Sri Ramana Maharshi

Sacred works

• AkṣaramaṇamālaiAn outpouring of love to Aruṇācala, the hill at Tiruvaṇṇāmalai that Ramaṇa held to be Śiva himself, sung as a bride's garland: 108 verses, one for each Tamil letter — pleading, teasing, surrendering — with the refrain "Aruṇācala Śiva".In Devotion & Sacred Story
• AppaḷappāṭṭuA kitchen song made for his mother while she rolled appaḷam, the crisp lentil wafer. Each ingredient and utensil becomes a step of self-inquiry: the grain is the "I" conceit, the grinding stone is the question "who am I?"In Direct Inquiry
• Aruṇācala AṣṭakamEight verses on the hill itself: how the name Aruṇācala filled his mind from childhood before he knew it was a place, and how, looking for the one who saw it, he found the seer gone and the hill standing. Spoken as they came, unasked.In Direct Inquiry
• Aruṇācala NavamaṇimālaiNine verses to Aruṇācala in varied metres, a garland of nine gems: Śiva's dance at Chidambaram stilled into this hill, "you are That" set down as red rock and light, and the plea to be kept as his own.In Direct Inquiry
• Aruṇācala PadikamEleven verses of a lover's complaint to Aruṇācala, the mountain that draws lives to itself like a magnet: you took me by grace when I never once thought of you, and now you hide your face — finish what you began.In Direct Inquiry
• Aruṇācala PañcaratnamFive verses on Aruṇācala as the Heart itself, first written in Sanskrit and then in his own Tamil: all that is seen is a painting on you; in the Heart something dances saying "I, I"; ask where that "I" rises.In Direct Inquiry
• Aruṇācala PañcaratnamBhagavān's five Sanskrit verses to Aruṇācala, written before he rendered them into Tamil: the hill as the Self that is called the Heart, and the ways of inquiry, meditation and devotion that come to rest in it.In Direct Inquiry
• Ātma VidyāA song on how easy Self-knowledge is — "a berry lying in the open palm", says the refrain, which Muruganar wrote. Ramaṇa's five verses say how: let the thought "I am this body" sink, and what remains is the Self.In Direct Inquiry
• Ēkāṉma PañcakamBhagavān's last composition: five short verses on the one Self. Forgetting it is a dream of wandering, asking where it is is the drunkard's question, the body is in it as a picture on its cloth, and the First Guru taught it in silence.In Direct Inquiry
• Ēkātma PañcakamuThe same five verses on the one Self as Bhagavān first wrote them, in Telugu, before his Tamil: the dream of travel through many lands, the drunkard's question, the picture and its cloth, gold and ornament, and the First Guru's silence.In Direct Inquiry
• Nāṉ Ār?"Who am I?" — Ramaṇa's answers to Sivaprakāśam Piḷḷai's questions, later rewritten by him as one essay of twenty paragraphs: not the body, senses or mind; the thought "I" is the root of every thought; ask where it rises.In Direct Inquiry
• Uḷḷadu NāṟpaduForty verses on "what is", his fullest statement of the teaching: the world and the one who sees it rise together; find where the "I" comes from and both fall away. Written when Muruganar asked for the nature of reality and the way to it.In Direct Inquiry
• Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu AnubandhamA supplement of forty-one verses gathered over the years, some his own and many his Tamil renderings of Sanskrit verses he prized, on the company of the wise, the guru, the Heart, and abiding as the Self.In Direct Inquiry
• Upadeśa SāramThirty Sanskrit verses on the ways to freedom: action offered to God, devotion, breath and meditation, and last the inquiry into the "I" that alone ends the mind. His own rendering of the Tamil Upadeśa Undiyār.In Direct Inquiry
• Upadeśa UndiyārThirty Tamil verses framed as Śiva's counsel to forest sages who trusted in ritual action alone: from action done without desire, through devotion and breath, to abiding as the Self. Written at Muruganar's request to finish his poem.In Direct Inquiry
• Vicāra Saṅgraham"Self-Inquiry": the replies Ramaṇa wrote out for Gambhīram Seshayya in his years of silence, set down as forty questions and answers on how to find what one really is, and how that differs from yoga and other paths.In Direct Inquiry
• VicāramaṇimālaiThe essentials of the Tamil Vicāra Sāgaram, which Bhagavān drew out himself for a devotee who found the book too long: a disciple asks and the Guru answers, from why bliss seems to come from objects to what liberation in the body is.In Direct Inquiry

His renderings

• Ātma Sākṣātkāra PrakaraṇamŚiva's instruction to his son Guha on the direct realisation of the Self, from the jñāna-pāda of the Sarvajñānottara Āgama: the Self bears none of the marks laid on it, and the contemplation by which that mistake falls away.In Direct Inquiry
• Śrī ĀtmabodhaŚaṅkara's sixty-eight verses on the knowledge of the Self: why knowing ends bondage where doing cannot, told through the rope and the snake, the water and the salt — and closing in the Self as Brahman, one's own.In Direct Inquiry
• Śrī Dakṣiṇāmūrti StotramŚaṅkara's hymn to Dakṣiṇāmūrti, Śiva teaching in silence: the world seen the way a city is seen in a mirror, a lamp shining out through the openings of a pot — one awareness present through every changing state.In Direct Inquiry
• Śrī DevīkālottaramThe knowledge chapter of the Devīkālottara, an Āgama spoken by Śiva to Devī, in eighty-five Tamil veṇbās: what a seeker holds to and what he lets go of, and the conduct that keeps him steady in it.In Direct Inquiry
• Śrī Bhagavad Gītā SāramForty-two verses of the Bhagavad Gītā, chosen and set into Tamil veṇbā: Kṛṣṇa answering Arjuna's grief — the Self is never slain, act without seizing the fruit, and turn the whole of it over to Him.In Direct Inquiry
• Guru StotramEight verses recalling the guru to what 'That thou art' declares — sung, in the story the collection prints beside them, by Śaṅkara's own disciples to bring him back to himself while he wears a king's body.In Direct Inquiry
• Hastāmalaka StotramThe boy Hastāmalaka's answer to Śaṅkara's question 'Who are you?': not the body, not a name, not a station — ever-present awareness, appearing through many minds as the sun appears in many waters and divided by none.In Direct Inquiry
• Vivekacūḍāmaṇi — Tamil proseŚaṅkara's crest-jewel of discrimination, in Bhagavān's own Tamil prose: what the Self is and what has only been taken for it — from the qualifications a seeker needs, through enquiry, to the freedom of one established in it.In Direct Inquiry