1823 - 1874 · Vadalur, Tamil Nadu
The saint of the Vast Grace-Light
In the Tamil country of Tirumular and anbe sivam, Ramalinga Adigal — Vallalar, the great giver — sang thousands of verses to the divine as Arutperunjothi, the Vast Grace-Light, and taught a path he called Sanmarga: the pure way, open to all castes and creeds, resting on compassion for every living being.
He held jeeva karunyam — tenderness toward all life — to be the very door of grace, and made it concrete: in 1867 he established at Vadalur a feeding house whose fire, tradition holds, has not gone out since. Hunger, he taught, is the first altar at which the divine is to be served.
The practice he gave is twofold and available to anyone today: feed the hungry as worship, and contemplate the divine as boundless light — sitting quietly, opening the heart toward the Vast Grace-Light with melting compassion. On this site, whose field is the green of anbe sivam, his stream flows very near.
