Divya PRABHA ndham

The heading is not so because part of my name is embedded in the words but just to throw light on the works that throw light into our lives.It seems dangerous to even imagine what our lives would have been without the important 4000 verses which we can cling to to cross the ocean of samsara. Being the guiding light we depend so much on the works of the Alwars that what if never seems to arise in our minds. If it were not for the works of the alwars we would be groping in the dark. remember the story of a blind folded man left in front of an elephant and who was made to imagine what he could feel by touching the elephant. the picture the blind folded man draws is frightening cause we are able to imagine the scene before our eyes and we are aware both of being blindfolded and having seen an elephant. But our condition is just what the blindfolded man experiences when in concern with the Lord. The alwars however have supplied a wide range of characters and canvas where anything and everything is depicted as either a source or goal. The connect has to come by the grace of the Lord.

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=wMWUAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT30#v=onepage&q&f=false

Narasimha Jayanthi.

Vaishakha Shukla Chaturdashi is celebrated as Narasimha Jayanti. Lord Narasimha was the 4^thincarnation of Lord Vishnu. On Narasimha Jayanti day Lord Vishnu appeared in the form of Narasimha, a half lion and half man, to kill Demon Hiranyakashipu. 

The combination of Vaishakha Shukla Chaturdashi with Swati Nakshatra and weekday Saturday is considered highly auspicious to observe Narasimha Jayanti Vratam. 

Narasimha is the fourth incarnation of Lord Vishnu and the aim of the divine incarnation of half-man half-lion was to save the world from the clutches of Hiranakashipu, the demon king. Narasimha incarnation was also the result of the unwavering devotion of Prahlad the young devotee Vishnu. But fiery Narasimha threatened to destroy the world and it was Goddess Lakshmi who calmed him down.

Hiranakashipu as a result of intense austerities (Tapas) got a boon from Brahma that he will not be killed either by a man or a beast, neither will he be killed indoors or outdoors and nor during day or night. Armed with such a powerful boon, Hiranakashipu asked the people to worship him and not Vishnu. He over powered the Devas and people started worshipping him except for his son Prahlad.

Child Prahlad displayed exemplary courage and worshipped Vishnu before Hiranakashipu. Hiranyakashipu tried several methods to change his son’s mind. When the attempts failed, he tried to eliminate the boy but each time he was saved by Vishnu.

Finally, the prayers of young Prahlad were answered and Lord Vishnu appeared to get rid of Hiranakashipu. He appeared as Narasimha – neither man nor lion – dragged the helpless Hiranakashipu to the threshold of his palace door and killed him at twilight.

But the fiery form of Narasimha was beyond the control of human beings and Devas. They tried to propitiate him in many ways but all attempts failed. Narasimha threatened to annihilate the world. Finally, Brihaspati, the guru of Devas, invoked Goddess Lakshmi to calm Narasimha down.

Goddess Lakshmi appeared before Narasimha and this calmed him down and he then returned to Vaikunta.

Bhagvad vishaya saaram.

An Interview with PBA Swamy - 1979 Interview conducted by Sri K.A. Manavalan and Sri T.A. Bhashyam - published in Geethacharyan, March 1979 Issue Translated from Tamil by TCA Venkatesan Q. How did you get the name "prativAdi bhayankarar"? A. This is not my name. It is the title given to our ancestor. His divine name was Prativadi Bhayankaram Annan. He lived at viLakkoLi sannidhi in Kanchipuram. He learned the general sastras from NayanArAchAryar, son of Vedanta Desikar. Later, after hearing the greatness of Manavala Mamunigal, he went to Srirangam and seeked Swami's divine feet. There, due to Mamunigal's grace, he learnt the special sastras and became one of his ashta dikgajas. Q. Why did he get the name "prativAdi bhayankarar"? A. When he was the disciple of NayanArAchAryar, he defeated a advaitic pundit in a philosophical debate. Upon which NayanArAchAryar celebrated him as "prativAdi bhayankararE". From that day forward, he and his descendants came to be known by that name. Q. Were you born in Kanchipuram itself? A. Yes. I was born in Kanchipuram in the household of my grandfather (mother's father - Shashti Jeeyar Swami). Q. Can you tell us about your studies in youth? A. My father's name was Annangaracharyar. During a very young age, I learned from him. I had upanayanam done when I was six years old. My father taught me 3000 divyaprabandhams before I was nine years old. Two years later, he performed samashrayanam for me and then taught me the Thiruvaymozhi thousand. These were taught to me in Kanchipuram as well as in our village of Chiththathoor Thiruvadi Rayapuram. In addition, I learned many works from my father's uncle Kidaambi Krishnamacharyar. Q. Did you learn Sanskrit works also from your grand uncle? A. I learned some works from him first. Later, I learned many Sanskrit works, including Sri Bhashyam, from Sri U Ve Jagadguru Gaadi Ananthacharyar Swami. When Swami went to North India, upon his order, I learnt from Ilangaadu Rangaswamy Iyengar Swami and Pudhupper Venkatacharyar Swami. In addition, I learned Bhagavad Vishaya Rahasyam, mUvAyira vyAkhyAnam, Tamil grammar, ancient Tamil works, Ashta prabandhas and Kamba Ramayanam from Shashti Jeeyar Swami. Q. From whom did you learn the Vedas? When did you get the interest to learn them? A. I learned some parts of the Vedas first from Narasimhacharyar. Later I stopped learning the Vedas as they were in the way of my Sanskrit education. After the age of nineteen, I started learning them again from Mamballam Sudarshanacharyar Swami. About 25 people learned with me. I created a pAtashala for us to learn Vedas and purchased a building for it. We started reciting the Vedas we learnt, in the divine streets around the temple. This was started in the year 1919 and stopped in 1964 when I had a heart attack. Q. How many languages do you know? In how many languages have you written works? A. I know Tamil, Telugu,, Hindi and Sanskrit. I have written works in all four languages. I have also performed upanyasams in all four languages. Q. Till now (1979), how many works have you authored? A. In the four languages, I have written about 1207 books. This room in which I am seated has many books - out of which only about 1/4th are not authored by me. The rest were written and published by me. Q. Can you group the books you have authored so far? A. They can be separated into 16 groups. Most importantly, I have published pUrvAchArya granthas. I published all of Ramanuja's granthas in a book called Ramanuja Granthamala; all of Vedanta Desika's granthas in a book called Vedanta Desika Granthamala; and all of Manavala Mamunigal's works in a book called Varavaramunindra Granthamala. In addition, I have published books authored by me, in 15 groups. Starting at the age of 19, I have authored extended meanings for the 4000 divyaprabandhams. Q. In addition, you have also been publishing a journal, right? A. Yes. I have been running journals in all four languages. I publish a journal called "Vaidika Manohara" in Sanskrit and Hindi. In Telugu, I publish a journal called "Ramanuja Patrika" and in Tamil "Sri Ramanujan". Q. Are you the editor for all magazines or do you use representative for each of the magazine? A. I am the editor for all magazines. I have not kept any assistant so far. These magazine have been running for 32 years. Q. You said you know four languages. Do you also know English? A. When I was learning at the Vanamamalai Patashala, my mother wished me to learn English. However, my father did not agree to it. Later, when my father was ill, a doctor came to see him. At that time, my father himself asked that I learn English from the doctor. I learnt English from him for about 1.5 years. I also learnt English for some time from a person called Venkataryan. Even now, while I cannot speak well in English, I can still read and write. My hand- writing is beautiful in all languages. Those who see my handwriting ask me if I am a B.A. I tell that I am a P.B.A (laughs). Q. What's the reason for your greater affinity for dEva perumAL's ghoshti than for dEva perumAL Himself? A. My father had ordered me that I should never give up ghoshti. It is due to his grace. I have never missed iyal ghoshti once nor have I offered obeisance to it once. Q. What do you mean you have not offered obeisance to the iyal ghoshti once? A. If one is present in the ghoshti when it starts, then one does not have to offer obeisance to it. Only if one joins it in the middle does one have to do that. I have never joined the ghoshti once in the middle. I will always be ready before the ghoshti starts. All this is due to the grace of my father. Q. What is the reason for Divyaprabandha ghoshti to come in the front and Veda ghoshti to come behind, when perumAL goes about in the streets? A. The Divyaprabandhams which are the Tamil Vedas tell us all about the Lord's divine auspicious qualities. However, the Sanskri Vedas which started telling about these qualities, failed in its attempt and backed off ("yatO vAchO nivartante"). The same is stressed by Vedanta Desikar, Kambar and others. This is the reason why aruLis seyals are in the front and vEda pArAyaNam is in the back. Q. Amongst all your works, which one do you consider is the best? A. Amongst the works I have authored, I consider the work "Sri Bhashya Saram" in Thamzih, as the best. Also, all my vyakhyanams in Sanskrit for the 4000 Divyaprabandhams are very good. Q. Do you recall your first work? A. I was about 15 years old at that time. A scholar speaking at the Hundred Pillar mandapam in Kanchipuram stated that as the Divyaprabandhams were written in Tamil they cannot be respected. I wrote a 30 page book in Sanskrit called "Divyaprabandha Vaibhava Viveka:" rejecting his claim. That was my first book. Q. Can you tell us when and where you gave your first discourse? A. One time I had gone to Hyderabad (Sitarambag) for Udayavar Utsavam, along with my acharya Sri U. Ve. Gaadi Ananthacharyar Swami. I was about 16 years at that time. There some people requested Gaadi Swami to perform a discourse. Then, he ordered me to do a discourse. That order is the source for all my upanyasams. I performed my first discourse there on Udayavar Vaibhavam. Q. Your voice is majestic till date. What is the reason behind that? Do you use any medicines to protect your voice quality? A. The Lord's grace is the reason for my voice being good. I do not use any medicine for that. The Lord is the medicine. Q. Even though you have helped the people of this world by performed many discourses, there is a complaint that you have not created any disciples who can follow in your foot steps.... A. I have written thousands of works. Even today, many scholars who perform discourses write to me saying that their discourses are based upon my writings. They all can be considered my disciples. Even though I have not created a few disciples, I have written thousands of works that will last hundreds of years. That is sufficient. Q. Our sampradhayam is going down. In such a situation, who are you appointing as your heir? A. When so many scholars such as Sadabishekam Govinda Narasimhachariar, Velukkudi Varadachariar, Pillai Lokam Bhashyakachariar, S. Krishnaswami Iyengar (Sudarshanam Publisher), Nallan Ramakrishna Iyengar, K.A. Manavalan and Sthalasayanaththuraivar are building the sampradhayam, it is wrong to say that the sampradhayam is going down. Therefore, it is not necessary for me to appoint someone as my heir. Q. Can you say something about the Thenkalai and Vadakalai divisions within the Srivaishnava Sampradhayam. What was Vedanta Desikar's role in this division? A. During Vedanta Desikar's time, there was no division within the Srivaishnava Sampradhayam. Why go that far? I will swear, wearing a Thulasi garland, that prior to 1800, there was no Thenkalai Vadakalai division. Vedanta Desikar gained great knowledge through upAsana. Therefore, he authored a great number of works. In these works, first he will reject a notion of Pillai Lokacharyar. A few pages later, he would state that "this is the thought of such and such". A little later, he would agree with what he himself had rejected earlier. A certain group which came after his time, started following his earlier opinions. This is the cause for the Thenkalai Vadakalai division. Q. When and where did you get the title "mahA mahipOdhyAya"? A. In 1972, at Allahabad, seven people were selected as Saptha Rishis. At that time, this title was given to me by vice president Sri Pathak. Q. We learn that you have gone on several divyadesa yatras. Have you been to all Sri Vaishnava divyadesams? A. So far, I have done North Indian divya desa yatras alone 23 times. Out of the 108 Sri Vaishnava divyadesams, 106 are in this world. Out of them, excluding Salagramam and Thiruppirithi, I have worshipped at 104 divya desams. Q. Many people of our sampradhayam go to work early and return late. Being involved in lowkika like this, they are unable to follow the Srivaishnava sampradhayam. Can you briefly tell what they can do? A. After waking up and performing sandhya- vandanam, they must recite all 30 verses of Thiruppavai. If there is insufficient time even for that, then they must at least recite the "siRRam siRukAlE" pasuram. If they do this much, they would have followed the Srivaishnava sampradhayam. Q. What do you consider as your greatest gift? A. I consider the fact that I was born in Manavala Mamunigals' sampradhayam as my greatest gift. Just as Dasaratha prayed that Rama be born as his son for seven (all) births ("ninnaiyE maganAgap perRap peRuvEn EzhpiRappum nedunthOL vEndhE"), so too I pray every day that I gain Manavala Mamunigal as my acharya for seven (all) births ("ninnaiyE guruvAgap peRap peRuvEn EzhpiRappum yathIndhrap pravaNA"). Q. You have accomplished a great many things. Is there something that you feel you have not done yet? A. Whatever you consider that I have accomplished thus far, if they remain without any problems, then that is sufficient. Q. When you perform discourses, why do you ask questions toward the audience? Particularly, when it appears that you are questioning some scholars, it is said that they are bothered. A. I do not ask questions to bother any one. I ask them questions so that the audience realize their knowledge. Also, if people who have knowledge of the Vedas and Divyaprabandhams come to me, I take them with me to my upanyasams. I do this for the benefit of the audience only - not to test them. Q. As the editor of magazines, what is your wish for the magazine Geethacharyan (run by Sri M.A. Venkatakrishnan)? A. Geethacharyan must grow greatly. It must increase its pages more. As it grows, I would like to stop my magazine "Sri Ramanujan" and take this as my magazine. 

There is something more to all of this than meets the eye.

Usually it is pride that takes over a person who has learnt a little bit of the scriptures. though in reality he is supposed to be just the opposite. there are some attributes of the saints, that we have missed i feel. we are only looking at their works and analysing them but what of their souls how come they are able to have no pride at all. the more they know the more common plain they become. They did not follow the acharam which the forward classes followed. nothing mattered to them. how come such rules arose  how come then some people called it the hymns for the drowning literally translating the word. if you study the grid as it were the background that one comes from plays such an important role to what one becomes. it sounds contradictory no wonder rules were formed. but in doing so some of them went way beyond the practical.
yeh its all very confusing it is.        
An ignorant mans vision is gross and physical. hence he sees the several objects as so many different things. but a wise mans vision is subtle and he perceives the unity underlying the apparent diversity. this is what is called equal vision. Does the wise man then give the same or equal treatment to all. even the most casual observation will reveal that Nature means diversity and difference. In health wealth authority even in physical matters like colour, height weight sound etc. there is no equality even among children of same parents. So the idea of perfect equality is a myth. both of the physical and mental planes, inequality reigns supreme and it is the law of nature. Sadhana consists in eliminating mental inequalities and rising into an absolute plane of perfect equality and then the inequalities of the physical plane though always there do not make themselves felt. The doctrine of equality has often been misunderstood and even abused by interested parties. Many pose as philosophers and os such imposters it is usually made fun of saying philosophers are approaching take care of your possessions as they make no distinction between yours and mine. wise men therefore counsel to adopt equality only in bhava. In our dealings with others and our worldly possessions we cannot and should not enforce the doctrine of equality. A sadhaka however can, as far as he is subjectively concerned, exemplify the principle in his life and conduct without detriment to others interests. but he should not shelter himself under the doctrine of equality and try gratifying his selfish needs. All creatures are essentially divine, but the difference of their upadhis or bodies do count in the practical world. A tiger too is Narayana but bow to him from a distance. 

What makes a life worth living? It’s a Wonderful Life

Many films explore the question, “What makes a human life good?” everybody’s favourite schmaltzy Christmas classic, takes on the task directly, with both predictable and unexpected results. Start with the predictable ones: the old question whether a life that is morally good is also good in the sense that it makes you happy is answered in the affirmative. The James Stewart character, George Bailey, achieves the title’s wonderful life by sacrificing his own plans and ambitions for the sake of his family and the poorer members of his community. According to the movie, what’s good about the morally good life is the way it connects you to people.

But at a slightly deeper level, the movie raises the question whether Socrates’ famous claim – that the unexamined life is not worth living – might be true. For what saves Bailey from suicide is the chance to examine his life, by the philosophical device of a thought experiment: “You’ve been given a great gift, George. A chance to see what the world would be like without you.” The movie suggests that if he had not been given that chance, he might well have killed himself. But if he had done so, believing it would have been better if he had never been born, would we, the audience, still judge that he had a wonderful life? And if we would not, then does the movie show us that a human life cannot be good unless the person who lives it thinks about it and knows that it is good?

Can anything really be justified? Ida

Her lover has asked her to come away with him. “Then,” he says, “we’ll buy a dog, get married, have children, get a house.” But Ida’s question, again, is, “And then?” To this, all he can say is: “The usual. Life.”

Ida is a novice nun. Before taking her vows, she has been sent into the world to meet her aunt, her only surviving relative. During the film, she learns that she is Jewish and discovers how her parents were murdered during the war. The aunt is a worldly state prosecutor who urges Ida to abandon the convent and live life to the full, but who is herself burdened by her own past. When the aunt commits suicide, Ida tries out cigarettes, vodka, high-heels, jazz and finally sex with a young saxophonist she has befriended. But as the film ends, we see her back in her nun’s habit, returning to the convent.

The saxophonist offers love, domesticity, contentment. With her repeated “and then?” Ida pushes to its limits the question: “what would make such a life worth living?”

Her lover is stymied. And indeed, it is unclear what answer can be given when the demand for justification is pushed this far. We see Ida reject a life of worldly engagement and choose instead a different kind of commitment. She does not explain this choice. Her lover’s answer: “Life” is the last word in the film, followed only by the music of Bach, as Ida trudges back to the convent, against the traffic. We are left wondering whether any ultimate choice of this kind can be fully explained or justified. Can there be an ultimate answer to Ida’s question, “and then?”, and if so, what form could such an answer take?

Is there more to us than biology? Gattaca

When Gattaca was released in 1997, Dolly, the most highly publicised sheep in history and the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, was one year old. The human genome project, hailed as the biological equivalent of putting an astronaut on the moon, was progressing at an accelerating pace towards its goal of mapping and sequencing the entire human genome. These developments triggered widespread ethical debates about genetic determinism.

Would clones of a famous scientist or successful athlete be able to live up to the expectation that they would achieve as much as the person whose genetic material they had inherited, or would those very expectations be a crushing psychological burden? Would sequencing the human genome enable us to identify the genes that contribute to higher intelligence or other desirable traits and would that in turn lead to discrimination against those who do not have them?

Into this highly-charged debate came a film that took its name from the initial letters of the four building blocks of DNA. Gattaca portrays a future in which parents can select from their genes to produce the child that has the best genes that any child of theirs could have. These offspring, known as “valids”, get the best positions in society. The film’s plot focuses on the attempt of Vincent, an ambitious “in-valid” conceived in the old-fashioned way, to escape his genetic destiny of being a cleaner and instead become an astronaut.

Vincent triumphs through sheer strength of will. In one scene he challenges his genetically superior brother Anton to see who can swim farther out into the ocean. Vincent wins, because he leaves nothing in reserve for the swim back. Presumably many of the audience come away assenting to the film’s tagline that “there is no gene for the human spirit”.

That tagline needs critical scrutiny. If “the human spirit” is a reference to the hero’s guts and determination, then presumably there are genes for that, and if we knew enough about our genes, they would be part of one’s genetic profile. If that isn’t what is meant by “the human spirit” then what is it, and how do we come to have a characteristic that does not have a genetic basis?