(No subject)

[Guest guest]

Dear new members

 

this is the first contribution i submit for all of you.

The articles in this wonderful "magazine" MOUNTAIN PATH have been and always are an incredible help on my journey "back home".

May they be of real help to everybody who is openminded.....

 

in Sri Ramana Maharshi

 

 

michael bindelIch verwende die kostenlose Version von SPAMfighter, die bisher4 Spammails entfernt und mir so eine Menge Zeit gespart hat.Rund 5,8 Millionen Leute nutzen SPAMfighter schon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing Muruganar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi's Life

 

Sri Ramana Maharshi's

Teaching

 

Devotees of Sri Ramana

Maharshi

 

Books by and about Sri

Ramana Maharshi

 

Home

 

from The Mountain Path, Vol. 1 - October 1964 - No. 4

 

We have decided in each issue of 'The Mountain Path' to introduce one

or more of Bhagavan's devotees to our readers, so as to increase the

feeling of personal fellowship between those who approach from a

distance and those who, whether resident here or not, are known

devotees of Bhagavan. To start the series we are here giving an account

of the austere devotee and eminent Tamil poet Muruganar.

 

Among the devotees of Bhagavan, Muruganar, the poet, holds a specially

honoured place. In Tamil Nadu the connection between poetry and

sanctity has been close and continuous down the centuries.

Peria-puranam, the story in verse of the sixtythree Saivite Saints

— many of them poets — was a favourite of

Bhagavan's in his

boyhood; and in drawing Muruganar to himself the seer was only helping

to preserve an ancient tradition.

 

Born in 1895, Sri C. K. Subrahmanyam grew up in an atmosphere of Tamil

learning and became in due course a teacher of Tamil in a High School.

His first collection of poems, Swatantra-Gitam, owed much to his ardent

admiration of Gandhiji and, like the early work of his elder

contemporary, Subrahmanya Bharati, formed a distinct contribution to

the national movement.

 

But when he came to Bhagavan and fell under his spell, he renounced all

other interests, completely effaced his personality and turned into " a

shadow of Bhagavan. " And he has lived ever since in a state of stark

simplicity, utterly poor and obscure. In thus losing the world to find

Bhagavan, he has found a joy to utter and a voice to utter it which

have given him a high and assured place among the immortal

singer-saints of Tamil Nadu. This sudden and complete change in the

poems and in the manner of his utterance, the marvellously sustained

and infinitely varied beauty of the enormous bulk of his verse on a

single theme, constitutes an undoubted 'miracle' wrought by Bhagavan,

permanently there for all eyes to behold.

 

Muruganar was content with composing his poems and having them read by

Bhagavan. For him there was no 'wider public' to whose notice they

should be brought. Thus it fell to an admirer, Sri Ramana Padananda, to

arrange for the printing and publication of six volumes of Muruganar's

poems.

 

The status of Muruganar as a poet is as yet known only to a small

circle. It is given to few to appreciate the architechtonics, the

prosodic virtuosity and the wealth of mythological and metaphysical

suggestion in the songs of this most scholarly poet; and it is given to

fewer still to recognise in them the modulated echoes of the Master's

vibrant silence. But discerning critics like Sri V. S. Chengalvaroya

Pillai and Mr. Justice M. Ananthanarayanan have not hesitated to

compare him with St. Manikkavachagar.

 

In practising the Presence of Bhagavan under the terms of Muruganar's

images and rhythms, one enters into intensely felt relations with the

Guru who figures in various roles of Siva or Subrahmanya, as father,

mother or lover, as master, king or commander, as beggar or betrayer.

Each of the 850 stanzas in Guru-Vachaka-Kovai1 is a little golden

casket wrought with loving care to enshrine and set off a gem fallen

from the Master's lips.

_____________________________

1 - An English translation of a part of which is published by Sri

Ramanasramam under the title. Guru Ramana Vachana Mala.

 

The stream of Muruganar's inspiration has continued running fresh and

strong even after the passing of Bhagavan. If it has lost some of the

old briskness and brightness, it has acquired a new serenity.

 

Leaving aside Muruganar's own copious outpourings, his success in

evoking so much of the little that Bhagavan himself wrote is something

to be grateful for. It is to Muruganar that we owe the existence and

poetic pattern of Upadesa Saram, (Instruction in Thirty Verses) the

living quintessence of advaitic thought and a brief but sufficient

vade-mecum of Bhagavan's own practical guidance. Muruganar composed a

long narrative poem telling how the rishis who trusted too much to

their rituals were taught a lesson. At the crucial moment, when Siva

had to deliver His teaching, Muruganar left it to Bhagavan to provide

the ipsissima verba of divine revelation.

 

Many of the Forty Verses on Reality owe their final form and the

exposition its logical arrangement to Muruganar's efforts. And this

game of collaboration reached its climax in the composition of Atma

Vidya, which fills a musical mould of Gopalakrishna Bharati with a new,

profound meaning. Beginning " Easy is Self-knowledge " , it raises only to

reject the image of " the berry in the palm of one's hand " ; so evident

is this perception that it needs neither perceiver nor thing perceived.

Having proceeded thus far, Muruganar had to leave off where the poet

qua poet could only say or imply, " The rest is silence " . But Bhagavan,

speaking with an authority higher than any poet's, continued the

argument, explained the sadhana and the grace and ended with a hint,

that Annamalai, the Inner Eye, the One Alone, is the author.

 

With Muruganar one finds oneself taking part in a strenuous game where

transcendental experience is created and caught. in words, coloured or

common as he chooses. The universal teacher who teaches through silence

is made to manifest in a thousand sounds and sweet airs, each uniquely

appropriate to a role and a mood. Thrice blessed is the ear trained to

hear the secret that only Muruganar can utter. For in his garden of

delight, one sports with God in a riot of rhymes and eats forever the

ever fresh fruit of the tree of the knowledge that home is heaven and

heaven is home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sri Ramanarpanamastu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ich verwende die kostenlose Version von SPAMfighter, die bisher4 Spammails entfernt und mir so eine Menge Zeit gespart hat.Rund 5,8 Millionen Leute nutzen SPAMfighter schon