Kulasekara Alwar’s devotion to Sri Rama

One of the most zealous among the Azhwars – the incarnations of god’s aides was Kulasekara. His attachment is Sri Rama was so intense that he completely identified himself with every one of his acts. He saw Sri Rama in everything everywhere and at every moment and considered that the constant chanting of the every name of this ”great repository of compassion” would make even the wast ocean of the life-cycle a mere puddle.

Sri Embar Vijayaraghavachariar, in discourse said Kulasekara was Kausthubam – the brilliant gem worn by Sri Narayana – reborn. To him, service to god’s devotees was nobler then the worship of god himself.

Stating that he would hold on to his feet in the wake of the worst adversity, he expounded the doctrine of Absolute refuge by comparing himself to a child which sought its mother’s tender caress even after receiving several spanks, kike a lotus which blossomed only when the sun’s rays fell on it and like a patient welcoming a doctor, having cured him earlier for the torture involved in the treatment of his ailment.

As king of Cheranad with hos principal seat at Kozhikode, kulasekara took pains to see that Sri Rama’s name echoed all around continuously. As the Ramayana was recited, he entered into the spirit of the different characters and sang a lullaby to put the child Sri Rama in the cradle to sleep. When the episodes of Sri Rama fighting Kara and his 14,000 men single – handed and of Sri Sita’s incarceration on Lanka where being narrated hr ordered his own army to march to help them. His animated flights of ecstasy where quelled only when the devotees informed him that Kara and Ravana had been killed.

Kulasekara who believed that God’s devotees would never steal God’s property, proved their innocence when a minister, out of jealousy of their intimscy with the king, concealed a jewel, by dipping his hand in a pot containing two deadly cobras and coming out unscathed. At Tirumalai, he sang that he should remain there as a bird, a tree or a vessel used in Sri Venkateswara’s rituals, or a stone step in his sanctam or a fish in the adjoining tank to taste to devotee’s feet .

In chidambaram, he worshipped Sri Govindaraja and extolled Hanuman for having been installed close to him. Kulasekarazhwar has rendered Sri Rama’s entire life history in terse verses (akin to Sankshepa Ramayana) and that of Sri krishna in equally crisp stanzas. He married his daughter to Sri ranganatha in Srirangam.