Amongst the 12 Azhwars , Vishnuchittar was glorified as ” Peria Azhwar” . Our poorvacharyars comment that though he appeared after Mudal azhwar, Nammazhwar, Thirumazhisai Azhwar, he was honoured with the title “Peria Azhwar because while all other azhwars glorified Lord as Supreme Personality, Azhwar had “pongum parivu” […]
Chinni Krishna and Peria Azhwar
Several legends that are related to the Kadamba tree are famous to relish . Under the Kadamba tree, Lord Krishna used to swing from the branches and dance in festivity with all the gopikas of Vrindavana. Once while grazing the cows along with the gopas near GOVERDHAN near a village Sammai our little krishna saw […]
Chinni Krishna’s butter cup ( Dhonai leela ) at Vrindaavan
“An Āchārya does not merely teach us how to reach the Lord. He teaches us what we must be willing to leave behind.”
Yesterday…
I stood at Śrīperumbūdūr.
The birthplace of the JagadĀchārya who had slowly become the very identity of my spiritual life.
And then…
something completely unexpected happened.
A sacred garland that had adorned Śrī Rāmānuja was placed in my hands.
I stood speechless.
Why me?
I had no answer.
But as I carried it toward Kooram, one thought kept returning…
“Perhaps I am not carrying the garland.
Perhaps the garland is carrying me toward another lesson.”
Today…
I understand.
There are places where history is remembered.
And there are places where history seems to breathe.
Kooram was such a place.
As we entered…
I felt an inexplicable stillness.
The surroundings were simple.
There was no grandeur demanding attention.
No overwhelming architecture.
No elaborate spectacle.
Yet…
something was unmistakably present.
A presence.
The presence of a disciple who had once lived here…
served here… suffered here… and surrendered everything here.
Śrī Koorathāzhvān.
I had read about him. I had heard about him. I had spoken about him.
But standing upon the soil associated with him…
was different. Suddenly… the words I had heard for years became flesh.
Until then…I had thought I understood what it meant to be a disciple.
Listen to the Āchārya. Receive his teachings. Perform kainkaryam.
Follow his instructions. Seek his blessings.
But Koorathāzhvān was about to teach me something far deeper.
A true disciple does not merely receive from the Āchārya.
He becomes willing to give everything to him.
Even… when the price is unbearable.
The story takes us back to the time when Śrī Rāmānuja’s influence had spread far beyond Kanchipuram and Śrīraṅgam.
His mission was becoming increasingly powerful.
His teaching of Viśiṣṭādvaita was attracting seekers.
His compassion was reaching people whom society had forgotten.
And his disciples… were becoming living examples of what surrender could mean.
Among them stood Koorathāzhvān. Not merely a scholar.
Not merely a wealthy householder who had abandoned worldly privilege.
Not merely a disciple.
He was… an embodiment of Āchārya-bhakti.
When the danger to Śrī Rāmānuja arose…
the greatest question was not,
“Who is brave enough to face it?”
The question was…
“Who is willing to protect the Āchārya at any cost?”
Koorathāzhvān did not hesitate.
When the Chola ruler demanded that Śrī Rāmānuja appear before him…
the danger was real.
Koorathāzhvān understood that his beloved Āchārya’s life was at stake.
And then… he did something extraordinary.
He put on the saffron robes associated with his Āchārya.
He took the tridaṇḍa. And he went in his place.
Think about that for a moment. He did not say,
“Let us find someone else.” He did not say,
“Why should I sacrifice myself?”
He did not calculate. He simply thought…
“My Āchārya must be protected.”
And he walked forward.
But Koorathāzhvān was not alone.
Another great soul stepped forward.
Śrī Periya Nambi.
A revered elder. A teacher. A devotee.
A servant of Śrī Rāmānuja.
He too knew what awaited them.
And yet… he walked beside Koorathāzhvān.
Two devotees. One purpose.
Protect the Āchārya.
That moment reveals something profound.
The greatness of an Āchārya is not measured only by how many disciples surround him.
It is revealed by the quality of love his disciples develop.
They were brought before the ruler.
The demand was simple.
Abandon your conviction.
Accept the king’s declaration.
Sign. Submit. Survive.
But the two devotees remained firm.
Their faith was not hatred toward another religion.
Their conviction was not arrogance.
They simply could not deny what they had surrendered their lives to.
The situation became terrifying.
And then came the cruel command.
Their eyes…
the instruments through which they had seen the Lord’s temples…
the eyes that had looked upon their Āchārya…
the eyes that had read sacred texts…
were to be taken from them.
Periya Nambi suffered the terrible violence first.
Koorathāzhvān witnessed it.
And something within him broke.
Not his faith. Not his surrender.
Something else. His attachment to the body.
Koorathāzhvān understood something that I had never understood so deeply.
What is the value of physical sight…
if it has witnessed the suffering of a devotee and still desires to continue living merely for itself?
In one of the most heartbreaking moments of the tradition’s history…
Koorathāzhvān chose to surrender even his physical sight by forcefully removing his eyesight on his own without any loss of time
The body could be injured. The eyes could disappear. But…
the vision of the Āchārya could never be taken away.
As I stood in Kooram…
I looked at the place around me. The simplicity of it overwhelmed me.
How could such immense spiritual history have unfolded in such ordinary surroundings?
Then the answer came quietly.
Because greatness does not require grandeur.
The greatest sacrifices often happen without witnesses.
A disciple does not surrender because someone is watching.
He surrenders because… the Āchārya is watching.
I began to ask myself another question.
What exactly does it mean to see? We have eyes.
We see temples. We see deities.
We see Āchāryas. We see sacred books.
We see pilgrims. But do we actually see?
Koorathāzhvān lost his physical sight…
and yet he saw the Lord more clearly than many of us ever will.
Perhaps… spiritual blindness is not the absence of physical vision.
Perhaps it is seeing everything… except Him.
I remembered my own journey.
How often I had been distracted by appearances.
Who was respected? Who was wealthy?
Who was educated? Who was powerful?
Who was important?
The Āchāryas slowly taught me that none of these measurements survive the journey Home.
Koorathāzhvān’s life reduced everything to one simple question:
“For whom am I living?”
And his answer was complete. For the Āchārya.
And through the Āchārya… for the Lord.
The lives of our PūrvĀchāryas teach something that no philosophical argument can fully communicate.
Śaraṇāgati is not merely a word we recite.
It is a transformation of ownership.
The body is His. The mind is His. The knowledge is His.
The wealth is His. The life is His. Even the fruits of our service…
are His. Koorathāzhvān did not merely teach surrender.
He lived it.
“The Āchārya does not ask for our eyes. He asks us to see the world through the eyes of surrender.”
“Koorathāzhvān lost his physical sight, but nothing could blind him to the feet of his Āchārya.”
“A disciple’s greatness is not measured by what he receives from his Āchārya, but by what he is willing to surrender at his feet.”
Standing there…
I wondered…
Could I surrender even one small attachment with that completeness?
Could I put aside pride?
Could I surrender recognition?
Could I forgive an insult?
Could I give up the need to be right?
Could I serve without expecting to be noticed?
Could I place the Āchārya’s happiness above my own?
Koorathāzhvān had answered these questions with his entire life.
I was still learning to answer them with mine.
But the story did not end with darkness.
Something far more beautiful was waiting.
Years later…
the blind Koorathāzhvān would once again stand before the Lord.
Śrī Varadarāja Perumāḷ would appear before him.
And the Lord would ask the devotee…
“What do you want?”
Koorathāzhvān could ask for his eyes.
He could ask for his suffering to end.
He could ask for justice.
He could ask for anything.
What did this great devotee ask?
The answer…
would become one of the most profound lessons in the history of Śrīvaiṣṇava devotion.
Tomorrow…
The Eyes That Saw More After They Were Gone.
“The world thought Koorathāzhvān had lost his eyes.
But standing before the Lord, he discovered that he had lost nothing.
He had gained the vision that sees only Him.”
To be continued…
Śrīmate Rāmānujāya Namaḥ
Adiyen Ramanuja dasan
Pictures : Courtesy Google images
The Garland My Āchārya Sent
“Sometimes the Lord gives us a flower to carry, only to teach us that we are being carried by His grace.
Yesterday…I stood in Kooram.
A young Bhattar asked my daughter a question that appeared simple…
“Will you forgive the person who hurt you? She hesitated“How can I?”
The Bhattar smiled gently Then he said something that changed the atmosphere around us.
“The Āchārya you worship here forgave the very person whose actions caused him to lose his eyes.”
My daughter became curious. The devotees around were too curious We waited.
And as the Bhattar began narrating the divine history of Śrī Koorathāzhvān, something extraordinary happened within me.
I no longer felt that I was listening to a story.
It felt as though… Koorathāzhvān himself had begun speaking across the centuries.
But before I share that sacred story… I must take you back to where this particular journey began. Śrīperumbūdūr.
Our Āchārya Yātrā was not merely a pilgrimage.
We had undertaken it with the blessings and guidance of our revered Āchārya, HH Swamy Mudaliyāṇḍān.
Our intention was simple. We wanted to walk wherever JagadĀchārya Śrī Rāmānuja had walked.
We wanted to see the places where he had lived… the temples where he had worshipped…
the sannidhis where he had served… the maṭhas where his disciples had preserved his teachings…
and, above all…we wanted to meet the people who were still carrying his legacy.
Everywhere we went… the past seemed strangely alive. An old priest would suddenly narrate an incident.
A quiet sannidhi would reveal another memory.A simple stone would become sacred because someone told us,“Our Āchārya stood here.”
The more we travelled…the more I understood something.
We were not visiting history.We were walking through living memory.
And then we came to Śrīperumbūdūr.
The birthplace of the great Āchārya who had become the very breath of my spiritual life.
There are certain places where the heart behaves differently.
Śrīperumbūdūr was one such place I stood before the sannidhi…
and tried to imagine the extraordinary child who would one day become the JagadĀchārya of the Śrīvaiṣṇava world.
A child… who would grow into the great Śrī Rāmānuja.
A child… who would challenge ignorance without hatred.
A child… who would cross barriers of caste, status and learning.
A child… who would make the deepest truths of Vedānta accessible to ordinary souls.
A child… whose compassion would eventually embrace countless generations.
And I stood there thinking…
What would it have been like to stand before him when he was alive?
I had no answer. But perhaps… the Lord had another way of answering me.
During our visit… something happened that I had never anticipated.
A revered priest connected with the temple approached us.
There was no ceremony. No announcement.
Nothing that suggested that anything extraordinary was about to happen.
And then… I was unexpectedly asked to receive something.
A garland that had adorned Śrī Rāmānuja.
For a moment… I simply stood there. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
Me? Why me? There were so many devotees. So many learned people.
So many deserving souls. Why was this small servant being entrusted with something that had touched the Āchārya? I accepted it with trembling hands.
I could not speak. The garland was no longer merely a garland. It had become…
a responsibility. A sacred trust. The Priest said , In your Acharya Yathirai you are supposed to have darshan of Swamy Koorathalwan after Swamy Ramanujas dar shan and hence , I was asked to take the garland to Kooram.the place where Swamy Koorathalwan stays …But how dis he knew we will go immediately to this holy shrine surprised me
The moment I began that journey… my mind became completely still.
I had carried many things in my life. Documents. Books. Offerings. Garlands.Prasādam.Responsibilities. But this was different.
Every step seemed to carry a question.
“Who is carrying whom?” Was I carrying the garland?
Or… was the garland carrying me?
I thought about the innumerable devotees who had surrendered themselves at the feet of Śrī Rāmānuja. I thought about Koorathāzhvān.
I thought about Periya Nambi. I thought about Mudaliyāṇḍān.
I thought about the countless disciples who had sacrificed everything for the preservation of their Āchārya’s teachings.
And suddenly… the journey from Śrīperumbūdūr to Kooram did not feel like a physical journey.
It felt like an invisible thread connecting one Āchārya to another…
one disciple to another… one generation to another… and finally… to us.
As I walked…another thought arose.A flower eventually withers.
A garland eventually disappears. But the touch of the Āchārya does not disappear.
The physical garland may lose its fragrance.But the fragrance of the Āchārya’s life…
travels across centuries.
Perhaps that was why I had been entrusted with it. Not because I was worthy.
But because the Āchārya wanted to teach me something.
Grace does not always arrive in the form we expect.
Sometimes… it comes as a mantra. Sometimes… as an unexpected meeting.
Sometimes… as a priest’s words. Sometimes… as a pilgrimage.
And sometimes… as a simple garland placed into trembling hands.
I thought of my own spiritual journey.
Years ago… I was religious.
I followed what my elders had taught me. But slowly…
through the mercy of the Āchāryas… religion began becoming something deeper.
Relationship…… Then… surrender…… Then… service. and…… finally…
a longing simply to know more about those who had lived only for the Lord.
That longing brought me here. To Śrīperumbūdūr. And now… toward Kooram.
As I approached Kooram… I knew that something far greater awaited us.
The garland was still with me. But my thoughts were already moving ahead.
Who was this disciple… whose devotion was considered so extraordinary?
Why did the name Koorathāzhvān still make devotees tremble with emotion?
Why had this great soul willingly surrendered everything at the feet of his Āchārya?
And why… when given the opportunity to ask the Lord for anything…
did he ask for something that would make even the strongest heart weep?
I did not yet know the answer. But I was about to discover it.
Perhaps… the Lord had arranged that small journey so that I could understand one great truth:
We do not choose the moments in which grace enters our lives.
Grace chooses us. I had thought I was going to Śrīperumbūdūr to see the birthplace of my Āchārya.
Instead… I was given something to carry. And perhaps…
that was the real lesson. To carry the memory of the Āchārya.
To carry his teachings. To carry his compassion.
To carry his love for the Lord. And above all…
to carry his message to those who have forgotten the way Home.
The garland has reached Kooram.
Ahead lies a sannidhi filled with centuries of sacrifice.
There… I will hear the story of a disciple who considered his Āchārya’s command greater than his own body.
A disciple who gave away what the world considers most precious… and received something far greater in return.
Tomorrow…
Koorathāzhvān — The Disciple Who Gave Everything.
“I thought I was carrying the garland of my Āchārya.
Only later did I understand… the garland was carrying me toward Him.”
To be continued…
Śrīmate Rāmānujāya Namaḥ
Adiyen Ramanuja dasan
Pictures Courtesy Google Images
