thiruppavai day sixteen song sixteen
From the Bhakti List Archives
• December 30, 2002
THIRUPPAVAI - DAY SIXTEEN - SONG SIXTEEN Transliteration nAyakanAy ninRa nanthakopanutaiya kOyil kAppOnE kotith thOnRum thOrana vAyil kAppOnE manikkathavam thaL thiRavAy Ayar cirumiyarOmukku aRaipaRai mAyan manivannan nennalE vAy nErnthAn thUyOmAy vanthOm thuyiLezap patuvan vAyal munnam munnam mARRAthE ammA nI nEya nilaikkathavam nIkkElOrempAvAy. Translation Guard at the gates of Nantakopan, our Lord! Guard at the doors next to the flagstaff! Unbar the decorated doors. The inscrutable Manivannan has already promised us The proceeds of the pavai. We have assembled in all purity To wake him up with our songs. Don’t keep on questioning us, dear. Throw open the hospitable doors. As has been stated earlier, with the fifteenth song, a phase of pavai comes to a close and with the sixteenth song, the next phase begins. Between the two songs, the maids take bath and wear the vaishnava marks. They also become pure of heart. Cleanliness at the physical level and purity at the spiritual level are at one and the same time an achievement and a qualification. It enables the maids to demand admittance into the abode of the Divine as we understand from the sixteenth song. This purity needs an explanation. It can best be understood in the context of Nammalvar’s songs. ‘mananaka malam ara malar micai elutarum’ is a line in the second song of Tiruvaymoli by Nammalvar. When God makes his presence felt in the mind, it is cleansed of all its impurities. nALum ninRu atum nam pazamaiyamkotu vinaiyutanE mALumOr kuRaivillai mananaka malmaRak kazuvi naLum thiruvutaiyatikaLtham nalam kazal vananki mALum Oritatththilum vanakkotu vAzvathu vaLame. When each day we cleanse the mind of its impurities and worship the feet of the Divine, the cruel effects of fate are nullified. To live so is to live this life valorously. Thus purity is a state of preparedness to receive divine grace. The present experience of rapturous communion with God in the temple provides the basis of hope for the future redemption. Though God’s grace is extended as an unmerited benevolence, the soul has to achieve a certain poise that is called purity. In such a poise, the human self is to express the life of the soul, the godly life, and is not to engage in the egoistic satisfaction of desires. Body and soul are not to be antagonistic to each other, competing for the life of the human. Rather they are to become one harmonious unity, as the life of God is lived out through the totality of human life. Thus the maids qualify themselves as those who have cultivated devotion to god and replaced an inferior life with a superior one. The idea of achieved purity is to be found in Saiva Siddhantha also. In fact, there is a beautiful metaphor that explains the point. Life is like a pond in which moss is so overgrown that the water never shows to the eyes. Throw a stone into the pond and the water is to be seen for a brief moment only to be held away from sight again by the moss coming together. The stone thrown into the waters overgrown with moss is bhakthi and what is revealed is the soul in its essence. Curiously, there is a Sivan temple at Erramannur in Kerala. The devotees who go to the temple are not supposed to pray for anything in particular. The mood should be one of preparedness to give up all of the self and become pure enough to gain admittance into the abode of God. The guards at the gate and the doors know that the maids are matured enough in spiritual cultivation. And yet, like masters in spiritual cultivation, they seem to delay entrance of the maids into the temple. Krishna was being brought up in the context of the atrocious days of the reign of Kamsa. That in effect is the binding confinements of bodily existence in which the devotees live. Therefore the maids have to assure the guards that they are not the evil forces like Surpanakai or Bhutanai. They identify themselves as the innocent maids of Ayppati. – ayar cirumiyarom. They also refer to the promise of God’s grace in terms of the proceeds of the pavai. They identify their mission with waking up God with their songs. Thus the song is the dramatisation of a situation of gaining admittance into the abode of God, the Divine presence. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------------------------------------------- - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH - To Post a message, send it to: bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com Group Home: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bhakti-list Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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