This is an account of my visits to the Ramana Mandiram in Madurai in 2017 when I was travelling with a friend through Tamil Nadu, South India. It was in this building that Sri Ramana realised The Self in 1896. We had first stayed in the Sri Ramanasramam in Tiruvannamalai before making our way to Madurai to visit both the Ramana Mandiram there and the Ramana Maharshi Sundaram in Tiruchuzhi. The visit described below was made on the evening of the day we had gone to Tiruchuzhi. I was feeling tired from a day on the road in South India and we had just walked in to the building after an end of day thunderstorm, a common occurrence in that part of South India when the weather is hot.
First Day
At around 5 O’Clock Anita and I headed out of the Madurai Residency and onto the busy streets in the centre of a city which was dominated by the ancient Meenakshi Amman Temple, abode of the triple breasted warrior goddess Meenakshi. In fact it is not so much a temple as a complex of buildings on a site covering 6 hectares and dating back hundreds of years, being without doubt one of the top pilgrimage destinations in the whole of south India for devotees and tourists, both Indian and foreign. First of all however, before we ventured into the world of the Meenakshi Temple, we planned to go to the house where Ramana Maharshi lived whilst he had been studying in Madurai as a student in the last decade of the 19th century. It had belonged to his uncle and it was in one of its rooms that Ramana Maharshi had attained Enlightenment of the Self. A short time after this event, he made the journey to Tiruvannamalai and the holy hill of Arunachala where once he had arrived he never left, living in the bliss of self-realization from 1896 to 1950, radiating a presence which drew seekers to him from all corners of the world. The house in Madurai was now called the Ramana Mandiram and I had got its address after a visit to the Ramanasramam offices earlier on in the week. It had been written out for me plain and simple –
Ramana Mandiram
17/21 Chockkappan Street
Madurai – 1
(opp: To Meenakshi Temple South Tower)
The rickshaw driver we chose from outside the Residency had one or two problems locating the Ramana Mandiram but nothing too outrageously time consuming, which meant we still got there from our hotel in under 15 minutes. The house had been bought by the ashram many years ago and was now open each day of the week from 5 O’Clock in the morning, when it was possible to either go inside and meditate or to participate in the daily pujas performed there at certain times of the day. Anita and I left our shoes in the rack just inside the entrance and walked into the ground floor room of the Mandiram, in which a few people were sitting in front of a shrine to Ramana Maharshi located at the far end of it. It was a wrathful portrait of the master, with a pair of uncompromising eyes staring right back at you whilst he sat in meditation posture on a tiger skin. We walked up to the shrine, received a blessing by way of some grey vibhuti ash and vermillion red kum kum powder, both of which were firmly pressed onto our foreheads by an old man dressed in the orange robes of a sannayasin.
We soon made our way up the stairs to the two rooms on the first floor. The front room was empty and bare, save for a wooden shrine with a large portrait of Ramana Maharshi on it, whilst next to it was a pile of thin cushions to be used when sitting on the floor. There was one person in the room sitting in meditation, and it was silent apart from the sounds coming up from Chockkappan Street which lay outside the open windows. The smaller room at the back was more in shadow, really quite dark, and it had no windows. Here there was another framed portrait of Ramana Maharshi, this time one of him as a young man, his dark and piercing eyes staring intensely at the observer. An oil lamp was lit in front of the portrait with a stick of incense burning next to it, and there was also a young man sitting in lotus posture, eyes closed in meditation. Anita and I sat in this room for quite a while, I had my back against the wall and eyes half closed, whilst Anita sat cross legged on the floor.
The silence of the room and the whole first floor was pervasive, intense even, transporting me back to states of mind similar to what I had been experiencing in my room at Ramanasramam. Needless to say, this was more than OK with me. We stayed for about 20 minutes on that first floor of the Mandiram, trying to adjust to the different scene now that we were in Madurai. No doubt a few Westerners made their way down to the Ramana Mandiram each month, but in general the place felt more off the beaten track and very much set up for the use of the local devotees of Ramana Maharshi, which was fine by me, great in fact. Just to be able to walk up the stairs to those two rooms in the front and the back, to know I was about to sit in the space where Ramana Maharshi’s life had changed so completely, felt like it was something very special. In essence, this is what I had come to Madurai for; just to be there, to sit in the mandiram and to do some meditation. Put simply, there was a feeling of peace and silence to the Ramana Mandiram which I could in no way have ever anticipated experiencing without actually making the trip.
For our first visit Anita and I stayed half an hour or so with a view to coming back later on, but when we left and found ourselves on Chockkappan Street whilst making our way to the south tower of the Meenakshi Temple, we were soon caught in the middle of a huge thunderstorm which had more than one or two chunky streaks of lightning thrown in for good measure. It was of such power and intensity that we turned around and went back to the Ramana Mandiram until the whole thing blew over. This was a fortunate turn of events, because going back upstairs to those two rooms on the first floor instantly made me feel more relaxed and introspective than what I had done before. My mind was more spacious than the last time, which of course had been straight after the initial excitement of first arriving there. As a consequence I was able to quickly go into a state of meditation in the front room whilst the storm raged outside, where the sounds and sights of the busy streets of central Madurai seemed to soon fade away into the distance.
The front room scene on the first floor in the mandiram went something like this:
Ramana Maharshi face portrait blown up large and framed, placed on a wooden shrine with a fine drawing of the holy hill Arunachala above it, a pile of thin cushions in the corner to be used when sitting on the floor.
Otherwise, all else was empty.
So I sat in meditation, trying to still my constantly spinning mind, now full of impressions of Madurai and the road trip down from Tiruvannamalai earlier in the day. Sitting there with my eyes closed, legs drawn up and bent at the knees, with my back leaning against the wall; no stools, no chairs to sit on, and of course it was impossible for me to ever hope to sit cross legged on the floor. The storm, in what was now the early evening dusk of Madurai, with lightning streaks and deep rumbles of thunder, was a release of pressure after the building up of heat from the day and more than a little elemental in the best possible way. Our stay in the mandiram was longer than intended because of that rainstorm, but it felt all the better for it, there was a timeless silence about the place, a feeling of going deeper into the journey, whatever the journey was that we were on.
By the time we left the mandiram it was getting dark, and coming up to 7 O’Clock in the evening. We headed for the Meenakshi Temple in order to go inside now that the rains had more or less stopped. On the way we went to a restaurant for something to eat because we were feeling more than a little hungry, both of us having not had much during the course of the day, not much at all since our breakfast back in the ashram. After sitting down I first of all ordered a plate of vegetable fried rice, only to change it once I discovered it was possible to have a fresh masala dosa, causing the waiter to ask me twice to confirm my veggie rice was now cancelled, to which I told him that yes, indeed it was.
Second Day
We spent the next hour or so learning a lot about the many statues inside the Meenakshi, plenty about those colourful mandalas and scared yantras painted on the ceilings of the long corridors, and also about some of the many reasons why the Meenakshi Temple was held in such veneration by all Hindus, and in particular Tamils. At the time of our tour it seemed to be the most fascinating stuff I had listened to in a very long while but funnily enough when me and Anita returned to the Meenakshi Temple the next day and walked virtually the same route as we had with our guide, there was very little we could actually remember about what he told us. Obviously there were bits and pieces here and there, but the long and the short of it was that it had just gone in one ear and out of the other, well at least that was the case for me. By the time our guided tour of the temple was done we were both choc full of information and in need of a bit of air, so we made our way back to the west gate in order to collect our shoes and walk the short distance to the Ramana Mandiram on Chockkappan Street.
It was gone 8 by the time we reached the mandiram and it felt good to be able to step back inside the building where there was an evening puja taking place in the room on the ground floor, men on one side, women on the other. It did not take long for Anita and I to make our way up the stairs and to those two rooms on the first floor. I went to the front one again, where the scene was pretty much deserted apart from a man who was sitting to the side with his back against the wall, eyes closed in meditation. To recap, this front room was comprised of bare walls, a smooth granite tiled floor, a fast spinning ceiling fan pushing the very warm evening air around, and a pile of thin cushions stacked up in one corner whilst the windows were open to the sounds of Chokkappan Street coming in from the outside. The carved wood Ramana Maharshi shrine had a black and white photograph of the guru’s face framed above it, a photograph which I had seen many times before. Above this enlarged photograph was a single red flower placed upon the picture frame and above that a drawing of the holy hill of Arunachala. The only light shone from just one low energy bulb suspended from the centre of the ceiling, apart from that the room was deep in evening shadow. Anita was in the windowless back room where the large framed portrait of Ramana Maharshi as a young man with eyes of burning intensity was on another wooden altar, at the bottom of which was the light of an oil lamp along with the sweet smell of burning incense, and just like the day before there was also a young Indian man inside meditating whilst sitting in lotus posture.
Within both rooms there was the silence and energy of concentration, even though sounds were rising up and coming in from the street outside, sounds which comprised the mid-evening busyness of a south Indian temple city in which there were lots and lots of people. I sat in the front room on the floor, near to one of the open windows with my back against the wall and my arms resting on my drawn up knees. It was a comfortable enough position, as for me to have attempted to sit cross legged would have been a complete non-starter, so I just settled into a mildly contemplative state and soon began to go deeper. Guess it might have been down to the power of the place, the fact it was where Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi attained Enlightenment of the Self in 1896, which pushed me into a state of silence. Slipping into a meditative state might also have had something to do with the rigours of the day and the fact my body now felt a bit tired.
Our trip out to Tiruchuzhi, walking around the sundaram, the ride back to Madurai down the empty highway beneath a cloud strewn sky, the walk into town during the rainstorm, the guided tour of the Meenakshi Temple and then our return to the mandiram. It all added up. Everything building, not so much that I felt too tired because of it, more like I just did not want to go anywhere else, and was perfectly happy where I was. So I sat there with my eyes closed, or rather half closed, and concentrated on my breathing, aware there was just one other person in the room, that there were also the sounds of the city floating in through the windows along with the ceiling fan spinning above, pushing the warm evening air around. On top of all that there was also an inexpressible sense of universal energy which seemed to come as if from out of nowhere, a feeling of a great and immense light which was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. My body felt motionless and with my eyes half open I tried to focus on the framed face of Ramana Maharshi on the carved wooden altar against the wall opposite to where I was sitting.
I tried to focus on the face of the guru, just like I had done so many times before, but the face began to change into shapes and forms which went way beyond human; they were simply indescribable and full of the utmost power. I could not stop this face transformation of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi from occurring, in fact the shape shifting with my concentration upon it became a form of bliss for me, the deepest bliss imaginable. I realised beyond any doubt that to try to limit Ramana Maharshi and the message he conveyed, taught, emanated, or whatever else you might wish to call it, by way of either words or silence, both through the waking state and the dream, was a big, big mistake. It went beyond the man, beyond the human form he took, in fact to try to limit it to that was quite clearly ridiculous. The real energy that supported, immersed and projected his enlightenment was hugely more powerful than anything which could be contained or adequately expressed by the human body or by way of words. The faces and shapes which the photograph of Ramana Maharshi turned into as I sat there both seemed to be highly personal, as if relevant to only me, yet at the same time utterly beyond contrivance or anything really that I could ever imagine.
The power emanating from the constantly changing face on the altar was simply incredible, it was strange and beyond comprehension, yet absolutely real at the same time. It pounded into me and left me in a state of the deepest bliss and wonder. I was unable to move, unable to articulate in any sensible manner what was really going on, apart from experiencing a feeling of deepest gratitude that it was happening at all. The whole experience which occurred as I sat there on the floor in that front room of the mandiram took me up to 9 in the evening when its doors were due to close for the night. I was not sure at the end of it whether or not I was going to be able to stand up. The simple fact of the matter was that the change of the guru’s face into a power, a force which was way beyond human, taking into account all the distortions which accompanied it, had put me in a place where what I perceived by way of his photograph was the nameless, faceless, indescribable energy of the Self. It was incredible, it was unexpected and it blew my mind as a consequence, leaving me numb, leaving me speechless.
By the time Anita came in from the other room I was still sitting on the floor, having changed my position to rest my back against another wall and with my legs stretched out in front of me, still feeling stunned from having gone into such a state of bliss which was so full of power. Nonetheless I did indeed soon get up, then followed Anita out of the Ramana Mandiram and back onto the street. I would not have believed I would have been able to get up so easily and step back into the scene of mid-evening central Madurai so soon, but get up and step into it I did.
shape changing
hollow to the point of nowhere
but with an energy greater
than the sun,
no wonder it knocked me
sideways
and saw me talking to myself
through an unknown media
whilst my limbs were unable
to move me
from out of the bliss bubble
I found myself in
The header image for this article is a photograph taken by Digital Buggu as found on Pexels.
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