1918 - 2001 · Tiruvannamalai
The beggar of the divine name
He called himself a beggar and this beggar, sat for decades beneath a punnai tree and later in an ashram at Tiruvannamalai, chain of beads in hand, chanting the name of Ram. Formed by three masters — Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, and above all Swami Ramdas, whose initiation into the Ram mantra set him permanently ablaze — he became one of the most loved saints of the late twentieth century.
He deflected every reverence to his father, as he called God, and taught almost exclusively through the divine name and through blessing. My father alone exists, he would say — the recorded refrain of his whole life.
The practice he gave is the one that consumed him: the continual remembrance of the divine name — for him, Ram — carried on the breath through all activity, with the conviction that the name and the named are one. Begin with a fixed daily period; let it overflow its banks on its own.
