Bhagavad Ramanuja Vaibhavam- 1.60- Swami Ramanuja's jnAna mudra

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SrI:

SrImathE Gopaladesika manahadesikaya nama:

 

Dearest all,

 

Continuing on our pastime of enjoying Bhagavad Raamanuja vaibhavam: [as part of

our series and service to Srivaishnavas to commeomorate the 1000th year (2017)]

 

Let us enjoy Swami Desikan's anubhavam.

 

Swamy Desika performed prapatti by fixing his mental will

firmly on Udayavar through incessant contemplation. Udayavar in an act of

divine contemplation appeared before Swamy Desika in a spiritual epiphany,

so as to liberate him from the tangles of the mundane samsaric morass. In this

verse, Swamy Desika experiences, enjoys and elucidates the beauty of

Udayavar’s divine form with his hands adorning the gesture of Jnanamudra or

upadeshamudra and imparting spiritual knowledge.

 

In his 24th verse of YatirAja saptathi- Swami says:

 

Udayavar is indeed a great apostle with a divine vision to see both visible

as well as past actions and events. This way he even sees the darkness of

nescience in Desika’s heart. Knowledge of the Supreme is the only entity

that has the power to drive away the darkness of nescience. And so, Bhagavad

Bhashyakara makes his divine form visible to Swamy Desika with his hands

adorning the gesture of Jnanamudra.

 

Periyazhwar, inorder to have his mind perpetually contemplate on

Paraman says “unnudaiya vikkiramam onRozhiyaamal ellaam suvar vazhi

yezhudhikkonden. â€. That is after having inscribed all the divine leelas and

feats of Emperumaan including His dasha-avataaras along the inner walls of his

heart, Periyazhwar kept enjoying the divine

panorama perennially just as we watch motion pictures on the silver screen. In a

similar way, our Udayavar thought of painting on the intellectual screen of our

Swamy Desika, the beautiful picture of supreme spiritual knowledge that he was

about to impart. Artists painting pictures on the walls would do so by first

removing the dirt on the wall and by cleansing it with a shade of white paint.

In a similar way Udayavar by means of the dazzling rays from the shining nails

of his fingers gesturing the Jnanamudra, cleansed the dirt and darkness of

nescience in Desika’s heart and continued to paint the beautiful picture of

knowledge about the Supreme reality and the remaining sentient and insentient

orders. Owing to the fact that Ramanuja was a great apostle, he could, using the

rays of his nails, paint the picture of Supreme knowledge and cleans the dirt of

the six evil qualities of kama (desire), krodha (anger), lobha (greed),

moha (obsession), mada (pride) and matsarya (jealousy).

 

Yatiraja never felt tired in imparting knowledge to his disciples who came to

him with a beseech and would always enjoy it to the fullest extent. He would

conduct kalakshepams and impart knowledge to his disciples untiringly even if

they came around repeatedly.

 

In order to paint a beautiful picture it is essentially necessary that the

brush be of a very soft nature. If it is hard, then the picture might not come

out as good as expected. In this analogy Swamy Desika uses the words

karAmbhujEna to symbolize that Udayavar’s fingers adorning the jnanamudrai

were as soft and tender as a fully bloomed lotus flower.

 

In this verse, Swamy Desika uses the phrase “yEsha nATha likhathi †which

amounts to “He is here writing …â€. Swamy Desika makes use of words that

address a person as if he is right in front and uses verbs in the present

continuous tense. With such usages Swamy Desika re-affirms that he is in a

spiritual epiphany with our Udayavar.

 

Acharyan ThiruvaDigaLE SaraNam

Regards

Namo Narayana

dAsan