Pushpa, ThyAga, Bhoga ...11

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Ramanujar was little disappointed, as he was not able to get

Thirukkacchi Nambigal as his AchArya. He still wanted to get some

kind of sambandham with Thirukkachi Nambigal. He decided to invite

Thirukkachi Nambigal to his house for lunch, and planned to eat the

left over of the food that Nambigal had eaten.

Can one eat the left over food of another person? There are 5 cases,

where this can be done. They are with the food eaten by:

Elder Brother Father Husband BhAgavathAs AchAryan

Thondaradippodi Azhwar has indicated about this in his ThirumAlai as,

‘pOnakam seytha sEdam tharuvarEl punitha manRE?’

Azhwar refers to the sanctity of food eaten by BhagavathAs.

Raman sent Lakshmanan to Sugriva’s place to get him back. Since

Sugriva was not able to keep up his word on returning on time,

Lakshmanan went to Sugriva’s place with full of anger. In order to

please Lakshmanan, Tharai, the wife of Sugrivan got a plate full of

fruits to Lakshmanan, with the thought that Lakshmanan was a royal

person. This was what Lakshmana immediately replied to her,

‘Thara, you don’t know what I eat. I don’t eat anything that Raman has

not eaten. If there is something that is not eaten by Raman, it is

equivalent to the food eaten and left over by a dog.’

That was the kind of bhakti shown by Lakshmanan. There is also an

interesting story. There was a person, who used to start eating with

Thayir Amudhu (curd). One day, when asked why he was eating in

reverse order. For that, the person replied that he eats on the leaf

that was used by his AchAryan. In order to get the anubhavam of the

prasAdham, he started eating from where his AchAryan had left.

Let us look at another interesting story. A shaiva sanyasi used to

live on the other side of Tamraparani. He had a dog with him. Due to

severe drought, the river got completely dired. He decided to let

atleast his dog to go to the other bank of the river, where

NammAzhwar (SriVaishnavite) lived. This side of the river was full of

SriVaishnavates. Hence, the sanyasi did not want to get to this side

to get his food. Because of hunger, the dog ate the food left over on

the banana leaves. In the evening, the dog wanted to return to his

master’s place. Due to heavy rain, the river got flooded. When the

dog stepped in to the river, the sanyasi witnessed a very interesting

thing. He saw the kapAlam of dog getting burst, and the soul of dog

being carried away to SriVaikuntam. The sanyasi immdiately realized

the greatness of NammAzhwar and started singing in praise of him. If

we look at the life of dog, just because it ate the left over food of

BhagavathAs, it got Moksham.

Let us see if Ramanujar was able to get what he wanted from

Thirukkachi Nambigal in the next posting?

aDiyEn,

ramanan

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