Arunagiri Malai

Arunagiri Malai

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The Lord of Arunachala,

He who sports with his royal consort,

Will remain within the hearts

Of those whose one desire

Is to behold him in the guise

Of the blissful dancer of Tillai's hall.(21)

He will not make his home

In the hearts of those

Who despise his friends.

What may be the holy state

Of those whose great treasure

Is Arunachala, eternally glorious,

I do not know.

I am a simple devotee

Who worships his golden foot.

Before I leave this body

Will that divine vision be mine,

Or will it pass away?

The effects of ancient deeds,

Sin and a multitude of afflictions,

Poverty and inescapable death,

All will disappear

For those who stand alone,

Praising him whose forehead bears a third eye,

Our sweet Lord Arunagiri!

You who swallowed the poison

Dripping from a serpent's fang

As if it were sweet ambrosia,

Our Lord of Aruna's Mount!

If you do not take pity on me

And take me to yourself

Like a mother with her new-born child,

A loving father, or a holy teacher,

What other salvation can there be

For a poor wretch such as I?

My spirit, accept the protection

Of the King, who justly ordains

Every birth we must endure

On salvation's path,

Our Lord of Arunachala,

Who cleaves to us

And rules our hearts.

If you have any wavering thoughts,

Put them aside!

Nowhere in this world

Have we seen unique miracles like those

Performed by the sage of Arunachala

Whose glory spreads far and wide.

When he walked upon the earth

He had cause to kill Yama with a kick

And flay the skin of a tiger

Wearing a form no eye could endure.(22)

Listen, my heart, while I tell you

Something wondrous indeed:

Those who have paid homage

To the Lord of Arunachala,

Who wears the dark ocean's poison,

And have immersed themselves

In the holy tank where he once bathed,

Shall never again be immersed,

Mark you well, in the waters of a mother's womb.

Come, Lord of Arunachala,

Grant me my one desire,

Which is to sing your praises!

The whole world will praise

Those who have renounced it,

As long as they in turn praise you.

But if they forget you

The world will revile them

And call them wicked.

To be as rulers of the earth;

To live like the gods in heaven;

To be united with the red lotus of his foot;

Such will be the lot of those

Who meditate upon the name of him

Whose ornaments are human bones(23)

And a cobra with a spreading hood,

Our Lord of Arunachala.

Hard indeed would it be

For anyone to change

What the Lord has ordained.

But the false-hearted of this world

Do not believe it, alas.

They do not seek the goodness

Of Arunagiri's Lord,

But wander from birth to birth,

Suffering in vain.

Those whose tongues speak not

The name of the wise one

Who consumed the ocean's poison,

Our heavenly protector,

The Lord of southern Arunachala,

Will suffer great distress,

Seeking only earthly pleasures,

And speaking to others of pleasure only.

Even if the rains fall

And famine comes,

And the messengers of death stalk the earth,

Those who pay homage to the holy one

Whose munificence is ever unfailing

Towards those who worship his golden foot,

The devotees of Arunachala's Lord,

Will not deviate from their path.

Other than him,

We revere no other God.

As for those who do so,

We consider them worthless.

Those who love earthly things

Will not win our esteem,

But for the Lord of Arunachala,

Our praise will be without limit.

Those who have seen the glory

That Vishnu could not see,

Nor Brahma on his white lotus pad,

Will speak thus:

'Earth's eight-shouldered Godhead, Lord of Arunagiri!

Your noble consort

Shares your very form. See, is it not so.'

Dear heart, of what use is anything

That originates in mental activity?

There are those who, to their grief,

Have no love for Arunachala's fair Lord,

But, imitating the righteous,

Heap garlands at his feet and cry out:

'Lord of the matted locks, our salvation!'

As for us, we shall not thus abuse his name.

For those who have sought refuge

At the feet of the holy one

Whose body is smeared with ash,

He whose name is sweet

Upon the lips of his devotees,

There will be no death.

Nor can there be any sin

For those who praise him.

Searching earth and heaven

As a boar and as a swan,

Did either Vishnu or Brahma

See his head or his foot?

In the end, their knowledge

Of Arunachala's Lord Sankara

Amounted to nothing.

Who else, then, could know him

Through and through,

His beginning and his end?(24)

My heart,

He who sent the three cities

Of his demon enemies

Tumbling down upon the broad earth,(25)

The Lord of Arunachala

Will come to my aid,

Entering my very soul.

What, then, have you to fear?

Speak!

If you devote to Aruna's Lord

One hundredth part of the desire

You lavish on bright-eyed maidens,

You will, without a shadow of doubt,

Discover his true nature, my heart,

And win for yourself eternal life.

Even if the devotees of Aruna's Lord

Embraced evil, committing sinful deeds,

Those deeds would not adhere to them

And grip them in return;

No more than a barren woman

However much she had intercourse,

Would become with child.

Listen, my heart, to this wondrous news,

Never before proclaimed upon the earth:

Those who cross the broad threshold

That fosters the holy service

Of the Primal One, Aruna's Lord,

And make obeisance to him there,

Will never again pass through

The door of a mother's womb.

This you should know.

Lord of Mount Arunagiri,

You who manifest as the sense organs,

Merging inseparably with the five senses,

Dwelling deathlessly

Where no hand can reach

And cast you out,

Tell me, what way is there

To subdue and control all this?

To cut off our desires is the teacher's duty.

Is this any different

From banishing our soul's original defilement?

Lord of Arunachala,

The presence of desire upon this broad earth

Is freely granted.

Is it any different then

To grant that that same desire

Might be destroyed?(26)

What sin can there be

To say that the Lord of Arunachala

Is the creator

Rather than Brahma or Vishnu?

When Lord Siva cut off

One of Brahma's five heads

Was the 'creator' able to recreate that?

Apart from Mother Uma and Father Arunachala

What other family is there for all that lives?

Speak!

All things, diminished at first

Through their birth,

Grow to greatness

By dint of long austerities.

There are some men who seek our father,

The Lord of Arunachala,

Not knowing that he dwells for all time

Within the hearts of those

Who praise him in song

As he dances his dance of bliss.

Such men run hither and thither,

Their minds in confusion,

Saying 'What might his dwelling place be?'

For those who do not fix their thoughts

Upon the red lotus foot of Annamalai's Lord

Whose upraised hand is filled with flames

And who shares his form with the maiden Ambikai,(27)

Every day they devote to spiritual practice

Will be a day spent in vain.

Although I have so often seen

The outward form of Arunachala's Lord

Wearing, as he is wont, the auspicious snake,

My mind and body are sick and dying,

For I have experienced that manifestation

In which he becomes one with my very Self,

And failed to realise the truth of it.

Great teacher, so hard to reach

For Brahma and Vishnu,

Yet so easy for me!

Arunachala's bounteous Lord,

Know this:

That just as a song and its melody

Are eternally one with each other,

Your form never leaves my eye,

Never fades from my sight.

Listen, my heart, it will be to you

As if you surveyed all the encircling earth

Without need of any conveyance

When you are born as a devotee of Arunachala's Lord,

Worshipping the lotus foot of the immaculate One

Who wears the fair rudraksha beads.

Should you aspire to be delivered

From the cycle of pleasure and pain

That has hounded you from ancient times,

You should know, my heart,

That except through the divine presence

Of the Lord of the matted locks,

Who dwells on holy Arunachala,

There can be no escape.

Seeing the fragrant golden foot,

The ruddy features, shining with grace

Of abiding Arunachala's Lord,

Never harbouring a single false desire,

You wander on and on, my heart.

But when will you bathe in bliss' flood?

Ask… When?

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(21) Siva as Natarajan, who performs his cosmic dance in the Chidambaram temple ('Tillai's hall').

(22) There is a puranic story in which Siva appeared before some rishis in the Taraka forest in the guise of a beggar. Through his power he caused the rishi's wives to fall in love with him. The rishis, angered by his behaviour, decided to kill him. They dug a pit, out of which emerged a tiger. Siva killed it and wore its skin. Later snakes came out of the pit, but they had no effect on Siva. He wound them around his body and used them as ornaments. Because of this incident Siva is almost always depicted as having at least one poisonous snake wrapped around his body. Siva began his cosmic dance in this forest, but later moved it to Chidambaram because the Taraka forest was not a powerful enough place to contain the energy. When Siva, in the form of Natarajan, performs his cosmic dance, only three people are permitted to witness it: Siva's consort and two rishis who were blessed by Siva with the boon of being able to witness the dance. It is widely believed that no one else could endure the power of such a darshan.

(23) After Siva decapitated Brahma's fifth head, he threaded the skull on the necklace he wears.

(24) Saiva Siddhanta, the philosophy that grew out of the poems of the early Saiva saints, is at heart a dualistic creed. Though it accepts that freedom from bondage can be obtained through Siva's grace, it does not accept that one can ever know Siva fully, as he knows himself. An echo of this can be found in the word Annamalai, one of the most common names for Arunachala. It means 'unreachable or unapproachable mountain'.

(25) At a time when the devas and the asuras were having one of their many wars, the three cities of the asuras were protected by a boon which specified that they could only be destroyed by one shot of a single arrow. When the devas were on the point of finally losing, they appealed to Siva and he obliged them by destroying all the asura cities with a single shot.

(26) The threefold impurity (karma, ego and maya) is held to be inherent in the soul's nature. This 'original defilement' can only be removed by the grace of the teacher. In Saivism, Siva is often perceived to be both Guru and God. Occasionally, as with Manikkavachagar, he even takes on a human form to act as a Guru. Thus, in addition to his godly functions such as world-creation, Siva also fulfils the role of an embodied teacher, instructing and removing the ignorance of those he deems worthy.

(27) One of the many names of Siva's consort.