raghavendra swamy
The Aradhana of Guru Raghavendra is fast approaching, and this year, the Aradhana is going to be celebrated from 23rd August 2021 to 25 August 2021, and in Mantrayalam, the Annual Aradhana festival would be grandly celebrated for about a week. During the Aradhana celebration, the Raghavendra Mutts would appear very nicely, since it would be garlanded with flowers and flower garlands, and lot of Lamps would be lighted which adds more brightness to the divine shrines.
The name and fame of Guru Raghavendra is increasing day by day, and according to most of the Madhwa devotees, Guru represents Guru Raghavendra, and God represents, Sri Venkateswara of Tirumala. There is a famous old Kannada song, and it would be played in the households of most of the Madhwa Devotees, especially during Thursdays, and during annual Aradhana festival days, and some of the contents present in the song are as follows:
“Get up early from the bed, today is the Aradhana of Guru Raghavendra, let us celebrate the Aradhana of Guru with great joy and bhakti, fetch enough flowers from the garden and also get the required fruits to be offered as Holy Prasad, and quickly prepare the Sweet Prasad items with purity, quality and tasty, in order to offer it to our beloved Guru Sri Raghavendra. Oh! Our beloved Guru, please come to our homes, accept our Prasad, and offer your blessings to us and to the depressed and the suppressed people in the world. Since you are the universal Guru, you are capable to bless and to shower your grace to the entire living beings in the earth”.
In most of the Raghavendra Mutts, especially during the Madhya Aradhana festival day, free food is offered to all the devotees who present in the temple. Devotees used to visit during the holy Aradhana festival day, irrespective of their caste, creed and community. During the Aradhana festival day, we can see lot of crowd in the Raghavendra Mutts, who would eagerly participate in the festival event, in order to get the glimpse of our Holy Guru Raghavendra.
Similar to temples, nowadays, the shrines of the saints like Shirdi Saibaba, Guru Raghavendra and Bhagavan Ramakrishna are also gaining more popularity due to the significance of the great Gurus. As per an ancient proverb, “Without Guru Bhakti we cannot get Mukti”, and hence let us regularly visit the shrines of our holy gurus, and let us beg to them to forgive our sins and mistakes, and to give salvation to us.
“OM SRI GURU RAGHAVENDRAYA NAMAHA”
WRITTEN BY
R.HARISHANKAR