Arunachala
I want to share an amazing article on Arunachala, the holy mountain in Tamil Nadu, south India. The incarnation of Shiva.
I will never forget when I first laid eyes on this sacred piece of land.
I was on pilgrimage from my guru Papaji’s house in Lucknow, to visit what had been (and forever was) his guru, Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi’s, home for some 55 years. The mountain Arunachala. Which enlightened Ramana to the irrevocable ultimate state of Freedom; of Pure Being.
Arunachala Shiva was Ramana’s guru. And so Ramana never left its feet. In eternal devotion to the mountain, he lived there until he died.
Still to this day, 15 years later, I choke with tears from the deepest place in my heart as I tell my story of coming to the mountain.
I will never forget.
I looked out of the window from the bus, approaching Tiruvannamalai station. At some turn of the road, suddenly He appeared.
Shiva.
The mountain.
Arunachala.
And I cried, from the deepest part of my Heart. I cried with emotions that words cannot encompass. Tears of Freedom. But even more so, of Grace. And of more Grace.
In the article, which you can read here, the author describes the anthropomorphic tale of how and why Shiva incarnated into this mountain. And indeed, Lord Shiva says: “This glorious Arunachala is that of which the mere sight suffices to remove all demerits which divide up Being into egos and finite worlds. What cannot be acquired without endless pains — the true import of Vedanta — is easily attained by all who can either directly sight this hill or even mentally think of it from afar.”
