1006, 1+0+0+6 = 7
The 7 day Mega celebrations offering 7 types of ‘flowers’ as part of worship for Ramanujacharya’s 1006th Jayanti
✿ Day 01
VIDYA:RTTHI VANDITHA RA:MA:NUJA
To offer flowers of inspired adoration for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, inspired students from various colleges gathered at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya’s teachings benefit students?
In today’s educational institutions, a student is taught only the surfacial aspects of what comprises the comprehensive knowledge. Sri Ramanujacharya opened floodgates to the secrets of Vedic knowledge to everyone that encompasses all-knowledge. These days, students are taught how to engage in ways to live ‘better’ in the physical world but are not taught what is the nature of self, who runs the Universal show?
This knowledge wasn’t something everyone could get an opportunity to learn until Sri Ramanujacharya opened it to everyone from the temple top. Unless and until such knowledge is exposed to students, their learning will be limited. It is analogous to knowledge of an ocean to contain only water and aquatic beings, but they wouldn’t know an ocean has more precious elements such as gold and diamonds.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 1
✿ Day 02
ba:la se:vitha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of innocent cherishing of Ramanujacharya for His 1006th Jayanthi, children from across the nation gathered at the Statue of Equality
How do Ramanujacharya’s teachings benefit children?
Sri Ramanujacharya passed on the tradition of Vedic times where the learning system enhances a child’s memory. Earlier, a student would learn a topic from 6am to 12pm, and another session from 2pm to 8pm. Learning a single topic for such duration improves one’s focus levels.
Today, our children are getting used to scrolling videos that are less than a minute. If the content goes any longer, they lose patience and skip / change. The duration of periods in a class are around 45 minutes to an hour. Such short spans are training a child’s mind to shorter spans of focused attention. They get bored or lose patience when a teacher goes beyond that duration.
Children as part of Prajna program get trained for a super memory skill called avadhanam in Bhagavad Githa.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 2
✿ Day 03
BAHUJANA KA:MITHA RA:MA:NUJA
To offer flowers of traditional songs and dances for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, several artists from ‘dalit’ communities gathered at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit downtrodden communities?
A brief episode from history: Ramanujacharya came to know that his guru Maha:pu:rna Swami was being ill-treated for giving high regards to Ma:rne:ri Nambi who was born into a ‘lower caste’ family. Maha:pu:rna Swami respected Ma:rne:ri Nambi for his devotion towards Lord. They were class-mates under the tutelage of Ya:muna:charya swami.
Ramanujacharya humbly enquired his guru Maha:pu:rna for clarification on whether such disparity is valid based on ancient history, Puranas and Vedas.
As a response to Ramanujacharya’s question, Maha:pu:rna swami beautifully stated that he is not any greater than Rama and Ma:rne:ri Nambi is not any lesser than Jatayu. He added that he is not any greater than Yudhishthira and Ma:rne:ni Nambi is not any lesser than Vidura.
What he meant was, “If Rama had shown so much respect and love for Jatayu, a bird that fed on dead bodies, how could he not have respect for Ma:rne:ri Nambi for being a great devotee? If Yudhishthira had so much regard for Vidura who was born into a family that was considered relatively ‘lower’ caste, how could I not have respect for the great devotee Ma:rne:ri Nambi.”
Lord declares in Puranas…
vipra:th dwishadguna yutha:th
aravinda na:bha pa:da:ravinda vimukha:th
svapacham varishtam manye:
One may be born into a dog eating family, but if he has devotion for God, he is regarded higher than a scholar of Vedic scriptures with no devotion for God.
Ramanujacharya Swami concluded God never showed disparity. Everyone must therefore have equal opportunities for their growth. He institutionalized temples such that every section of the community can play their role by utilizing their skill in the service of God. When such noble reforms take place in a temple, the rest of the society would exercise the same. Ramanujacharya implemented this in temples because the societies were temple-centric societies back then… We must understand how Ramanujacharya brought out ‘policies’ that were inclusive and not divisive.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 3
✿ Day 04
mahila: ma:nyada ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of respectful gratitude for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, hundreds of women who have achieved excellence in various streams of service came together at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit women?
Ramanujacharya Swami empowered women by bestowing them also with the secret vedic truths. He worshiped those who were devoted to the Lord and had great wisdom. One day, during divya kshethra yatra, he was just entering the outskirts of Thirukko:lu:r as he noticed a woman leave the place with all her belongings.
He asked her why she was leaving such a great place. She gave 80 statements, each one of which beautifully explained the greatness of 80 devotees. Each statement, despite being short, carried the elixir of bhakthi rasa, the divine emotion called devotion for Lord.
Ramanujacharya understood the depth of her devotion for Lord, convinced her to go back to Thirukko:lu:r along with him, offered her thi:rttha and prasa:da, and made arrangements as per her wish for uplifting the Thirukko:lu:r temple.
There were such great women at Vedic times, puranic times, in the times of Sankaracharya Swami. It was said that Mandana Misra, Sankaracharya’s wife, participated in a scriptural discussion which forced participant men to go back and learn details before re-engaging in the discussions. We are not sure what happened between then and the times of Ramanujacharya that allowed disparities based on gender.
Ramanujacharya not only ensured the disparity based on gender is curtailed but also named Visishta advaitha philosophy as Sri Sampradaya to indicate that compassion, a feminine quality forms the underlying foundation of the philosophy.
Hence, Lord is revered as Sitha Rama, Lakshmi Narayana, Parvathi Parameswara…
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 4
✿ Day 05
vidvath vinutha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of in depth appreciation of Ramanujacharya’s contribution, hundreds of erudite scholars, Vice chancellors of several universities gathered at the Statue of Equality as part of 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit the elite and the erudite scholars?
1000 years ago, Ramanujacharya Swami identified the need and led a team to build a dam on Thondanur lake with 74 outlets. The dam is architectured in a manner that stands functional till date.
1000 years ago, Ramanujacharya Swami institutionalized temple services into 20 different sections where he included and involved everyone in service activity based on their skills. His administrative style was inclusive and he nurtured skill-based ownership in work and not by inheritance or caste.
Ramanujacharya Swami stood as an inspiration being a revolutionary reformer in areas that one could not dream of thinking in those times. Ramanujacharya Swami was attacked 4 times, twice by priests themselves for bringing the reforms. Ramanujacharya did not stop, he believed in holistic progress of the society in addition to one’s own development with the foundations of time-tested Vedic path.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 5
✿ Day 06
viswaru:padhara vinutha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of inspired awe for the magnanimity of Ramanujacharya’s heart and mind, a technology panel came together and gathered at the Statue of Equality as part of 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings inspire the technologists?
Ramanujacharya Swami elevated Dhanurdas’s interest in the physical beauty of his lover to devotion for the Lord by ‘showing’ him the depth of beauty in the Lord’s eyes. When one can feel, experience, understand the Lord, they will naturally find ways to protect, preserve and pass on that divine treasure. When one loves the Lord, he/she will see the world, everyone and everything in this world as their family. When that happens, there is lesser chaos, there is lesser disharmony, there is lesser mis-understanding. Using such incidents from Ramanujacharya as inspiration…
Directors of IITs, IIIT, BITS group of institutions presented topics such as Digital Twin, Heritage as an asset, Preservation of culture and discussed what role technology can play in spreading Ramanujacharya’s message.
Hundreds of priests along with Ramanuja murthi of their temples came together as a procession to the Statue of Equality. Why?
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings inspire the seekers of Vedic truths?
There was an incident during the period of Vittadeva who belonged to the Hoysala dynasty. Ramanujacharya was challenged by Jain monks on his philosophical understanding. Ramanujacharya suggested that a cloth be tied as a separator between the Jain monks and himself. 10,000 Jain monks gathered and posed various questions to Ramanujacharya. His answers suited all of them even though all their questions were different. It was an amazing incident and people were thrilled to watch the debate on philosophy and eternal truths. Ramanujacharya won the challenge and several Jain monks became his disciples. It was as if Adi sesha with thousands of heads addressed thousands of people simultaneously. This is when Ramanuja’s viswaru:pa came into light…
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 6
✿ Day 07
kavijana kalitha ra:ma:nuja
How did Ramanujacharya inspire poetic fraternity?
While learning Vedas demands dedication and seriousness on the topic, poetry takes the path of investing emotion into the topic. Because the target topic is beyond the physical world and is connected to the eternal supreme truths, the poetic expressions have the power to pass through the canals of the ears and touch the souls. Ramanujacharya’s compassionate heart that saw everyone equally and his revolutionary ideas that desired everyone’s holistic upliftment blessed the many gathered poets in expressing their worshipful respects for him through their poems.
One of the famous poets on the stage expressed how HH Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji carries the same compassion and wisdom. He said, “Everyone who comes to Swamiji for getting initiated with marks of Sankha and Chakra to become a member of Sri Vaishnava sampradaya receives two other things. The first one is the compassion that flows from Swamiji’s eyes. The second one is the joy that contagiously spreads from His smile to others. The depths of compassion that flows from His eyes and the joy He spreads just by smiling are two invaluable assets that He shares graciously with everyone.”
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 7
– 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti
– April 25th to May 1st 2023
– Statue of Equality
– Hyderabad, Telangana, India
1006, 1+0+0+6 = 7
The 7 day Mega celebrations offering 7 types of ‘flowers’ as part of worship for
Ramanujacharya’s 1006th Jayanti
✿ Day 01
VIDYA:RTTHI VANDITHA RA:MA:NUJA
To offer flowers of inspired adoration for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, inspired students from various colleges gathered at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya’s teachings benefit students?
In today’s educational institutions, a student is taught only the surfacial aspects of what comprises the comprehensive knowledge. Sri Ramanujacharya opened floodgates to the secrets of Vedic knowledge to everyone that encompasses all-knowledge. These days, students are taught how to engage in ways to live ‘better’ in the physical world but are not taught what is the nature of self, who runs the Universal show?
This knowledge wasn’t something everyone could get an opportunity to learn until Sri Ramanujacharya opened it to everyone from the temple top. Unless and until such knowledge is exposed to students, their learning will be limited. It is analogous to knowledge of an ocean to contain only water and aquatic beings, but they wouldn’t know an ocean has more precious elements such as gold and diamonds.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 1
✿ Day 02
ba:la se:vitha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of innocent cherishing of Ramanujacharya for His 1006th Jayanthi, children from across the nation gathered at the Statue of Equality
How do Ramanujacharya’s teachings benefit children?
Sri Ramanujacharya passed on the tradition of Vedic times where the learning system enhances a child’s memory. Earlier, a student would learn a topic from 6am to 12pm, and another session from 2pm to 8pm. Learning a single topic for such duration improves one’s focus levels.
Today, our children are getting used to scrolling videos that are less than a minute. If the content goes any longer, they lose patience and skip / change. The duration of periods in a class are around 45 minutes to an hour. Such short spans are training a child’s mind to shorter spans of focused attention. They get bored or lose patience when a teacher goes beyond that duration.
Children as part of Prajna program get trained for a super memory skill called avadhanam in Bhagavad Githa.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 2
✿ Day 03
bahujana ka:mitha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of traditional songs and dances for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, several artists from ‘dalit’ communities gathered at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit downtrodden communities?
A brief episode from history: Ramanujacharya came to know that his guru Maha:pu:rna Swami was being ill-treated for giving high regards to Ma:rne:ri Nambi who was born into a ‘lower caste’ family. Maha:pu:rna Swami respected Ma:rne:ri Nambi for his devotion towards Lord. They were class-mates under the tutelage of Ya:muna:charya swami.
Ramanujacharya humbly enquired his guru Maha:pu:rna for clarification on whether such disparity is valid based on ancient history, Puranas and Vedas.
As a response to Ramanujacharya’s question, Maha:pu:rna swami beautifully stated that he is not any greater than Rama and Ma:rne:ri Nambi is not any lesser than Jatayu. He added that he is not any greater than Yudhishthira and Ma:rne:ni Nambi is not any lesser than Vidura.
What he meant was, “If Rama had shown so much respect and love for Jatayu, a bird that fed on dead bodies, how could he not have respect for Ma:rne:ri Nambi for being a great devotee? If Yudhishthira had so much regard for Vidura who was born into a family that was considered relatively ‘lower’ caste, how could I not have respect for the great devotee Ma:rne:ri Nambi.”
Lord Himself declares in Puranas…
vipra:th dwishadguna yutha:th
aravinda na:bha pa:da:ravinda vimukha:th
svapacham varishtam manye:
One may be born into a dog eating family, but if he has devotion for God, he is regarded higher than a scholar of Vedic scriptures with no devotion for God.
Ramanujacharya Swami concluded God never showed disparity. Everyone must therefore have equal opportunities for their growth. He institutionalized temples such that every section of the community can play their role by utilizing their skill in the service of God. When such noble reforms take place in a temple, the rest of the society would exercise the same. Ramanujacharya implemented this in temples because the societies were temple-centric societies back then… We must understand how Ramanujacharya brought out ‘policies’ that were inclusive and not divisive.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 3
✿ Day 04
mahila: ma:nyada ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of respectful gratitude for Ramanujacharya on His 1006th Jayanthi, hundreds of women who have achieved excellence in various streams of service came together at the Statue of Equality.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit women?
Ramanujacharya Swami empowered women by bestowing them with the secret vedic truths. He also worshiped those who were devoted to the Lord and had great wisdom. One day, during divya kshethra yatra, he was just entering the outskirts of Thirukko:lu:r as he noticed a woman leave the place with all her belongings.
He asked her why she was leaving such a great place. She gave 80 statements, each one of which beautifully explained the greatness of 80 devotees. Each statement, despite being short, carried the elixir of bhakthi rasa, the divine emotion called devotion for Lord.
Ramanujacharya understood the depth of her devotion for Lord, convinced her to go back to Thirukko:lu:r along with him, offered her thi:rttha and prasa:da, and made arrangements as per her wish for uplifting the Thirukko:lu:r temple.
There were such great women at Vedic times, puranic times, in the times of Sankaracharya Swami. It was said that Mandana Misra, Sankaracharya’s wife, participated in a scriptural discussion which forced participant men to go back and learn details before re-engaging in the discussions. We are not sure what happened between then and the times of Ramanujacharya that allowed disparities based on gender.
Ramanujacharya not only ensured the disparity based on gender is curtailed but also named Visishta advaitha philosophy as Sri Sampradaya to indicate that compassion, a feminine quality forms the underlying foundation of the philosophy.
Hence, Lord is revered as Sitha Rama, Lakshmi Narayana, Parvathi Parameswara…
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 4
✿ Day 05
vidvath vinutha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of in depth appreciation of Ramanujacharya’s contribution, hundreds of erudite scholars, Vice chancellors of several universities gathered at the Statue of Equality as part of 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings benefit the elite and the erudite scholars?
1000 years ago, Ramanujacharya Swami identified the need and led a team to build a dam on Thondanur lake with 74 outlets. The dam is architectured in a manner that stands functional till date.
1000 years ago, Ramanujacharya Swami institutionalized temple services into 20 different sections where he included and involved everyone in service activity based on their skills. His administrative style was inclusive and he nurtured skill-based ownership in work and not by inheritance or caste.
Ramanujacharya Swami stood as an inspiration being a revolutionary reformer in areas that one could not dream of thinking in those times. Ramanujacharya Swami was attacked 4 times, twice by priests themselves for bringing the reforms. Ramanujacharya did not stop, he believed in holistic progress of the society in addition to one’s own development with the foundations of time-tested Vedic path.
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 5
✿ Day 06
viswaru:padhara vinutha ra:ma:nuja
To offer flowers of inspired awe for the magnanimity of Ramanujacharya’s heart and mind, a technology panel came together and gathered at the Statue of Equality as part of 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti.
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings inspire the technologists?
Ramanujacharya Swami elevated Dhanurdas’s interest in the physical beauty of his lover to devotion for the Lord by ‘showing’ him the depth of beauty in the Lord’s eyes. When one can feel, experience, understand the Lord, they will naturally find ways to protect, preserve and pass on that divine treasure. When one loves the Lord, he/she will see the world, everyone and everything in this world as their family. When that happens, there is lesser chaos, there is lesser disharmony, there is lesser mis-understanding. Using such incidents from Ramanujacharya as inspiration…
Directors of IITs, IIIT, BITS group of institutions presented topics such as Digital Twin, Heritage as an asset, Preservation of culture and discussed what role technology can play in spreading Ramanujacharya’s message.
Hundreds of priests along with Ramanuja murthi of their temples came together as a procession to the Statue of Equality. Why?
How do Ramanujacharya Swami’s teachings inspire the seekers of Vedic truths?
There was an incident during the period of Vittadeva who belonged to the Hoysala dynasty. Ramanujacharya was challenged by Jain monks on his philosophical understanding. Ramanujacharya suggested that a cloth be tied as a separator between the Jain monks and himself. 10,000 Jain monks gathered and posed various questions to Ramanujacharya. His answers suited all of them even though all their questions were different. It was an amazing incident and people were thrilled to watch the debate on philosophy and eternal truths. Ramanujacharya won the challenge and several Jain monks became his disciples. It was as if Adi sesha with thousands of heads addressed thousands of people simultaneously. This is when Ramanuja’s viswaru:pa came into light…
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 6
✿ Day 07
kavijana kalitha ra:ma:nuja
How did Ramanujacharya inspire poetic fraternity?
While learning Vedas demands dedication and seriousness on the topic, poetry takes the path of investing emotion into the topic. Because the target topic is beyond the physical world and is connected to the eternal supreme truths, the poetic expressions have the power to pass through the canals of the ears and touch the souls. Ramanujacharya’s compassionate heart that saw everyone equally and his revolutionary ideas that desired everyone’s holistic upliftment blessed the many gathered poets in expressing their worshipful respects for him through their poems.
One of the famous poets on the stage expressed how HH Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji carries the same compassion and wisdom. He said, “Everyone who comes to Swamiji for getting initiated with marks of Sankha and Chakra to become a member of Sri Vaishnava sampradaya receives two other things. The first one is the compassion that flows from Swamiji’s eyes. The second one is the joy that contagiously spreads from His smile to others. The depths of compassion that flows from His eyes and the joy He spreads just by smiling are two invaluable assets that He shares graciously with everyone.”
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 7
– 1006th Ramanuja Jayanti
– April 25th to May 1st 2023
– Statue of Equality
– Hyderabad, Telangana, India
