Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha As I was thinking about this concept for a while, by God's grace, I got a mail from one of the scholars(Shri Vijay from Triplicane, my humble pranams to you, Swami!) amongst our group members who pointed out a mistake that I had done in my earlier post. I thank him for his kindness in pointing out my mistake in a nice fashion. And this question triggered more of my thought process and as I was thinking about this more, I ended up getting the lord's grace to get a different perspective on this subject and I ended with this post. I do not have any references to Acharya Granthams, as this perspective is what the lord showed me in my mind. If anything is wrong in this post, it is solely due to my ignorance, but if there is anything right at all, the credits go to the lord and that great scholar. I request that this post be evaluated by learned scholars and I request them to correct my mistakes. This post does not have any authenticity as it does not qualify as a perspective of the purvacharyas and hence is not for all. Nirhetuka and Sahetuka krupai: The perspectives Nirhetukam is the krupai of the Lord that requires no specific reason to be attributed to granting anything(including moksham) to the Jeevatma. Sahetukam is the krupai of the Lord that gives some specific reason(some effort put in by the jeevatma) to justify granting anything(including moksham) to the Jeevatma. Now, the perspective from which these concepts needs to be understood are: Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) - A jeevatma does "something" that "according" to the lord is a reason for granting say "moksham". Even if the lord wants to grant moksham to someone of his choice, he does not want to force it and hence attributes the granting of moksham to some effort that was put in by the jeevatma. Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - The Jeevatma has realized its swaroopam and has starting thinking Him all the time and does everything as a kainkaryam to Him. This Jeevatma, having realized its incapability to do anything, attributes the moksham it is going to attain/has attained, to the Nirhetuka krupai of the Lord. This Jeevatma cannot digest the fact that "it" did something. To this Jeevatma, it did nothing to qualify for the moksham, and it is only due to the Nirhetuka krupai of the lord that it attained the moksham. [While this is so, in my earlier post, I had made a mistake of not clearly explaining what I meant as "adopting bhakthi". Adopting bhakthi may be due to two reasons: a) Because the jeevatma has realized its swaroopam and makes performing bhakthi as a swabhavam with no intent of grabbing lord's grace - an unconditional act (Bhakthi is not an upayam, because the lord is the upayam and the upeyam). b) Performing bhakthi to attain moksham(upayam) i.e a conditional act. Azhwars and great souls fall in category (a) while others fall in (b). This difference in mindset makes the major difference between prapannas and others. A prapannan(a) attributes everything to the lord's Nirhetuka krupai and hence to him, the Lord was the means(Upayam) and the end(Upeyam) too. For others(b), the bhakthi is the Upayam(Sahetukam) and the Lord is the Upeyam. It is such stupid statement that I have made to have projected Azhwars as those who adopted bhakthi as the Upayam and I humbly request EVERYONE to forgive me for the same. - Thanks to Shri Viji from Triplicane] So, in this eternal harmony[as per Prapatti philosophy], the lord keeps attributing the moksham to the effort put in by the jeevatma, while the jeeva keeps attributing the moksham that it attained, to the lord's nirhetuka krupa. The former is Sahetukam, while the latter is Nirhetukam. Now let us try to switch the perspectives and see how it looks like: Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) - If the lord thinks that HE gave moksham only because of HIS swathanthryam and not because the jeeva wanted the same, then it is compared to a husband who forces his love on his wife. It is considered to be a wrong act. The lord will not think that way, and we should not even imagine "HE" attributing this moksham to HIS own swathantharyam. (This is an "izhivu" for the lord if we say HE thinks so) Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - If the jeevatma thinks that he got the moksham only because of his own efforts and not because of the Lord, then this feeling causes damage to the lord's Nirhetuka Krupa. Except prappanas, those who use the other margams including bhakthi margam as a "Upayam" to attain moksham would feel that it is Sahetuka krupai of the lord that granted the moksham i.e the jeeva thinks that the lord gave moksham only because it did bhakthi etc. (This is an "izhivu" for the jeevatma as well as the lord and is compared to a wife who thinks that the husband makes love to her only because she attracted him). To summarize: Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) & Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - Upayam[Means], (credits to his Nirhetuka Krupai) is the lord and Upeyam[End Result] is the lord too - Prapatti and Prapanna philosophy. Nirhetukam(from the perspective of the Lord) & Sahetukam(from the perspective of the Jeevatma) - Upayam[Means], is the Karma, Gnyana, Bhakthi, Sankhya etc(credits to his Sahetuka Krupai) and the Upeyam [End Result] is the lord - Other Karma, Gnyana, Bhakthi, Sankhya margams. For Prapannas - So, Nirhetukam has to be understood and considered only from the Jeevatma perspective and thus this justifies all the act of the Lord including granting of mokshams to Azhwars, Acharyas and Ajamilan. I.E, according to the jeevas, i.e us, the lord sees no difference amongst the Azhwars, Acharyas for that matter any living being and pours his unconditional grace. This justifies the perspective of Azhwars who say that they did not do anything to attain the lord and it is all due to HIS krupai that they have attained this level.While, this is so, Sahetukam has to be understood and considered only from the perspective of the Paramatma. He does not use HIS swathanthryam to award any moksham. He wants US to change our mind and turn towards HIM and hence, HE calls it Sahetukam and gives dumb reasons to justify granting of moksham even to people like Ajamilan. I apologize for all my mistakes and misunderstandings. Yatheendra Pravanam Vandhe RAMYA Jamataram Munim Adiyen Ramanuja DAsan, Lakshmi Narasimhan
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