Sri APNSwami’s Shishya Writes | Swami Desikan’s Life Chronicles – A Perspective for Modern Life

NOTE:  As we celebrate Swami Desikan’s Thirunakshatram, here is an article written by Sri APN Swami’s Shishya that talks about what we can learn from Swami Desikan’s life today.

    Swami Desikan’s Life Chronicles – A Perspective for Modern Life

     Multi-faceted, illustrious, brilliant, devout, austere…….are some of the adjectives that come to our mind when we think of Swami Vedanta Desikan.  In fact, his life and the many accomplishments that embellish it are a wonder that can overwhelm us today.

     As we celebrate the 751st birth anniversary of Swami Vedanta Desikan, let us see how we can imbibe his life and the many incidents in it, for our modern life.

Faith and Devotion

    Today, we ask many questions regarding the existence of God, philosophical ideas, our sastrams, and just about everything else that we cannot comprehend with our limited knowledge  and capacity. We often think these questions are a manifestation of our intelligence. But in reality, they reflect our ignorance and lack of faith in our sastrams and principles that have been established by Perumal and followed by our acharyas.

    Swami Desikan, despite his intelligence and capabilities, never questioned what his acharya said. He simply followed it and got profound results at the end. 

    When Swami Desikan was about 20 years old, his maternal uncle and acharyan, Appullar taught him the Garuda mantram and asked him to meditate on it. Dutifully following his acharya’s words, Swami Desikan went to Thiruvaheendrapuram, a divya desam near Cuddalore. He climbed up the Oushadagiri hill, sat under a banyan tree and meditated on the sloka taught by his acharyan. He controlled his senses and focused his mind singularly on Garudan, the embodiment of Vedas.

    Garudan, pleased with his devotion and meditation, emerged before Desikan and taught him the exalted Hayagriva mantram, To top it, Garudan also gave Desikan the Hayagriva idol that he had been worshipping for many years. Keeping this idol in front of him, Desikan started meditating on the Hayagriva mantram. Pleased with desikan, Lord Hayagrivan emerged and gave him “lalamrutham” and due to his grace, Desikan composed more than 120 different literary works, each a gem in itself. 

    This incident goes to show the unconditional faith and devotion that Swami Desikan had in his acharya and on Perumal that helped him to establish Bhagavad Ramanujar’s principles through his works. The fact that many of his works are being read and celebrated 650 years after his life reflects the depth of their meaning and their relevance even today. 

Adamant Detachment 

   Swami desikan was never attracted to money or riches. He lived a life detached from material pleasures, as is evident from the many incidents in his life.

    As we all know, he prayed to Perundevi thayar to give wealth to a poor brahmin boy so he could get married. Hearing his Sri Stuti, Perundevi Thayar showered gold coins, but Desikan never took even a single coin home. He thanked Thayar for Her benevolence and left while the boy collected it all. Likewise, in another incident, a rich man gave some gold coins during Desikan’s daily unchavruthi. His wife, Thirumagai, who had never seen gold coins before, asked Desikan what these are. In response, he used a stick and pushed it away as if these gold coins were a piece of dirt. Such is his detachment to money and material pleasures.

    Today, all of us run behind money in one form or another. While it is impossible to live like Desikan, we can ensure that our life doesn’t always revolve around money and we make time for other important aspects too, such as family, God, spiritual pursuits, kainkaryam (service), and more. 

Mental strength (Vairagyam)

   Swami Desikan’s detachment to wealth stems from his enormous mental strength.

    Once his childhood friend, Vidyaranyar, wanted to help Desikan by making him the royal poet at Vijayanagar kingdom. So, he sent a messenger to bring Desikan to the king immediately. But Desikan refused to come as he didn’t want to praise any king with his words. He understood the insignificance of this wealth and refused to entertain any king. He only wanted to praise Perumal and his acharyas through his words and hence rejected the offer. This also led him to compose the famous Vairagya Panchagam, five stotras that describe the reason for his vairagyam. It takes a lot of fortitude to refuse the name, fame and wealth that came knocking at Swami Desikan’s door. 

    We can too emulate such mental strength that is sure to help us handle many stressful and difficult situations in our life.

Humility

    Despite all his wondrous capabilities, Desikan was a humble person who saw the hand of God in everything, from his breath to every morsel of food that went into his mouth. He understood that everything is Sarveshwaran and he is a servant of his Lord. Such an understanding gave him a lot of humility too. 

     In this Kaliyugam, we tend to believe that we are on top of everything. We like to flaunt even the smallest of our accomplishments by forgetting the Hand that gave it to us. Swami desikan was a living example of humility and let us pray to him to give us a bit of his humility, so we can live a life of gratitude and modesty. 

Courage to take on challenges

    Humility is not the same as meekness. Despite being humble, Desikan never shied away from challenges. He participated in many debates to establish the validity and greatness of Bhagavad Ramanuja’s principles at every opportunity and took on many scholars at the same time. Probably the best example of his fearlessness is the challenge to complete a 1000 slokas within a single night. After taking the blessings of Sri Ranganathar, Desikan finished 1008 slokas on His paduka within just four hours! This work, called Paduka Sahasram, is a magnum opus of Swami Desikan and one that etched his name in this land forever. 

    Like that, our life is full of challenges, both from within and outside. Instead of running away from challenges, we should develop the courage to face them in the faith that our Perumal and Acharyas will guide us through it. 

Unconditional support

    Any learning from Swami Desikan’s life is never complete without a mention of his wife Thirumagai. She supported him in every way possible and like him, stayed away from wealth and material pleasures. She followed her husband dutifully and served him in the best way possible – all of which gave her a sense of fulfillment and completeness and one that is sadly missing in our lives today. 

    To conclude, these incidents in Swami Desikan’s life teach us a ton of different aspects that we should imbibe to live a happy, healthy, and peaceful life, according to what’s prescribed in our sastras . This is not an exhaustive list as Swami Desikan lived a blemishless life by strictly following our Sastras and the words of our purvacharyas. 

    On this 751st thirunakshatram of Swami Desikan, let us all strive towards emulating at least a few of these aspects in our life too.

Acharyan Thiruvadigale Charanam. 

Adiyen
Lavanya Badrinarayanan.

Sri APNSwami’s Shishya Writes | Teacher’s Day in our Sampradayam

NOTE:  This is a small write-up by Sri APN Swami’s Sishyas based on Swami’s experience with his  Acharyan and the all-important role that every Acharyan plays in our day-to-day lives.

Our sampradayam is unique in many ways, and one of them is the unbreakable line of guru paramparai. Starting from Perumal to our current Acharyan, this guru paramparai continues without any break in the lineage.

In general, relationships are fragile because they can be broken at any time. Many times, we tend to stay away from people whom we don’t like or with whom we are not comfortable with. This could include even close relationships like husband-wife or father-son. In fact if you do certain rituals, you can permanently sever the relationship and have no connection whatsoever with the other person, so much that no “thetu” is even applicable when any untoward incident happens to the other person.

But one relationship that you can never break or sever is your relationship with Perumal. Andal rightly says, “Undan odu uravel namakku ingu ozhikka ozhiyaathu” (pasuram 28 of thiruppavai). This means we can never break our relationship with Perumal. And why is that? Because of our association with our acharyan. This is the greatness of an acharya-sishya relationship. Even blood relationships can break but your relationship with your acharyan can never break, regardless of anything.

What exactly is this acharyan-sishya relationship?

On the face of it, most of us think that giving sambhavanai, doing namaskaram to him, learning the meanings of different granthams, and taking his guidance on sampradayic and day-to-day activities alone define this relationship.

But in reality, this relationship is far deeper than this. An acharyan is not only a guide on the philosophical side, but also plays an important role in making you strong on the emotional, mental, and psychological side as well. In this sense, he teaches us not only the path to get moksham, but also to live a healthy life on earth. In fact, he can even help us in the most trickiest situations of our life.

Just like how Perumal protects us at all times, like that our Acharya also protects us always.

This can bring up an important question in our minds? Why don’t all people get the same level of acharyan anugraham? Why is it that some people seem to have more anugraham than others?

Let’s understand this with a simple example. Let us say in a class there are 50 students. Do all of them get the first rank? No. And why? Because their ability to grasp what the teacher is saying varies. In other words, some children are able to better understand what the teacher is saying when compared to others and this is why such students tend to get higher marks. Likewise, all of us understand and follow our Acharyan’s words in varying degrees and this is why the level of his anugraham also varies. If we follow our acharyan’s words perfectly and follow him obediently, there is no reason why we will not get his complete anugraham.

We can understand this better with Madurakavi Azhwar’s Kanninum Siruthambu . In one of the pasurams, he says, “Thirithandaakilum deva piraan udai kariya kola thiruvuru kaanban naan…” (pasuram 3). We all know that Madurakavi Azhwar is an ardent student and follower of Nammazhwar, then why did he talk about Perumal? Madurakavi Azhwar says that when he talks about Perumal, it makes his acharyan happy and this is why he praises Perumal. Such is his acharyan bhakti. He set the right example for all of us to follow.

So, when should we follow our acharyas obediently and imbibe their words? Everyday.

Though September 5th is celebrated as Teacher’s Day, in reality, every day is teacher’s day in our sampradayam because our acharyas give us their anugraham each and every minute. Let us all strive to make our Acharyas happy by following their wishes/commands in the best way possible to make them happy and to establish a deep bonding with them.

Acharyan Thiruvadigale Charanam