sri madhvacharya

8/11/2019 Sri Madhvacharya

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Sri Madhvacharya – is Personality and Teachings

- Pt. Raghavendrachar Rachur iJayateertha Vidyapeetha

Nahi jnanena sadrisam pavitramiha vidyate. Knowledge is incomparably pure. Thus says theholy Bhagavad Gita. Our life is a gradual march towards purity – the purity which is the souls

own nature. This purity can be achieved only by pure knowledge. Therefore, knowledge is thegreatest treasure of the mankind. It is the panacea of all our evils. It is the knowledge whichmakes man superior to other God's creations. Human being minus knowledge is just an animalwith two legs. The world has seen many seers, who came down to earth, to propagate the divineknowledge among the needy. But for them, the world would have drowned in the vast oceans ofignorance.

After the advent of Kali Yuga, the noble souls lost their way in the dense forests of samsara. Theysank to great depths of ignorance, doubt and bewilderment. The graceful Vishnu was moved bytheir plight. He wished to uplift his devotees and bring them back to the right path. As He has noavatar in Kali Yuga, He Himself did not wish to incarnate. Only an all-knowing person could haveaccomplished such a responsible task. Therefore, he ordered his chief aide Vayu to carry out hiswish. A true servant of God he is, Vayu devoutly carried out his master’s order. He incarnated as

Madhvacharya uplift the noble from the depths of ignorance and illuminate their minds with thebright light of knowledge.

Sri Madhvacharya is extolled in the Vedas to be the third incarnation of Vayu, the most powerful,knowledgeable and supreme among all souls. He served Bhagavan Vishnu in His threeincarnations. He became Hanuman when the Lord incarnated as Rama. He was Bhima when theLord appeared as Krishna and he came to the earth as Madhvacharya to serve BhagavanVedavyasa.

In Madhvacharya we find a true saint, an ardent devotee, a great reformer, an extraordinarythinker, a prolific commentator, a compassionate teacher and a spiritual genius of commandingintellect and power. He continues to be the great source of inspiration to his followers and hisvery remembrance galvanizes their slumbering minds. Let us in this short write up try to knowabout this great personality and his golden teachings. Anything we say about him falls short inpresenting a true picture of his majestic personality. But as Sri Narayana Panditacharya, hisbiographer, notes - mano vishuddhyai caritanuvadaha – we make a humble attempt for thesake of purification of our mind. .

A true saint

Sri Madhvacharya, right from his childhood, showed signs of divinity. He was completelydetached towards mundane worldly pleasures. This was natural to him as he was alwaysimmersed in meditation of the Almighty. At a very young age he made his mind to renounce thisworld and accept sainthood. This, he thought, is the best way to fulfill his life's objective ofuplifting the noble souls by imparting divine knowledge. Though decimating evil forces is theprime objective in all his incarnations he knew that by the will of God, Goddess Durga willincarnate in the near future for that purpose. Thus, unlike his previous two incarnations where he

single handedly destroyed most of the evil forces he chose to launch a peaceful attack throughhis works and discourses.

An ardent devotee

Madhvacharya's devotion towards Vishnu is unflinching and insurmountable. He is the bestexample of a true devotee of the Almighty. He doesn't even spend a moment withoutremembering the Almighty. He asks for nothing except service of the God. He is the perfectfollower of Bhagavata Dharma. In his eyes, Vishnu is the supreme master. All others are His



servants. He composed and devotionally sang several songs and stotras praising Vishnu’ssupremacy. When he was touring from place to place his entourage would dance and proceed infront of him singing his melodious compositions in praise of Vishnu.

A great reformer

Madhvacharya was a great reformer of his times. He was not subdued by the onslaught of Advaitic thought so predominant during his times. He took a fresh look at the Vedas and itsancillary literature. He revived the age old Bhagavata dharma based on Vedic teachings in thelight of the Brahma Sutras. Once he went against the practice of killing animals during Vedicsacrifices. He recommended that offering Pishta pashu or a figure made out of flour should bepracticed instead in this kaliyuga. He claimed that this is truly Vedic. He prevailed over thescholars and made his brother successfully perform a sacrifice using the pishta pashu.

An extraordinary th inker

He was an extraordinary thinker who revolutionized the Vedic thinking by his fresh and soundideas supported by stern logic which cut across all kinds of dogmatism. He was firmly set againstthe notion of accepting doctrines just because of their wide public acceptance. He refused toaccept that it is possible to derive a meaningful spiritual system based on any but the

apaurusheya

texts and their adjuncts. At the same time he gave due importance to perception asa valid means of knowledge. He also dismissed claims that only part of the Vedas are useful, andshowed that even the so-called karma-kanda portions of them are only meant to worship Hari.We find in some of his thoughts answers to even the most demanding problems of the ModernScience. His definition of an atom as an indivisible particle which has at least 10 parts greatlyappeals to the modern logical mind. The concept of sakshin and vishesas are some of hissignificant, unique and original contributions to the Indian philosophical thought.

A proli fic commentator

Madhvacharya was an exemplary commentator and critic who reviewed all the 21 commentarieson the Brahma Sutras and brought their shortcomings into light. He presented his own version ofthe Brahma Sutras gaining support from innumerable puranas and ancillary texts. He composed

more than 37 works of highest spiritual standard. His style is simple yet profound – readilyunderstandable by the beginners yet difficult to digest even by the men of strongest intellect. Heis said to have composed his magnum opus Anuvyakhyana by dictating each of the four chapterssimultaneously to four of his disciples. Sri Jayatirtha, the celebrated commentator ofMadhvacharya, records in appreciation of Anuvyakhyana - my mind acts as a bee towards thelotus called Anuvyakhyana. In each word of this great work Sri Jayatirtha could see multitudes ofmeanings. Though he is tempted to move forward to comment on the next word his mind doesn’tallow him to do so just as a bee wouldn’t want to leave the lotus. Attracted by the beauty anddepth, it still revolves around the same previous word, bringing forth yet another shade of hiddenmeaning. Such is the depth of thought carefully packed by Madhva in each of his words.

A spi ri tual genius of commanding intellect and power

Madhva was a spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power. At a very young age, when hisfather was teaching him how to write alphabets he questioned his father as to why he is repeatingwhat was already taught the previous day. Much to the incredulity of his teacher, he once recitedthe remaining portions of a Vedic mantra which was not yet taught by the teacher to his class. Heboldly accepted a challenge thrown up by a group of highly learned scholars and began todiscourse 100 meanings of the single name Vishwa, the first among the 1000 names of Vishnu.But he laid a condition that the assembly would reproduce what was told. The assembly ofscholars was dumbfounded by the grammatical, etymological prowess of Madhva which isimpossible for even the devatas. Just as a group of wells would fail to hold the vast waters ofannihilation, the assembled scholars could not hold in their heads even a portion of the vast



technical advancements. Therefore, even today there is a great need to propagate the ancient,divine and impeccable knowledge preached by Madhvacharya to every living soul.

sri madhvacharya

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