Sri: Srimathe Ramanujaya nama: Dear Sriman Lakshmi Narasimhan, Accept my pranams. I "hope" I understand your intentions. But your post made me think about my understanding on the same. The SVS sloka you quoted, I thought, applies to people(apart from qualified varNAs) who don't even know samskrt alphabets to read (pronounciation mistakes will enter),who don't know the language (ignorant of the meanings and hence perfect anubhava may not be there) and who do not have time to chant(after all we are living in 21 st century)even though they know to chant. People falling in such categories can recite "SrirAma...varAnanE". This applies to me for sure. I don't know the hidden meanings of SVS although I can understand superficially(highly dangerous) and although I can chant with reasonable perfection,I don't chant daily as I conveniently say I don't have time and hence utter "srirAma...varAnanE". It is similar to the statement of Sri Parasara Bhattar(I hope it's he who made it):if you can't chant the entire tiruppAvai,atleast chant siRRam siRukAlE,if you can't chant that also,atleast think and indulge in ANdAL's anubhavams. Similarly if we don't know the works of our acaryas,atleast we should think of our acarayas greatness daily. Thinking of Sri KuraththAzhvan a day is good for the soul. Our AcAryas had been so lenient and merciful that they have made our life easier. I am under the impression that nAlAyira dhivya prabandham is a thesis on love for God and I don't think anybody has said that "love should/must be loved only this way". Love vibrates with different modes and it always floods and overflows and there should never be any fence for it. It is precisely for this reason that EmperumAnAr did not dare to keep his hands on TiruvAymozhi vyAkhyAnam into writing. Otherwise lesser brainies would have thought that NDP had reached the dead end! I presume that my little understanding on this bears the same understanding expressed by Sri VPS Varadhan swami. If not I like to be corrected. Not everybody is fortunate to have the right/perfect AcArya to learn prabandham or other works. First of all where do you draw a line for "learned" scholar? Who do you think in mind when you say learned scholars? Jeeyars like Sri HH,or UpanyAsakas like Sri Velukkudi Krishnan swami(or his father) or some bhAgavathas who had listened to the discourses given by the first two categories? Moreover people have their own problems. I, coming from AcArya puruSha family, can learn from my own father. But he doesn't have a computer at home and he doesn't like to go to browsing centres, prefers "proper" letter writing. If it is over the phone he complains that he is not able to hear my voice clearly. I, being a student, can not afford to listen to each and every upanyasams plus I stay with roommates which causes lot of problems wrt phone line. So what do you want me to do in such cases? Would you advise me that I should drop the idea of learning about our sampradayam and wait? But the desire is already induced in me by Him and no one can stop it. It is because of that desire He also sent some "right" bhAgavathAs like Sri Parthsarathy Iyengar(I had pained him a lot with so many questions) and now Sri Vanamamalai padmanabhan who clears my doubts wrt Sri Vacana BhUShaNam and other works. I had learnt koil tiruvAymozhi and some other azhvars pasurams from a person who sings prabandham in a raaga based which is not similar to the usual style of chanting that I have heard in Tiru allikkENi. Would you say that it is wrong? That bhAgavatha sings so beautifully(with bhAva) that I also started singing esp "ozhivil kAlamellAm and kangulum pagalum" in a raaga as I liked this better than the usual way of chanting. Unless the singer/reciter feels, he/she can not create that feeling of love towards God in the audience. BhAva/feeling is more important than chanting/singing perfectly. I have personally witnessed this wrt carnatic musicians. But surely one thing I agree is that when someone chants incorrectly,he should not participate in the ghoshti. Otherwise it will become a chaos. As long as he chants alone and making some mistakes,that's okay and that also will get rectified over a period of time. Anyways PerumAL had been listening to some incorrect renderings of Sri Soundararajan before we all replied. I'm pretty sure that He would have enjoyed and I'm infinitely confident that AzhvArs and the Lord will direct him in the right path. Whatever has been said and written is based on my small experience in life and seek forgiveness if I hurt anyone's feelings. AzhvAr EmperumAnAr JIyar thiruvadigaLE sharaNam NC Nappinnai
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