Ramanuja's recipe for worldly ills

CHENNAI, DEC. 11. The visit of the Lord from the permanent abode to this clayey world heralded the process of strengthening of the moral fabric among people. As an ordinary human being, He demonstrated (in His incarnation as Rama) how to lead a life based on Righteousness, unfazed by the problems which cropped up in upholding the Divine Law. Again, in another incarnation, He revealed His identity now and then, showed He always supported those who obeyed the scriptural directives and left a hymn that still serves as a guide to human perfection (the Bhagavad Gita). These efforts did not reform the people totally.

It was then that He sent His attendants to spread His message of Faith, Hope and Devotion. One among such representatives chosen to be with the people and show them the path of purity was His couch, donning the role of a teacher, Ramanuja, to disseminate spiritual knowledge. The Srivaishnava tradition which directed people to reach the Divine Kingdom, easily existed prior to Ramanuja's appearance, but he was greatly influenced by the earlier works and established a solid philosophical basis for the devotional sentiment.

Ramanuja lived a complete life, which is mentioned as 120 years in ancient texts. In undertaking to carry out Divine orders, he spent half of it by staying in holy places and the rest in pilgrimage by foot to various sacred spots situated all over the country. It is surprising that in those days when travel could be only by walking and when there were no comforts he could complete this task. More than this was that he was accompanied in his tours by several ascetics and thousands of disciples, a wonder that cannot even be imagined. All the privations were only to tell the people as to how to conduct themselves and seek God's grace and thus escape from the worldly ills. What he appealed to them was that they should look to the Supreme Lord as their sole refuge and that this was the most effective means for release and that this step was open to all. The Jeeyar Swami of the Vanamamalai Math, in a lecture, said like Ramanuja, Sri Manavala Maamunigal, as well as his chief disciple, Sri Ponnadikkal Jeeyar, the founder of the Vanamamalai Math, had visited many places. Tulsidas, who wrote the Hindi version of the Ramayana, was a disciple of a ``Mahanth'' (also called Ramanuja) who in turn was the disciple of the founder-Jeeyar of this Math. Like them he (the present Jeeyar) visited ``Sri Koormam'' (on the borders of Andhra and Orissa where the Lord had assumed the form of a tortoise), Purushothamam (now known as Puri), Salagramam (in Nepal) and several other shrines.

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