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In a comment on one of my recent articles, How to attend to ‘I’? , Palaniappan Chidambaram asked: ‘Is being completely present to what is there is same like attending to “I”?’ Before attempting to answer this question, we need to consider what is meant by ‘what is there’, and whether this is the same as what should be meant by it. The obvious meaning of ‘what is there’ is what exists, but many things that we generally take to be existing may not actually exist, because they may only seem to exist. Therefore what we should mean by ‘what is there’ or ‘what exists’ is what actually exists and not what merely seems to exist. ‘I’ definitely does exist, because ‘I’ is what experiences both itself and all other things, so even if all other things merely seem to exist, their seeming existence could not be experienced if ‘I’ did not actually exist to experience it. The existence of ‘I’ is therefore necessarily true, whereas the existence of anything else is not necessarily true, because nothin...

In continuation of my previous three articles, Upadesa Undiyar – an explanatory paraphrase , Ulladu Narpadu – an explanatory paraphrase and Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham – an explanatory paraphrase , the following is the fourth of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai : ஏகான்ம பஞ்சகம் ( Ekanma Panchakam ), the ‘Five Verses on the Oneness of Self’, is a poem that Sri Ramana composed in February 1947, first in Telugu, then in Tamil, and later in Malayalam. The word ஆன்மா ( anma ) is a Tamil form the Sanskrit word atman , which means ‘self’, and hence in the title ஏகான்ம பஞ்சகம் ( Ekanma Panchakam ) the compound word ஏகான்ம ( ekanma ) means ‘the one self’, ‘self, the one’ or (by implication) ‘the oneness of self’, and பஞ்சகம் ( panchakam ) means a ‘set of five [verses]’. Thus this title implies not only that self is only one (and not many), but also that self is the only one (that is, the only one existing reality), which is the true ...

Sri Ramana composed many of his Tamil works — such as Ulladu Narpadu , Ekatma Panchakam , Devikalottara – Jnanachara-Vichara-Padalam , Atma Sakshatkara Prakaranam , Bhagavad Gita Saram and Atma Bodham — in a four-line poetic metre called venba , which contains four feet in each of the first three lines and three feet in the fourth line. Since devotees used to do regular parayana or recitation of his works in his presence, he converted each of the six works mentioned above (that is, each of his works in venba metre except Sri Arunachala Pancharatnam ) into a single verse in kalivenba metre by lengthening the third foot of the fourth line of each verse and adding a fourth foot to it, thereby linking it to the next verse and making it easy for devotees to remember the continuity while reciting. Since the one-and-a-half feet that he thus added to the fourth line of each verse may contain one or more words, which are usually called the ‘link words’, they not only facilitate recitatio...