Re: Analysis of the name 'nArAyanA' for Sri Vishnu
Namaste GaruDa,
Originally Posted by
Garuda
naarayaNa is a tattvam, not male/female/ it is 'it' the same with vishnu but they appear in forms for our benefit for us to do upasana......the narayana term is much broader and it covers anything, even vishnu,vasudeva merges into word narayana....hence if you see the ramanuja parampara, the acharyas give only Narayana mantram, (astakshari+dwaya mantram+charama slokam(sarva dharmaan parityajya)-last slokam of bg--combined)...Adi Shankara in his commentaries on also referred the supreme as Narayana only.
adiyen Ramanuja daasa
Many Hindus cultivate a habit of using the RAma nAma frequently, such as by greeting each other using the nAma ("Jai Sri rAma", etc). The secret behind this is no secret at all: we do it so that the nAma is on our lips for one final time again when we are about to die.
RAma is the shortest path to what Vedanta knows as "moksha". I equated rAma nAma to nArAyaNa earlier in this thread. Notice the "rA" sound common to both (same that occurs in surya who is bhArata-bhArati).
So, yes, we are not talking about finite entities here at all. We are talking strictly about the "Infinites", the "its" here.
Read the following carefully to understand this:
Let me explain the idea using the material analogy (a valid way). Let us then talk about the material space (bhag-AkASa) that we are surrounded with. How do we characterise this space?
Clearly, AkASa is attribute less. Yet we say, "here we have so and so length, so and so width, and so and so depth". Thus, we still are able to talk about the infinite in terms of "length", "width", and "height" which are very much finites. This is known as understanding the infinite using the language of finite.
In surya who is Bharat-BhArati, the bharat component is an amSa of Sri Indra, while the bhArati component (a mighty Devi as well) is an amSa of Narayana.
In this way, to the Vedic Rsis all knowledge was expressed in terms of the Aindra (Vedic Sanskrit is called Aindra): Indra classifies the finites by "divide-and-rule", but also makes out the infinites using the Aindra reception (also known as "inducing", "induction" etc - these words are rooted in Indra).
To come back to the original analogy, what do the Aindra description of bhag-AkASa (material space) using length, width and depth (there could be actually many more such finites such as position, momentum, energy, etc) tell us?
This description by the three finites tells us about the existence of three Infinites within the space. What are their names?
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Let us now come out of the analogy. The point I tried to demonstrate here was that: "there are more than one Infinte". There are more than one States of what Vedanta calls "moksha". And Narayana is the deity, the "it", who is the closest such state. Narayana is therefore also the first deity of this class encountered by our specially talented ancestors, the Rsis, when they were on their "straightest path", when they toiled hard to pave the way forward for humanity.
The names nara, nArAyaNa, hari and krishNa - spell out a very important formula (though still not the whole of the sanAtana-truth), and all these four names are seen on an equal footing, yet they are different from each other: nara is all the finite worlds combined, whereas the three others are three different Infintes, three different "its".
I hope I made myself clear here.
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On the intellectual plane, let me point out that the Rsis nara, nArAyANa, hari and krishNa belonged to Satyuga (correct me if I am wrong here). In Satyuga Sri Vishnu doesn't incarnate: there is no need for it.
So these four were Rsis who specialised in four very important modes of Sri Vishnu. This is how these names today are quoted more in the context of Vaishnavism. Though, these four names, and the deities behind them, can in a still valid way appear in Shaiva or any other Dharmic paradigm as well. Thus, for example, we see Swamy Satynarayna's vigraha (in the Andhra temple discussed in this thread), though still considered on some kind of equivalence with Sri Rama, is also considered "belonging" to all the three paradigms (also called deities): Shiva, Vishnu and BrahmA.
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You seem to be an adherent of Sri Ramanuja sampradAya. I spoke at length in this post because I believe you are Well placed to understand this.
Sometimes we should also see who is the teacher, besides just what his teaching is. This is because even the liberated ones, as shown in this post, can belong to different "places" - Lord Indra informs us of that.
If rAmAnujAchArya laid emphasise on Narayana nAma, it could have something also to do with the rAma nAma in his own name.
Sri Ram,
KT
Things to remember:
1. Life = yajña
2. Depth of Āstika knowledge is directly proportional
to the richness of Sanskrit it is written in
3. Āstika = Bhārata ("east") / Ārya ("west")
4. Varṇa = tripartite division of Vedic polity
5. r = c. x²
where,
r = realisation
constant c = intelligence
variable x = bhakti
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