winner. I do not have the correct set of ear rings". The girls replied "Hey Krishna! Our beloved! We thought till now that it would be beautiful only if we wear the correct pair of set. But this is the first time, we are seeing a person wearing a guy's ear ring on one ear and a girl's on the other. We thought that would be funny. But after seeing it on your face, we thought this is even more beautiful for You. You are not only the winner of this race but also for the winner of all our hearts.

Moral: Whatever ornaments He puts on, it is beautiful because it is He who gives beauty to the ornaments and not the vice versa as people commonly think. When someone remarks “Today in our temple, Krishna looked dazzling in green hued vasthram, in reality, it is not the case. The green hued vasthram got its beauty because it went on to adorn Krishna”. Be it green, blue, orange or whatever color we can think of, whatever jewel we can think of, in whatever order we can offer to HIM, the cloth or the jewel or whatever the entity is attains divinity and thereby looks attains its beauty and looks beautiful in our eyes. So there is no question of male ornaments/jewels/clothes vs. its female counterpart.

The same concept can be seen in one more incident in Mahabharata. When Yasodha was pregnant, she and Nandhagopar were talking about what baby would they be begetting? Nandhagopar was confident of a baby girl and Yasodha was for a baby boy. They had a lot of arguments. Finally Nandhagopar pacified Yasodha by saying "The gender of the child does not really matter. We would raise the baby with same love and affection irrespective of the gender. Don't worry Yasodha. Yasodha replied "It’s not the love and affection I am worried about my Lord. I am worried because we need to make the right kind of a jewel. If it is a baby girl then we should ask the blacksmith to make an ear ring. If it is a baby boy, we should tell him to make a "kundalam". Nandhagopar thought for a while and remarked "Oh. Is that all your problem. Don’t worry, we shall make both, adorn the baby based on its gender and keep the other one as such". We all knew that they got a baby boy in Balarama. They had aptly decorated Him with "kundalam" and kept the ear ring in their safe. After sometime, Yasodha thought that her husband might feel bad since he wanted a baby girl. Though they did not raise a baby girl, Yasodha at least wanted to use the “ear ring” for her younger son, our sweetheart Krishna. After when Krishna was born, she decorated Him with both ear rings as well as thodu. To her surprise, she found that whatever she jewel, whatever dress and in whatever order she decorated Krishna each day, every combination looked stunning and dazzling on Him. She realized that, when it comes to the Supreme, who now is her own son, the aforementioned differences doesn’t matter anymore, be it whatsoever.

Food for Charity

2011-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Prelude: Once upon a time during Krishna’s childhood days, Krishna and Balarama went to a nearby forest place. They sat under a tree and rested for sometime. There were some kids already there who were playing around for a long time. The kids started to feel hungry and went to Krishna and told that they are starving badly for food now. Even Krishna and His brother were hungry and wanted some food. There were a few brahmanas performing yagnas. Krishna told the kids “Go unto them. Tell them that I have sent you. They are doing a yagnam. So they will be giving a lot of prasaadam. Get food from then and we can all eat”. The kids went happily running to the group of brahmanas.

Time was only 11’o clock in the morning. The brahmanas told the kids in a strict voice “No. There is no prasaadam now. It will be distributed only in the evening at around 4:00 ‘o clock. You guys go, play and do not disturb us”. The kids came back in disappointment and reciprocated the message to Krishna. Krishna told them “Oh! Is that what it is? Okay. That is fine. We are yaachakaas (one who begs) now. We should not be ashamed to go to the next source. So we need to find a different source to get some food immediately”.

Krishna tells a story to kids: To illustrate the point that the yaachakaas should not be ashamed and should keep moving, there is a funny story that Krishna shared with the kids. Krishna went ahead and told, “In a village, there was a yaachaka who kept begging for food. Daily, he used to go to various houses and beg for food. In some houses he got food and in some others he did not. One fine day, he reached a particular house. He did not get much food that day. A lady came from that house and asked him “What do you want”. He replied “I want food”. The lady lied to him by saying “No. We don’t have any food in our house”. The yaachaka, in a menacing tone, said “Well. If you do not give me food, I will do what I did in the previous house’s lady. This lady got really afraid and went inside immediately and got him lots of delicious food. He ate away without leaving a trace of it. He became a regular customer at her place. The lady was not happy but did not have the guts to tell him not to come from now on. However, at the end of the month, the lady gathered all her courage and told “You have been regular to my house. I cannot give you any more food”. The yaachaka told her “If you do not give me food, then I will do what I did to the previous house’ lady. The lady was now bold enough to say “Okay. What will you do?” Let us see”. The yaachaka replied “I asked for food in the previous house. She did not give me anything. So I moved to your house. So if you do not offer me food, I will go to the next house” and proceeded to the next house quietly.

Kids continue yaachakam: Krishna remarked at the kids, “Oh my dear kids!!! So the moral of the story was that a yaachaka should never be ashamed and keep moving. Do not get bogged down because the brahmanas did not offer you any food. Go to their wives. They might give us some food. The kids went and told their wives that Krishna sent them and they need food. The kids also told them that the brahmanas did not give any food to them. The wives were quick to realize that everything starting from yagnam, the havis and the agni is Krishna. But their husbands did not give any food to Him. They immediately came up with lots of food from their respective houses. Krishna saw the wives coming with food for Him and the kids. Krishna is habituated to eating at regular intervals. He had very little breakfast in the morning that Yasodha had given Him and Balarama. Because He did not eat for a long time, He began to sweat a lot. When a person is in hunger, the thought that they are going to be fed soon exacerbates the wait. Krishna felt the same here. Soon, the wives arrived with the kids and Krishna distributed the food to all the kids. All rishipathnis attained moksha as a result of them giving food to Him.

Krishna and kids share the food happily thereafter

Moral: When God Himself comes unto you, there is no need for rules. Azhwar says “Unnum soru, parugum neer, thinnum vetrilai, ellam kannan”. The food that he eats, the water that he drinks and betel leves that he enjoys, everything is Krishna with respect to azhwar. For gopika girls, everything was Krishna as well. They are so innocent that they don’t even know the difference between right hand and left hand. They don’t take bath daily; they don’t know shastram at all. But they don’t have the need to do because the motive of all these shahstrams is to reach GOD. If God himself makes HIM accessible, then there is no need for the rules. In other words, if we regard Krishna as everything, then HE comes to us, if HE comes to us on His will, there is nothing more that we need.

Chumma!!!

2011-04-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

"Summa", (alternatively pronounced as "chumma"), is a very interesting word in Thamizh which has a lot of contextual meanings. It is difficult to pinpoint a particular definition of the word because each person uses this word depending on the situation. For example, if someone says "summa solladhey" , he means "don't say just like that", or "don't lie" or "don't talk just like that". If one asks "yen summa iruka?, then he means, "why are you not doing anything and just sitting idle?". "Chumma" also means "always", as in "chumma adhe paatai paadindu irukaadha" to mean "Don't sing the same song always". We have also heard "pesaama chumma iru", when someone wants the other person to be silent and not utter a word. The same word when Rajini uses, the whole theater rocks, when he says "Chumma adirudhu la". Though "chumma" and "adirudhu" are apparently opposites, Rajini combines them in one phrase to create a magical exclamation that fits only the likes of Rajini. If anyone else says, then people say "if Rajini says its nice, if you say it is "chumma" to mean it is waste/junk/useless. Let me stop here on the contextual usage of chumma. Probably, everyone who speaks Thamizh, can think of umpteen number of examples and contexts to use this word. In addition to those, there are many suffixes added to "summa" like "summaka", "summakachi" which mean the same thing.

Now, let us take a small dive into the origin of the word. "Swami", a sanskit word means "Owner". If we break the word "Swami", we get "Sva" + "ami" . "Sva" in sanskrit OR "Svam" in thamizh means property and "ami" means "One who possess". From "sva" comes the word "sothu", which again signifies "property". So "Swami" represents One who possess a property. This whole universe is God's and thus we refer God as "Swami". We are His "Svam" , meaning His property always and so we say "naan swami ku svam aaga irukiren", meaning "I am God's property".

Words do change over a vast period of time with respect to a lot of things. You can see that there is a change in how a particular word was originally pronounced and the way it is pronounced now. The meaning of the word also changes over time. Hence, the context in which the words are used changes significantly.

Now back to our "chumma". So the phrase "naan svam aaga irukiren" that meant "I am God's property, over the passage of time, has metamorphasized into "naan summa irukiren" to mean "i am not doing anything. I am staying idle"."Svam aa" got converted to "summa". After this contextual usage, it was left to people's creativity to use the word in whatever way they wanted to . Rest as they say was history and there were apparently multitude of interpretive usages of the word today.

But the beauty about the sentence "naan summa irukiren" is that the meaning conveyed in the above sentence is also verily valid, when we recognize that we don't do anything while the Supreme power controls us and makes us do everything. There are 9 different relation that we share with God. We all share these 9 relationship only with God and no one else. No one person can have these 9 different relationship with us at the same time. They are:

(1)Father-Son
(2) Husband-Wife
(3)Protector-Protected
(4)Physician-Patient
(5)Sustainer-Sustained
(6)Enjoyer-Enjoyed
(7)Body-Soul
(8)Master-Servant
(9)Owner-Owned

The last one above was the "Owner-Owned" or the "Swami-Sothu" relationship. He is the Owner and we are the ones who are owned (svam). While the Owner owns all His wealth, which includes us , we are His owned properties and His servants forever.

"Concept of Greeting"

2011-04-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is my first personal blog ever. I picked up a topic on "Greeting" as I thought that has more relevance as an opener. The core of this was taken from Sri.U.Ve.Velukudi Krishnan Swami's Sri Ramayanam discourse. There are different ways people greet or welcome each other. It differs by country, by states and by religion across the world. One of the common forms of greeting is a "handshake", closely followed by "hugging" and "bow-down". These greetings originated from the western world. In our country (India), today we have resorted to these means and follow it as professional and corporate demenaour. However, our tradition did not have this before the British rule. Instead, we have a greeting that we commonly refer to as "Namaskar"/”Namaste”/"Namaskaaram". Let us briefly look at the three greeting evolved, namely "handshake", "hugging" and "namaskaaram".

Handshake: Historically, the western world countries were involved in a lot of duels between nations because of trade, colonization etc. Not surprisingly, they had traitors in their own groups and spies from their enemies. Whenever two people who haven’t met before met, they had to check in their hands if they had some sort of weapons like a small knife , blade or any other small sharp edged tool that can be lethal. In order to that, they would just hand shake first before talking any further. They invented this system as their first check point to talk with an unknown person. Hugging: The reason “hugging” was invented was exactly similar to “handshakes”. The only difference is that the two people who hugged ensured that the opposite parties do not have any bigger weapon or any other lethal tools in their backs or beneath their coats and shirts. While these two were the original reasons, many people today may be oblivious of it and would still do it as a way to show their love and affection and primarily that’s their traditional way that was taught to them for a long time. Namaskaaram: In India, we do Namaskaram and it has references in our ancient scriptures, namely, "Vedas". The way a namaskaram is performed is by joining the two hands at about the chest level. This conveys that “I do not have anything great to offer you to equal your greatness, which is why I have come empty handed”. With this in mind, the person joins both his/her hands in front of the other person. There is no hugging involved whatsoever. The etymological origin of the word “namaskaaram” breaks the word into “na”+ “ma”+”kaaram”. “Na” represents negation, “ma” represents “mine” and “kaaram” is the noun form of the verb “kuru” that means “to do” or "act". Put together “namaskaaram” is the act of signifying that “I do not have anything (“na”) in my possession (“ma”). I salute the great person standing before me”.