What is food that is not offered to Perumal
What is food that is not offered to Perumal
______________________________________
Dear Bhagavathothamas
Adiyen is so happy to see such informative mails. Adiyen would like to share some personal experience here. Whenever adiyen took food by performing aposhanam, the feeling itself was so different. Its so amazing and true that the mantras chanted connect us to antaryami perumal as stated below and convert the food as offering to fire inside us. And such food gives good health and mind.
However adiyen has few doubts, what about food other than rice, should we also perform aposhanam and eat ? What about office goers ? Is there an alternative where we can chant the mantra mentally and partake the food?
\Always seeking your blessings
Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan
--- On Tue, 2/11/10, Thiruppathy Raguveeradayalwrote:
From: Thiruppathy Raguveeradayal
Subject: [andavan] Re: What is food that is not offered to Perumal
Date: Tuesday, 2 November, 2010, 10:52 PM
adiyen dasasya vignaapanam.
A few days back, adiyen posted here an extract from Sri Kesava Ayyangar's preface to "Periya Thirumozhi" under the title "What is food that is not offered to Perumal". Since the style of Sri R.K is very tough, there was some request to present it in simple Tamil. Few other members sent mails to me to present it in English. Since adiyen is not good (rather very poor) at English, adiyen requested Smt. Kalyani Krishnamachari to help. She immediately did it and sent the file as an attachment. As most often, yahoo groups truncate attachments, the text is reproduced below. Moderators may kindly excuse for wasting the bandwidth.
Here is the translation.
It was pointed above that the occurrences in the world are a kind of a battle. There is no material wealth without war. Without material wealth, there is no food. Without food, there is no life. Looking through gross, material eyes, it seems the act of eating is nothing but one living object making another living object its food. Those who realize this will not eat. Those who eat will never realize this. This is a contradiction. Is it really contradictory?
All created things have life. In each created object, there is ‘acit’ or inanimate matter and ‘cit’ or life spirit and the divine spirit that resides in, brings together both acit and cit as body and life and manages the object. So all created objects are called by body related scientists [shArIraka upaniShad] as ‘acit vishiShTa jIva sharIraka paramAtmA’. It is the Supreme God who is the inner life spirit of the life that is having the body as its refuge. That is why it is said, “niRkinradellAm neDumAl” [all that stands is emperumAn]. God is the body of all things, starting from the vegetable kingdom that is just unintelligent matter all the way up to highly intelligent and brilliantly shining knowledgeable scholars and thus become live objects. For those who realize that and act according to scriptures, food is a wonderful feeling experience. Eating is not just an inanimate act of the body. It is an intelligent act of a living matter. It is a blossoming intellectual act that is special and is something that happens as per rare discipline. Eating is an intelligent yAgam [sacrifice], that makes the eaten food, nectar. The inanimate matter in each object is said to be its flesh or meat.
Vegetables are like the flesh part of vegetable kingdom. If looked at deeply, it can be said that all vegetables are like flesh till they have not become like nectar through the yAgam process. The blessing remnant from a yAgam is the amudam or nectar. amarakosham says – ‘amudam vikasham vELvic cEDam bOjana cEDamAm’; bOjanam is the food; it can also be called nectar or amudam. Other meanings are deva-s’ food, mokSham or salvation, water, the blessing remnant from the yAgam etc. Since the sky i.e. the clouds give rain water as a blessing from yAgam after having consumed ‘food’, the water is called ‘amudam’ or nectar. Just as those who consume nectar do not die, those who consume the yAgam-remnant, the rain water presented by the sky [clouds], also do not die. Even deva-s who consume the nectar, the food of the deva-s, will get to be ousted out of devalokam, lose their deva post, come born in the earth and die – so say some
scriptures. It is also said that only those who partake amudam or nectar which is called ‘mOkkam’ or salvation will get to live forever. Comparing the ‘life without death’ aspects, salvation is equated to devas’ food, water and blessing remnant of yAgam-s and is called ‘amudam’ or nectar. The specialty of the sky is that it takes in salt water and gives back nectar water. That is like the blessing from yAgam.
yAgam is of two kinds – external and internal. External yAgam is that which is dome with external things like flower, fruit, water etc. Since God accepts them just by His glance and presents back to us as a blessing from the yAgam, that provides us life. In the inner yAgam, the life source surrenders itself to emperumAn as food and after He has partaken that, it feels like the blessing from the yAgam and enjoys itself; that is deemed to be the nectar that gives eternal life; that gives salvation. All external things and the ‘soul-food’ are considered as blessings from yAgam; thus, all these become nectar for people. If it is not a blessing from the yAgam, eating becomes like the animals hunting for food. The animals hunt for meat. It is an act that kills other beings. But eating food is an act of the yAgam. Vedam explains that yAgam-s are conducted by ascetics and God Himself consumes the food. emperumAn Himself has shown this truth; His words are “Those who consume the blessing from the yAgam attain a great status; they get relieved from the evil effects of the planets”. In the absence of this statement, there will be no way of getting relief from the planets.
Understand that the eating process is something that emperumAn ordains and carried out intelligently as an act of devotion. All beings are created as blessings from yAgam-s. His words are – ‘creating beings with yAgam-s’; vedam says, ‘viShNu is yAgam’.
The yAgam of eating is this – collecting a few vegetables (to let the rest keep growing) from the plants and trees that have been growing them, cooking them in the proper way with the thought that the prepared food will be consumed with perumAL’s permission, offering it to perumAL and partaking the food as a blessing and offering to the antaryAmi perumAL [residing inside the body]. Only food that is blessed by emperumAn is the proper food for all beings. That is nectar and medicine. Since the food helps with longevity, it is called nectar and medicine. So, that nectar alone is food. All the food that is consumed by great people is the yAga-blessing conferred by emperumAn. Just like the external things offered to Him, the inner self is offered as food and stands like a rare medicine and gets blessed. upaniShad proclaims that salvation is the endless happiness the inner self receives as a blessing from emperumAn. With no yAgam, there is no blessing. So, in order to receive amudam, one has to do the yAgam as ordained by God. One must become the yAga-blessing glanced by emperumAn. Just as the external food is given by external yAgam, in order to become an internal nectar, one has to surrender at His feet and perform the internal yAgam of true intelligence. This is what the upaniShad-s declare. The nectar for beings is the food offered to God who is the antaryAmi – divine spirit inside the living spirit. The antaryAmi perumAL digests that food through prANa agni and mixes with the agni in the stomach (jADarAgni) and accepts it with happiness and blesses it to be a medicine for the being. Only that offering presented to the parabrahmam’s radiant mouth is called ‘food’.
Food that is consumed with one’s own mouth [without offering to God] is similar to hunting for meat. The antaryAmi perumAn who is inside the animals also, consumes the food, mixes with the blood agni and protects the animals. Even though it is the antaryAmi perumAL making the animals digest the food, since the animals do not have the discipline or intelligence or feeling, they do not get blessed to eat yAga-food and keep eating other animals. Only people who apply intelligent feeling get to consume the nectar. That is why ‘eating’ was classified as a blooming intelligent act in the previous paragraph. So, food is something that is offered to emperumAn like an arAdhanam done in a saintly manner. This is called antaryAmi aArAdhanam (prayer done to the inner divine spirit) or ijya or yAgam. This yAgam must be done with good understanding and effort. This feeling must become mature and disciplined with practice. The food becomes nectar only for those who become experts in this act. That rare medicine is food. Just as hotA-s offer agni to brahmA, the food is something that is offered through life agni. So offering food is like offering havis in the yAgam. It is an internal process. Those who are not disciplined this way cannot avoid eating meat. Avoiding meat-eating will come only after renunciation for them.
All foods that are not blessed by emperumAn and turned into nectar and swallowed by people are considered meat. Based on this truth, it became customary for emperumAn’s devotees to call ‘rasam’ as ‘sARRu amudu’, vegetable as ‘kari amudu’, yogurt as ‘tayir amudu’, water as ‘nIr amudu’ and betel leaf as ‘aDaikkAi amudu’. In order to show the importance of the rice food, it was called ‘prasAdam’. So, prasadam means nectar, blessing, that which was offered to perumAL, pure food etc. ‘prasAdam’ is that which was blessed by perumAL with great happiness. The secret of eating is that, the eating feeling is similar to the special experience had by ascetics; eating is the discipline that arises from that feeling. Feeling becomes an order. Those who do not have that feeling and discipline are like meat swallowers, not food eaters.
Those who know the truth start with the feeling that food is brahmam and become mature in their thoughts, and get to experience great happiness. Sage bR^igu started this and shrI shaThakOpar took it to the final stage. The latter said, “uNNum cORu parugum nIr tinnum veRRilaiyum ellAm kaNNan – the food we eat, the water we drink, the betel leaves we take, are all kaNNan”. Thus he became a guide for all eaters. Try to understand the inner meaning of his teaching in “kumaittiTTu konRumbar, aRapporuLai aRindOrAr ivaiyenna ulagiyaRkkai” [those who not understand righteousness frighten others, ensnare them in their nets and torture them; this has become the nature of the world now]. upaniShad makes an anna nAdam with happiness, “I am eating food, I am eating food” [aham annam, aham annam etc] That is our nAthan’s pAdukA [slipper] sound; it is tiruvAimozhi sound; it is the upaniShad statement for the annam’s sound; it is shrI vedAnta deshikan’s pAdukA sahasra nAdapaddhati tirunAdam. Look how shrI shaTakOpar’s tiruvAimozhi’s anna nAdam is brought out in nAda paddhati. Understand and enjoy that nAda paddhati is the parabrahma pAdukAnanda nAdam that came out of emperumAn relishing the happening of anna nAdam through His divine eyes and divine ears
T.Raguveeradayal,
1/157, South car street,
Thiruppullani 623532
Ph: 04567-254242
cell 9443301091
http://thiruppul.blogspot.com/
______________________________________
Dear Bhagavathothamas
Adiyen is so happy to see such informative mails. Adiyen would like to share some personal experience here. Whenever adiyen took food by performing aposhanam, the feeling itself was so different. Its so amazing and true that the mantras chanted connect us to antaryami perumal as stated below and convert the food as offering to fire inside us. And such food gives good health and mind.
However adiyen has few doubts, what about food other than rice, should we also perform aposhanam and eat ? What about office goers ? Is there an alternative where we can chant the mantra mentally and partake the food?
\Always seeking your blessings
Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan
--- On Tue, 2/11/10, Thiruppathy Raguveeradayal
From: Thiruppathy Raguveeradayal
Subject: [andavan] Re: What is food that is not offered to Perumal
Date: Tuesday, 2 November, 2010, 10:52 PM
adiyen dasasya vignaapanam.
A few days back, adiyen posted here an extract from Sri Kesava Ayyangar's preface to "Periya Thirumozhi" under the title "What is food that is not offered to Perumal". Since the style of Sri R.K is very tough, there was some request to present it in simple Tamil. Few other members sent mails to me to present it in English. Since adiyen is not good (rather very poor) at English, adiyen requested Smt. Kalyani Krishnamachari to help. She immediately did it and sent the file as an attachment. As most often, yahoo groups truncate attachments, the text is reproduced below. Moderators may kindly excuse for wasting the bandwidth.
Here is the translation.
It was pointed above that the occurrences in the world are a kind of a battle. There is no material wealth without war. Without material wealth, there is no food. Without food, there is no life. Looking through gross, material eyes, it seems the act of eating is nothing but one living object making another living object its food. Those who realize this will not eat. Those who eat will never realize this. This is a contradiction. Is it really contradictory?
All created things have life. In each created object, there is ‘acit’ or inanimate matter and ‘cit’ or life spirit and the divine spirit that resides in, brings together both acit and cit as body and life and manages the object. So all created objects are called by body related scientists [shArIraka upaniShad] as ‘acit vishiShTa jIva sharIraka paramAtmA’. It is the Supreme God who is the inner life spirit of the life that is having the body as its refuge. That is why it is said, “niRkinradellAm neDumAl” [all that stands is emperumAn]. God is the body of all things, starting from the vegetable kingdom that is just unintelligent matter all the way up to highly intelligent and brilliantly shining knowledgeable scholars and thus become live objects. For those who realize that and act according to scriptures, food is a wonderful feeling experience. Eating is not just an inanimate act of the body. It is an intelligent act of a living matter. It is a blossoming intellectual act that is special and is something that happens as per rare discipline. Eating is an intelligent yAgam [sacrifice], that makes the eaten food, nectar. The inanimate matter in each object is said to be its flesh or meat.
Vegetables are like the flesh part of vegetable kingdom. If looked at deeply, it can be said that all vegetables are like flesh till they have not become like nectar through the yAgam process. The blessing remnant from a yAgam is the amudam or nectar. amarakosham says – ‘amudam vikasham vELvic cEDam bOjana cEDamAm’; bOjanam is the food; it can also be called nectar or amudam. Other meanings are deva-s’ food, mokSham or salvation, water, the blessing remnant from the yAgam etc. Since the sky i.e. the clouds give rain water as a blessing from yAgam after having consumed ‘food’, the water is called ‘amudam’ or nectar. Just as those who consume nectar do not die, those who consume the yAgam-remnant, the rain water presented by the sky [clouds], also do not die. Even deva-s who consume the nectar, the food of the deva-s, will get to be ousted out of devalokam, lose their deva post, come born in the earth and die – so say some
scriptures. It is also said that only those who partake amudam or nectar which is called ‘mOkkam’ or salvation will get to live forever. Comparing the ‘life without death’ aspects, salvation is equated to devas’ food, water and blessing remnant of yAgam-s and is called ‘amudam’ or nectar. The specialty of the sky is that it takes in salt water and gives back nectar water. That is like the blessing from yAgam.
yAgam is of two kinds – external and internal. External yAgam is that which is dome with external things like flower, fruit, water etc. Since God accepts them just by His glance and presents back to us as a blessing from the yAgam, that provides us life. In the inner yAgam, the life source surrenders itself to emperumAn as food and after He has partaken that, it feels like the blessing from the yAgam and enjoys itself; that is deemed to be the nectar that gives eternal life; that gives salvation. All external things and the ‘soul-food’ are considered as blessings from yAgam; thus, all these become nectar for people. If it is not a blessing from the yAgam, eating becomes like the animals hunting for food. The animals hunt for meat. It is an act that kills other beings. But eating food is an act of the yAgam. Vedam explains that yAgam-s are conducted by ascetics and God Himself consumes the food. emperumAn Himself has shown this truth; His words are “Those who consume the blessing from the yAgam attain a great status; they get relieved from the evil effects of the planets”. In the absence of this statement, there will be no way of getting relief from the planets.
Understand that the eating process is something that emperumAn ordains and carried out intelligently as an act of devotion. All beings are created as blessings from yAgam-s. His words are – ‘creating beings with yAgam-s’; vedam says, ‘viShNu is yAgam’.
The yAgam of eating is this – collecting a few vegetables (to let the rest keep growing) from the plants and trees that have been growing them, cooking them in the proper way with the thought that the prepared food will be consumed with perumAL’s permission, offering it to perumAL and partaking the food as a blessing and offering to the antaryAmi perumAL [residing inside the body]. Only food that is blessed by emperumAn is the proper food for all beings. That is nectar and medicine. Since the food helps with longevity, it is called nectar and medicine. So, that nectar alone is food. All the food that is consumed by great people is the yAga-blessing conferred by emperumAn. Just like the external things offered to Him, the inner self is offered as food and stands like a rare medicine and gets blessed. upaniShad proclaims that salvation is the endless happiness the inner self receives as a blessing from emperumAn. With no yAgam, there is no blessing. So, in order to receive amudam, one has to do the yAgam as ordained by God. One must become the yAga-blessing glanced by emperumAn. Just as the external food is given by external yAgam, in order to become an internal nectar, one has to surrender at His feet and perform the internal yAgam of true intelligence. This is what the upaniShad-s declare. The nectar for beings is the food offered to God who is the antaryAmi – divine spirit inside the living spirit. The antaryAmi perumAL digests that food through prANa agni and mixes with the agni in the stomach (jADarAgni) and accepts it with happiness and blesses it to be a medicine for the being. Only that offering presented to the parabrahmam’s radiant mouth is called ‘food’.
Food that is consumed with one’s own mouth [without offering to God] is similar to hunting for meat. The antaryAmi perumAn who is inside the animals also, consumes the food, mixes with the blood agni and protects the animals. Even though it is the antaryAmi perumAL making the animals digest the food, since the animals do not have the discipline or intelligence or feeling, they do not get blessed to eat yAga-food and keep eating other animals. Only people who apply intelligent feeling get to consume the nectar. That is why ‘eating’ was classified as a blooming intelligent act in the previous paragraph. So, food is something that is offered to emperumAn like an arAdhanam done in a saintly manner. This is called antaryAmi aArAdhanam (prayer done to the inner divine spirit) or ijya or yAgam. This yAgam must be done with good understanding and effort. This feeling must become mature and disciplined with practice. The food becomes nectar only for those who become experts in this act. That rare medicine is food. Just as hotA-s offer agni to brahmA, the food is something that is offered through life agni. So offering food is like offering havis in the yAgam. It is an internal process. Those who are not disciplined this way cannot avoid eating meat. Avoiding meat-eating will come only after renunciation for them.
All foods that are not blessed by emperumAn and turned into nectar and swallowed by people are considered meat. Based on this truth, it became customary for emperumAn’s devotees to call ‘rasam’ as ‘sARRu amudu’, vegetable as ‘kari amudu’, yogurt as ‘tayir amudu’, water as ‘nIr amudu’ and betel leaf as ‘aDaikkAi amudu’. In order to show the importance of the rice food, it was called ‘prasAdam’. So, prasadam means nectar, blessing, that which was offered to perumAL, pure food etc. ‘prasAdam’ is that which was blessed by perumAL with great happiness. The secret of eating is that, the eating feeling is similar to the special experience had by ascetics; eating is the discipline that arises from that feeling. Feeling becomes an order. Those who do not have that feeling and discipline are like meat swallowers, not food eaters.
Those who know the truth start with the feeling that food is brahmam and become mature in their thoughts, and get to experience great happiness. Sage bR^igu started this and shrI shaThakOpar took it to the final stage. The latter said, “uNNum cORu parugum nIr tinnum veRRilaiyum ellAm kaNNan – the food we eat, the water we drink, the betel leaves we take, are all kaNNan”. Thus he became a guide for all eaters. Try to understand the inner meaning of his teaching in “kumaittiTTu konRumbar, aRapporuLai aRindOrAr ivaiyenna ulagiyaRkkai” [those who not understand righteousness frighten others, ensnare them in their nets and torture them; this has become the nature of the world now]. upaniShad makes an anna nAdam with happiness, “I am eating food, I am eating food” [aham annam, aham annam etc] That is our nAthan’s pAdukA [slipper] sound; it is tiruvAimozhi sound; it is the upaniShad statement for the annam’s sound; it is shrI vedAnta deshikan’s pAdukA sahasra nAdapaddhati tirunAdam. Look how shrI shaTakOpar’s tiruvAimozhi’s anna nAdam is brought out in nAda paddhati. Understand and enjoy that nAda paddhati is the parabrahma pAdukAnanda nAdam that came out of emperumAn relishing the happening of anna nAdam through His divine eyes and divine ears
T.Raguveeradayal,
1/157, South car street,
Thiruppullani 623532
Ph: 04567-254242
cell 9443301091
http://thiruppul.blogspot.com/
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