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Vijay Triplicane • September 22, 1999 


Dear Varadhan,
    I am very happy to read your posting. It was an excellent, heartfelt
outcry of a sincere bhAgavatha calling for unity among the Sri
VaishNavas. The fact that you are from one of the most controversial
dhivya dhEsams makes it even more significant.

    We should assign utmost priority for respecting our AchAryAs and not
committing any kind of bhAgavatha apachAram thro our manas, vAk or
kAyam. Learning all vedas and prabhandhams, reciting them at the
appropriate svaram, and everything ,even including bhakthi to perumAL
comes next to this. We should take time to understand the lives of our
AzhvArs and AchAryAs and try to realize the level of humility and
modesty and the respect they showed to other bhAgavathAs. Didn't they
attribute greatest importance to that?

    When periya nambi performed final rites to a man from socially lower
caste, everybody questioned him. He replied," Sri Rama performed the
final rites to a bird jatAyu. I am no greater than Sri Rama and he is no
lower than the bird.". We could easily relate to this incident. This
happened about 1000 years back. Where did all this go? Where did we lose
this? There are several such incidents from our AchAryA's lives.

    We comfortably forget all these basic tenets of a SrivaishNava and
argue about the petty things. We don't realize how much of disgrace we
bring to our greatest sampradhAyam by doing this. Every time we feel
like talking about such issue, we should think that our AchAryas svAmi
dEsikar, svAmi MaNavALa mAmunigaL are right by our side listening to
what we talk and argue about and how they would be deeply hurt by all
this. After deeply hurting their heart does it make any sense to be
proud about knowing all the vEdhams and prabhandhams ...? What does it
get us?

    When Sri Ramanuja found out that kooraththAzhvAn lost his eyes, his
heart broke and he couldn't control himself. Sri KooraththAzhvAn replies
,"Pease don't worry. I must have ridiculed some bhAgavathA that his
thirumaN wasn't straight. Thats why I lost my eyes..." He wouldn't even
have thought about such an apachAram. But he puts himself at the lowest
position and such was his humility. If such a great soul as Sri
kooraththAzhvan pays so much importance to treating bhAgavathAs
respectfully, we don't even have to talk about the respect to be given
to the AchAryAs.

AzhvAr emberumAnAr AchAryan thiruvadigaLESaraNam.
-Vijay Triplicane
(Viji)
PS: Thanks for the excellent tape . Sri vELukkudi KrishNan's talk on Sri
kooraththAzhvAn is something that everyone should listen to. We need
such constant reminders about our AchAryAs to keep us in control.

--
Vijay Triplicane