Spirituality and the human
Bammera Pothana is a well-known Telugu poet and devotee of Lord Rama. He was related to the poet Srinatha, who was a great devotee of Shiva. Bhakta (as he is often called) Potana translated the Bhagavatham from Sanskrit to Telugu. The works of Pothana, Srinatha and other great telugu poets enabled telugu-speaking peoples to learn and know the classics of sacred lore: the Bhagavatham, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Tukaram (1608–50) was a prominent Varkari saint and spiritual poet of the Bhakti movement in India. Tukaram was a farmer and grocer who lost interest in the material world after losing his first wife and child in a famine. He neglected his worldly duties to his second wife Jijai (Awali) and their two children. He was initiated by his Guru Babaji Caitanya in a dream.
Surdas (Sant Kavi Surdas) was a 15th century blind saint, poet and musician, known for his devotional songs dedicated to Lord Krishna. Surdas is said to have written and composed a hundred thousand songs in his magnum opus the ‘Sur Sagar’ (Ocean of Melody), out of which only about 8,000 are extant. He is considered a saint and so also known as Sant Surdas, a name which literally means the “slave of melody“.
Sri Ramana Maharshi was a self-realised sage of South India. As a boy of sixteen in 1896, he challenged death by a penetrating enquiry into the source of his being. Later hailed as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi he revealed the direct path of practice of Self-enquiry and awakened mankind to the immense spiritual power of the holy Arunachala Hill, the spiritual heart of the world.
A full moon occurs late evening on 26 August 2018, on what is called Shravana Purnima. This full moon occurs in Shatabhisha nakshatra, the asterism of the ruler of the oceans, Varuna. This occasion also has a number of festivals: Rakhi, Raksha Bandhan, and Gayatri Jayanti (birthday of Gayatri Maa).
There is a famous shrine town, Trivellore, near Madras. Near there is a smaller village, Kammavaripalayam. Living here was one man by name of Sri Venkatappa Naidu. He married one Subbalakshmi of Parlapalle Village in Gudur Taluk of Nellore District. A male child was born (10.10.1894) named Venkatasubbiah, taking both his parents names. When the child was three years old his father transferred to Pennalurpet. His mother taught him a valuable lesson arising from an argument that carried over from a heated exchange in school. The other boy grew angry to the extent of beating Venkatasubbiah.
Mohandas Gandhi — also affectionately known as Mahatma Gandhi — led India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s by speaking softly without carrying much of a big stick, facing down the British colonialists with stirring speeches and non-violent protest.
The day being Tulsidas Jayanthi (commemoration of the birth of Tulsidas) we present an important saint of India. (b. 1543?, probably Rajapur, India, d.1623, Varanasi), Tulsidas was an Indian sacred poet whose principal work, the Rama charita-manasa. (“Sacred Lake of the Acts of Rama”), became an extremely popular form of devotional literature which has exercised an abiding influence on the devotional culture of North India.
