Spiritual tradition with universal appeal

CHENNAI, MAY 1. The role played by the saints and seers of the different religious traditions has been always acknowledged with gratitude by their followers as they had been instrumental in protecting their respective faiths from becoming extinct due to threats which had arisen during their long chequered history. In the case of Srivaishnavism, Ramanuja, who was hailed as Emperumanar by his spiritual teacher because his compassion towards suffering humanity overwhelmed him so much that he disclosed the esoteric teaching taught to him to one and all, appeared at a crucial period in the history of Sanatana dharma (Hinduism) when it had to be systematised on a firm footing.

True to the spirit of this faith which stresses service to the Lord as the summum bonum of all spiritual endeavours, Ramanuja is revered as an incarnation of Adisesha who performs eternal service to the Almighty in His transcendental abode. When the Lord manifested in human form as Rama, Adisesha accompanied Him as Lakshmana and performed service to Rama and Sita. During His Krishna incarnation, Adisesha was born as His elder brother as he had misgivings that as the younger one, Lakshmana, he was forced to obey Rama and hence he could not always act in the best interests of Sita, the Divine Mother incarnate.

It was with a heavy heart that Lakshmana had to kindle the fire which Sita was made to enter before the Lord accepted Her. Likewise, he had to escort Her later when Rama instructed him to leave Sita in the forest. As he did not want to give room to disobeying the Lord, Adisesha was born as the elder during His Krishna manifestation. According to hagiological accounts, Ramanuja himself indicated in an assembly of elders in Melkote that he was a manifestation of Adisesha. Nammazhwar had prophesied the birth of Ramanuja for lessening the evils of this Kali age in one of his hymns.

In his discourse, Sri K.B. Devarajan said that the grace of the Azhwars enshrined in their hymns had been bequethed to successive generations of devotees up to this day through the the preceptors starting from Nathamuni to whom the hymns of the Azhwars were revealed by Nammazhwar's grace. Ramanuja had a stellar role in this galaxy of preceptors as he was the chosen one on whom the spiritual legacy of this tradition was bequethed by the preceptors before him. The confluence of the Vedas and the Azhwars works which was one of the three wishes of Yamuna fulfilled by Ramanuja, has enriched the Visishtadvaita philosophy he systematised by enhancing its universal appeal in the redemption of man.

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