The Hindu : Devotion to preceptor

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 20, 2003

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - Religion

Devotion to preceptor

CHENNAI NOV.20 . Realisation of God, which liberates man from bondage, is the birthright of every human being and hence it is not the exclusive privilege of a few as commonly mistaken. The lives of saints and realised ones attest that the Almighty had knocked on the doors of even the most ostracised in society thereby proving that social identities like learning, age, gender, class or caste do not have any meaning at the altar of the Supreme Being. Another misconception that is associated with spirituality is that the knowledge of the Self (Atman) is abstruse and beyond the grasp of the laity and that it has to be pursued in isolation after cutting asunder worldly responsibilities. It is not so. It is rooted in the socio-cultural ethos of the common people and inextricably intertwined with worldly life and experience.

In his benedictory address, Swami Nityananda Giri said the life and compositions of Avudayakkal showed that devotion and Self-knowledge were not different and one led inevitably to the other. She was a disciple of Sridhara Ayyaval, one of the three saints (the others are Bhodendra and Sadguru Swamigal) who popularised the spiritual practice of chanting and singing the Divine name as means to liberation in South India. Avudayakkal was born in the early 19th Century to a pious couple of Shenkottai and even as a child displayed a spiritual bent of mind. Widowed at a very young age she lived a cloistered life as was common in society at that time. But her devotion was such that it brought her Guru literally to her doorstep, as she had no contacts with the outside world. Sridhara Ayyaval on a visit to the town initiated her and the last vestiges of ignorance were removed blessing her with spiritual experience.

This mystic experience afforded her the insight to articulate moving compositions in Tamil on the glory of the Guru and Self-knowledge couched in the language and idiom of the laity thereby enabling even the unlettered to imbibe the spiritual truth. Fourteen works she composed saw the light of day between 1894 and 1910. Her songs were popular in the Travancore palace and in the region around Tirunelveli where they are sung during worship and on festive occasions. They are reminiscent of the Upanishads and steeped in devotion to the preceptor who according to the spiritual tradition is none other than God Himself. Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh documented her life in his book, Lives of Saints, highlighting her singular devotion to Sridhara Ayyaval.

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