64th NAYANAR

Sri BHAGAVAN MAHARSHI RAMANA

Marble Statue Mandapam of Sri Bhagavan; Ramanashramam, Tiruvannamalai.

MEENAKSHI TEMPLE MADURAI

Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi (young Venkataraman Iyer) encountered the 63 Nayanmars at Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, and there after, reading Sekkizhar’s Periyapuranam.

An opinion held firmly by the author that Bhagavan Maharshi Ramana is the most illustrious 64th Nayanmar in the 20th century CE amongst the 63 Nayanmars during the 6th to 8th centuries CE. Number 64 is the most auspicious One. Sri Bhagavan deserves to be an addition set in stone amongst the 63 Nayanmars at the Mandapam Meenakshi Temple.

I am not claiming the canon changed; I am asking what it means that the saint who explicitly prayed for the grace of the 63 eventually became an object of devotion in a manner strikingly analogous to them. After the death experience, his eyes drenched in Divine Love, “He, Venkataraman, prayed before the images of the sixty-three Nayanmars at the Meenakshi Temple.” A tentative theological proposal: Ramana Maharshi as a “64th Nayanmars.” One might tentatively propose that, in a posthumous and theological sense, Sri Ramana Maharshi may be regarded as a “64th Nayanmar.” This is not to suggest that the traditional canon of the sixty-three Nayanmars has historically been expanded, but rather to recognize a striking continuity between Ramana’s own spiritual life and the Tamil Saiva ideal embodied by those saints. As a young man in Madurai, after his profound death-experience, Ramana repeatedly visited the Meenakshi Temple and stood before the images of Siva, Meenaksi, Nataraja, and the sixty-three Nayanmars. He later recalled that he would sometimes pray to Isvara for the descent of the same grace that had been bestowed upon the sixty-three saints, so that his devotion might become perpetual like theirs. His relationship with the Nayanmars was therefore not merely antiquarian or devotional in a conventional sense: he consciously placed his own aspiration for divine grace in continuity with theirs. From this perspective, calling Ramana a “64th Nayanmar” could be understood not as a claim about the historical canon, but as a retrospective theological reading. The young Venkataraman stood before the sixty-three saints asking for the grace that had made them what they were; the mature Ramana subsequently became, for countless devotees, himself an embodiment of radical surrender, devotion, and God-realization. The paradox is therefore significant: “the one who prayed before the sixty-three asking for their grace may, retrospectively, be seen as completing their devotional lineage.”

The mandapam of 63 saints: This Mandapam built in 1569 by one Ariyanatha Mudaliyar, situated in the front corridor of the Swami Sannidhi in the south row. This mandapam houses the sacred icon of Shekkizhar Swamigal and 63 Nayanmars.

Sri Bhagavan’s statue ought to find its rightful place in the Meenakshi temple amongst the 63 Nayanmars of Tamil Nadu! You heard this here first. The Nayanmars (‘hounds of Shiva’, and later ‘teachers of Shiva ) were a group of 63 Tamil Hindu saints living during the 6th to 8th centuries CE who were devoted to the Hindu god Shiva. The Maharshi, indeed, is the 64th Nayanar of Tamil Nadu, there is no doubt about this. A wish that the Maharshi himself held within his heart, ‘why can’t I be granted the same grace of such ones,’ he pleaded in the Meenakshi Temple, Madurai after the “experience od death,” nay, “after the experience of the immortal spirit.” After all, Sri Bhagavan is Arunachala Shiva.

This is an opinion firmly held by the author, that Sri Bhagavan ought to be recognised as such. Sri Bhagavan’s Light does dwarfs all other Lights. Fast forward & give it time, you will see, but then, will you be around? Were will you go? Where will you be? Whence? Here and Now, become absorbed, because when Yama, the Lord of Death, knocks at the door, will you tell Him, O Yama, please wait! Or, will you say, its ok, I trust Brahma. You have trusted and danced with these two deities for such a long time, so so many millennia, where has it got you? Dukkha…Moksha is getting rid of the false or the non-existent dukkha, here and now. Get rid of your thoughts, here and now. Be Happy!