BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI
Adusumilli Bharathi
BHAGAVAN SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI
"Reality is only one and that is the self. All the rest are mere phenomena in it, of it and by it".
The sage who thus encapsulated quintessential Advaitism is Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi whose silence, like that of Lord Dakshina Murthy, is said to have provided eloquent answers to many a spiritual query from aspirants. Beyond Atmavichara - inquiry into the nature of "I" consciousness - Bhagavan did not champion any particular system of philosophy or yogic practice. Sri Rajeswarananda Swami has rightly said of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi that he touches all aspects of life without being "cramped or confined by any" and that "no school of philosophy, cult, creed, yoga could claim him as he did not fit easily into any ready made classification. He lived free and remained free and let everyone remain free likewise".
Born as the second son of Sundaram Ayyar and Alagammal on 30th December 1879, in a small village in Tamilnadu, Bhagavan was named Venkata Ramana. He had an uneventful childhood and, looking at the boy more interested in playing than studying, no one could guess that he was poised to blossom into a towering spiritual stalwart. Two incidents mark the first rumblings of his resolve to take to a life of renunciation: one is his chance hearing about the sanctity of Arunachala, believed to be the abode of Lord Siva, and the other is the transforming influence exerted on him by the book "Periya Purana". What clinched that decision, however, was the terror of death that suddenly gripped him in his seventeenth year while he was afflicted with a minor illness and was lying down on his bed. His overcoming of that fear through lucid analysis of the enigma of death - of what it can and cannot destroy and his mounting quest from that time onwards to understand the true nature of "I" consciousness misguidedly linked by human beings with the physical body and the rational mind, made him wish to leave home to find an answer. The young boy’s withdrawal into himself, his total neglect of both the biological needs of food and sleep and the familial and social obligations as a son and a student became a constant source of friction between him and his family members. Things came to a head when he was found meditating, by his elder brothers at a time he was supposed to be doing his homework. The enraged elder brother shouted at him saying that may be it was time to put an end to the farce of Ramana’s going to school. As if hurt to the quick, Ramana took with him three rupees out of the five rupees given to him to pay school fee and fled to Tiruvannamalai. After brief halts at Villipuram and Kiluru he reached. Tiruvannamalai on 1-9-1896 and began intense spiritual Sadhana after offering worship to Lord Siva in the temple. Wishing to remain undisturbed he entered the tunnel where "Patala Lingam" was housed. When his presence there was discovered by some people, he was in a state of deep trance. His hair was matted, His nails were overgrown and his worm - infested body was oozing pus. Devotees began to turn up in large numbers to have darshan of this saint who obviously had transcended the limitation of body consciousness. To escape this unwanted limelight, Bhagavan used to frequently change the place of his meditation.
Somehow word reached Bhagavan’s family regarding his whereabouts and his mother, brother and maternal uncle rushed to Tiruvannamalai and coaxed him in vain to go home with them. It was only in later years that his mother came back and was accorded enlightenment by him and spent the rest of her life free from the coils of earthly attachments. During summer season Bhagavan used to come away from the Virupaksha temple premises to stay in a mango grove. It was Ganapathi Muni who first experienced Bhagavan’s radiant Divinity He began addressing Bhagavan as Sri Ramana Maharshi and following his advice all his devotees began to address Bhagavan like that only. Bhagavan had supreme compassion for everyone and everything in creation. Men and animals were seen by him as the manifestation of the same Divinity concretised in different forms in accordance with the law of karma. Devotees in the Ashram used to be served food cooked by Bhagavan himself. From morning 3 o’ clock to night 9 o’ clock, he used to be busy cooking, tending cows, gardening, writing letters, or clarifying the doubts of devotees about spiritual topics. His clarification was verbal only rarely. Devotees silently praying in his presence used to get answers for doubts from their own minds.
Sangharakshita, a Buddhist monk who visited Ramana Maharashi was so impressed by his teaching through silence that he paid a tribute to that silence as a "positive spiritual force". Murphet and Paul Brunton also hailed Maharshi’s silence as free flowing divine current unimpeded by the blockage of articulation.
In course of time a few festivals began to be celebrated in the Ashram. Circumambulation round Arunachala hill used to be the favourite festival of many devotees because Bhagavan’s singing of his own composition "Arunachala Siva" standing in the midst of the hundreds of lighted lamps was a glorious sight to see. Devotees used to feel that Lord Siva himself was standing before them. Even after Bhagavan was incapacitated from walking by a malignant tumour and was confined to bed, he never for a second lost his equanimity. Hours before his "Sayujyam" on the 14th of April, 1950 Bhagavan is reported to have reiterated his teaching that he was not his body and that there can never be cessation for pure consciousness which was his true identity as it is that of everyone and everything in the universe.
Once in a while when devotees were not able to grasp a philosophic concept, Bhagavan used to explain it with the help of apt images, Talking about how surrender to God will make life easy, he used to say that clinging to the illusion of "doership" would be like a man insisting on carrying his luggage on his head after being seated in the compartment of a train. He used to say that such an act will no way lessen the burden of the train and is therefore a foolish courting of unnecessary strain. He used to say that surrender and desire can never coexist even if it be a desire for salvation. As surrender means implicit faith that God will give every man what is right for him at any given moment of his life, Bhagavan used to jokingly say that asking for a wish to be fulfilled is not surrender but a command to God. To ensure that surrender will not be mistaken to be non-action he used to say that real surrender means a "surrender to what needs to be done" with deep love for God and with no thought for personal reward and not mere idling away of time.
His first question to all questioners invariably used to be "who is asking this question ?" Sadhana as defined by Bhagavan is the effort to recognise the oneness of the perceiver, the perceived and the act of perception. He wanted aspirants to remember that just as a fabric can have no separate existence apart from the threads with which it is woven, human mind’s existence is only as a tangle of thoughts. Since what is left after rooting out thoughts is pure awareness, dwelling on it, according to Bhagavan is "meditation without mental activity". Bhagavan’s answer to the age old question of overcoming fate in the context of everything being predetermined, and his clarification regarding the role of prayer is worth noting.
"There are only two ways in which to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to inquire who undergoes this destiny and discover that only the ego is bound by it and not the self, and that the ego is non- existent. The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realising one’s helplessness and saying all the time. ‘Not I but Thou oh, my Lord’ and giving up the sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine" and leaving it to the lord to do what he likes with you…
… The changeless infinite self transcends both free will and destiny with which only the ignorant are concerned. To the ignorant the ‘I’ is the self limited to the body, to the wise the ‘I’ is the self infinite".
Courtesy - Mihira
Regards
Bharathi