srImathE ramAnujAya namah
dear devotees,
the following is a formatted version of the same
mail we sent.
adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan,
varadhan
---srImathE SaTakOpAya namah
srImathE rAmAnujAya namah
srImathE anantArya mahAguravE namah
srImathE vara vara munayE namah
Dear bhagavathas,
The following is a long post, written after many a
discussion with people from all walks of life
regarding our religion. Please take it for what it is
worth. The main reason behind our posting this on this
list is to spark a movement behind our religion, and
to channel the energy of all interested people towards
a common cause. Some projects that we have started (or
starting) are also mentioned at the end, as a starting
point for interested people to converge.
In our interaction with members of our community,
wefound out that there are four main pillars in our
religion- (i) the message (ii) institutions that
reinforce the message (iii) practitioners and (iv) the
teachers of the message.
The Message:
This as such, is the combined wealth of knowledge that
had been given to us by our acharyas - all the source
texts, the commentaries on them written by our
acharyas, and the religion as practiced by our
acharyas. We are bound to (a) preserve the message (b)
learn from the message and (c) propagate the message.
Preservation, in essence is ensuring that the message
is available for future generations. We all know about
the lost books that were written by our AchAryAs. In
this day and age, it will be a tragedy if we do not
preserve everything that is available - be it books,
commentaries, life histories, or be it upanyasams,
araiyar sevais and other forms of spreading the
message. More importantly, the message, once preserved
needs to be learnt and propagated. That necessitates
the translation into English for the benefit of most
of us, and/or paraphrasing the contents into simple
colloquial tamizh, telugu, kannada and/or other
languages. Learning is a personal thing that we can
address later. As far as the propagation goes,
upanyasams are one means of propagation. Making the
works available - through the web, or through a
library is another method. Audiovisual presentations
are another method that we definitely need to use.
Plus, we need to address the entire child population ?
these messages need to be propagated in a manner that
is attractive to them - be it comics, CD-ROMs or any
other modern mode of communication
Institutions that reinforce the message:
Temples, jeeyar maTams and AchArya purusha
thirumaLigais. There is a physical aspect, as well as
the practicing aspect. From a physical perspective,
the temples should be in a good condition and must be
maintained on a regular basis. On the practice aspect,
temples should have daily/periodic kainkaryams and
festivals conducted in the frequency prescribed, and
in the manner and tradition prescribed. There have
been numerous renovations of dilapidated temples
recently. However after the renovation festivities are
over, there still remains the issue of maintenance and
lack of people visiting the temple. It is sad to see
that there is little local participation in many rural
temples. We HAVE to address the above two issues if we
want the temples to last for a long time. More
importantly, we need to create a viable and sufficient
source of livelihood for those who run the temple -
the archakas, the paricharakas and the adhyapakas.
Practitioners:
We, as practitioners of the religion need to strive to
make every effort to learn and understand the
religion. We represent the religion and by our
behavior, our religion will be judged. We need to be
true to ourselves, and the teachings of our acharyas.
Every person should think about questions like (i)
what can i do in 30 - 45 minutes everyday re: religion
(ii) what should I learn (iii) how can i help my
family and future generations practice this (iv) if
someone is interested, how can i show him the way and
(v) how can I support the various activities going on
in support of the religion. No answer is a wrong
answer. Everyone is interested in some form of the
other, and given his/her constraints will want to
participate is some form or the other- The challenge
is how to channel that participation so that it
benefits both the interested person as well as the
religion.
Leaders/AchAryAs:
Perhaps the most important pillar, since a strong
leader in this area can make a huge impact in the
other three areas. Unfortunately, this is perhaps the
weakest pillar in the ramanuja sampradaya. We need to
create an atmosphere in which matadhipathis and
acharyas are respected, and do things that are
constructive towards the sampradayam. We need to
provide incentives to young people who have the
inclination to go in this direction. We need to make
every effort to prepare them to take the position of
an acharya ? birth alone does not make one an acharya
- are there institutions that will teach religion?
veda/nyaya patasalas? Not a lot - we need to think
along those lines. How do we create an atmosphere that
breeds future leaders in our religion?
The following are some observations that we gathered
about each of the four pillars mentioned above.
1. Message:
(i) Books/Publications: First of all, we need to have
all the available works of our acharyas available to
everyone and catalogued. There are numerous books and
publications that have been lost. People like
puththUr svAmi and srivaishnava-sri svami are
publishing the vyahkyanams of our purvacharyas, which
is just one aspect of the puzzle. The key thing
lacking is books and/or messages published by the
19th/20th century acharyas. These books are important
given our language handicap. Authors like PBA svami,
pattapa svami, karappangadu svami made it a point to
write in such a way that even a layman can understand
complicated concepts, and in a simple language. We
have to make an effort to save their books and
periodicals. Once collected, we need to convert them
into an electronic format.
(ii)Upanyasams: All upayasams that are being
conducted now are recorded. So, they are safe for the
most part- But there are upanyasams of PBA,
karappangadu svami, velukkudi varadachar svami etc.
that might be available. If they are, we need to
collect them, and preserve them for posterity
(iii)Technology: With the advent of technology, can we
look into modern modes of conveying the message?
Video tapes of araiyar sevais, interactive CD-ROMs
about the religion for children etc.
(iv) Accesibility: Language is a key barrier. Very few
of us are comfortable enough in tamizh or sanskrit to
the extent required to understand the message. So,
there is a definite need to convey the message in
English, simple colloquial tamizh, telugu, kannada
and/or any other language that is necessary.
(v) Children! - We HAVE to communicate the message to
the younger generation. Otherwise we risk the
possibility of an entire generation being uninterested
in the message, and the tradition will be lost forever
without even giving people a chance to determine if it
is good or not. Comics, interactive CD-ROMS, videos
and other modern modes of communication HAVE to be
used in this case.
(vi) propagation: making the message in any form
available over the web, audio, through a library etc.
is a need - we are doing some of it now, but it has to
be a lot more than that
2. Institutions:
We will consider just temples alone in this for now.
(i) Every temple needs to be in good shape (no falling
roofs, collapsing walls, no water leaking on perumaL
etc.)
(ii) renovations are a huge affair, and are being done
regularly
(iii) The main point we have noticed is lack of
maintenance. It is appalling to see temples in good
shape not maintained properly and then becoming
dilapidated
(iv) There is a very small number of interested people
in most rural temples to take care of them - priests,
paricharakas and local community - In most rural
temples, the surrounding village people do NOT come to
the temple regularly. The sad part is, most of them
will if they are given a chance to.
(v) Severe shortage of priests and paricharakas.
(vi) We have to generate a means of sustenance in
these areas so that the priests, paricharakas and the
supporting staff stay in the area and take care of the
temple on a daily basis
(vii) The local community has to be involved; there is
no point in just a few regular temple goers and a
handful of visitors going to the temple
(viii)Daily thiruaradhanams and regular utsavams have
to take place properly. This is a question of
organization, people and money
(ix) The temple practices need to be authentic and
traditional, and these have to be recorded for
posterity's sake so that no future mischief can take
place
(x) We have to enable religious tourism as a viable
economic opportunity for the rural communities - i.e.
provide incentives to more people to visit these
temples, and in return for providing a service (tour
guide, food, lodging etc.), the local people should be
compensated decently. Unless this works, there is no
way local people will stay there without any source of
livelihood.
3. Practitioners:
(i) We have to follow at least the basic tenets -
kindness, no jealousy, no anger, humility, respect for
other people. The following needs to be in spirit, not
just in external appearance etc.
(ii) We have to learn as much as we can. Thisis the
only way the religion will be propagated. If we do not
know, how can we help others if they are interested?
(iii) Everyday, ideally, we should set aside sometime
for religious activity - be it reciting stotras, doing
thiruaradhanam for perumal, working on some project
for the religion or whatever one?s interest may be -
30 minutes a day per person will make a huge
difference
(iv) We have to support in whatever way we can,
(monetary, physical, volunteering etc.) to whatever
extent we can in the activities that we are interested
in.
4. Leaders/Teachers:
(i) We have to respect ALL leaders - all jiyars - all
acharya purushas.
(ii) We have to enable them to do their bidding in
life. They should be able to count on us to provide
help in carrying out their leadership role.
(iii) We must make it possible for youngsters who are
interested in such a calling to prepare themselves for
that - they need to learn about the religion, have
leadership qualities and the ability to organize
(iv) Developing leaders necessitates places of
learning, and means of support for them for their
livelihood
(v) Finally, if our leaders are organizing something
relevant to the sampradayam, we must support them
wholeheartedly.
Those are just some of the thoughts and observations
that we have collected over time. None of this is new,
but it definitely gave us the clarity in terms of the
issues facing the religion, and more importantly how
we can play a small role to support the religion. We
then decided to start doing something ? after all, we
can analyze forever, and little will get done. We
recognize that there are multitudes of people that may
be doing similar things and we definitely need to
synergize with their efforts, and we will as time goes
along. But, for the moment, and it probably is just
youthful exuberance, we decided to plunge into the
following projects.
1. Ramanuja sampradaya Library: By this, we do not
mean a large building named ?Ramanuja Library etc.?.
We have noticed that there are collections of books
that a lot of people have, that are very very
valuable. Unfortunately, most of these get destroyed
with time due to a state of disuse. We want to collect
every book, article, magazine and pamphlet that has
been published by our acharyas and scholars ?
contemporary as well as in olden times. We want to
make a catalogue, store the books at many places till
we reach a time where the collection is large enough,
and we have sufficient funds to store it in a
commonplace. We have started the process of acquiring
books published by many people (PBA svami,
kArappangadu svamu, puththur svami, velukkudi svami
etc.) and started cataloguing them. We intend to
collect all the available pUrAcharya commentaries that
have been published also. The biggest need we see is
books that have been published from 1870 ? 1970 or so.
There are thousands of books published by great people
that are present in many homes. We request everyone to
lend us any book that they find about the sampradayam.
If we do not have a copy, we will may a photocopy and
return the original. We will release the initial
catalogue of books we have access to in the next few
days. As a priority, we are looking for issues of the
periodical "ramanujan", that was published for many
years by PBA svAmi
2. Translation into English/other languages - We have
prioritized a few key books for translation into other
languages - {for example, in that list, there are two
books by PBA (i) ramanuja sampradaya saram (ii) nitya
aradhana kramam of svami manavala mamuni}. We need
volunteers that can translate from tamizh to english,
telugu etc. The basic requirements are that the person
be able to understand simple tamizh and sanskrit, and
is familiar with srivaishnava terminology. We will
help with proof reading and getting the translations
corrected by learned people. We believe that retired
bhagavathas are a prime source of volunteers for this
activity. If anyone knows someone that can help,
please let us know. If they are located in chennai, it
makes co-ordination easy. But, if they are located
elsewhere, we will mail copies of the relevant
material.
3. Availability to information: radioramanuja.com and
the tele-upanyasams are two visible efforts in this
area. We intend to make all possible information
available publicly at cost so that anyone that is
interested can have access to the information.
Accesibility to scholars and acharyas is a major
effort. Some of the activities will result in
computers being put in various matams and acharya
purusha homes so that there can be instant
communication between the srivaishnava community and
its leaders.
4. Temple maintenance: We have tried variations of
this in the past, with varying levels of success, but
we have settled on a more local model now. We have
chosen two areas - thirunangur and kanchipuram for two
pilot projects. These two areas were chosen primarily
because we either happen to be intimately familiar
with these areas, or have managed to rope in someone
who is intimately familiar with these areas. That
makes it easier for the volunteers to co-ordinate. A
local committee is being formed (consisting of a
temple person, non-temple person, local leader of the
community and the temple EO in some cases) in each
area. A corresponding foreign committee will be
formed. The foreign committee will be entrusted with
the task of publicity and raising funds for small
projects in the temple. The local committee will
involve the local community, and implement the
projects as planned. The local committee will also
include a representative from a major donor in some
cases. If someone wants to visit the temple etc., the
local committee will co-ordinate. We require
volunteers in India as well as abroad for this
project.
5. As a physical service, we have decided to take up
the cleaning of the nammazhvar sannadhi in the
varadarajar temple at kanchipuram, and making it a
safe place without bugs, grass etc. We are in the
process of co-ordinating with the elders of the
community to gain their permission to begin the work.
People in and around kanchipuram/chennai that are
interested are requested to volunteer.
6. Creation of a volunteer/management pool: It is
absolutely essential that we maintain a pool of
volunteers for any purpose - especially very skilled
people in their retirement that can spend a lot of
time in these activities. We have no clue how to go
about doing this yet, and we request your input.
7. Practitioner information: We intend to collect
information pertinent to daily life and what is
prescribed etc., and make it available. We need
volunteers to type text, and translate or
transliterate a few pages for this. This is a
relatively easy task and we can finish this very fast
if we get the right people involved.
The above is a very rough email intended to convey
information. We will follow up with information about
each project separately. The key need now is for us to
get more volunteers, and start developing the projects
in a better manner.
In the meantime, we consider it important that there
be discussion about these projects, and any
suggestions for additional projects that are doable
and reasonable in scope (i.e. no calls for renovation
of a major temple costing 20 lakh rupees etc.)
We hope that with discussion on the ramanuja list, we
will be able to identify projects that can be done,
get interested people together and implement the
projects, and more importantly enjoy the anubhavam of
the Lord and His devotees through this small squirrel-
like thing we get to do.
azhvar emperumanar jeeyar thiruvadigale saranam,
ramanuja dAsAs,
mukundan, venkatEsh, guNa and varadhan
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