A little less than six months after his arrival at Tiruvannamalai the person who was to become called Sri Ramana Maharshi shifted his residence to a shrine called Gurumurtam at the request of its keeper. Shortly after that a Malayalee named Palaniswami (sometimes refered to as Palani Swami) joined him as his permanent attendant. Anyone who is familiar with the life story of Sri Ramana would feel nothing but indebtedness toward Palaniswami for the lifetime of care and protection he provided Ramana. From Gurumurtam to Virupaksha Cave (1899-1916) to Skandasramam Cave (1916-1922) on the holy mountain Arunachala he was the instrument of divine protection for Ramana. Ramana would be without consciousness of the body and lost in inner bliss most of the time and during those times protection was very valuable. Besides physical protection Palaniswami would beg for alms, cook and prepare meals for himself and Ramana, and care for him as needed.
GURUMURTAM SHRINE
The story of how Palaniswami joined Ramana is an interesting one in itself. Palaniswami was from Kerala and was worshipping the image of Lord Ganesha in Tiruvannamalai. During the period of time Pananiswami was paying homage to Ganesha, Ramana was being rescued by Sri Seshadri Swamigal when the latter was immersed in penance in the underground vault called Patala Lingam located in the Thousand-pillared Hall of the Arunachaleshwarar temple, while ants and other insects were gnawing away at his body and boys were throwing stones at him. Many in Tiruvannamalai thought Seshadri a madman. A person that had heard of Ramama and a possible need for continued protection, seeing Palaniswami's capacity for devotion, approached him saying: "What is the use of spending your life with this stone swami? There is a young swami in flesh and blood at Gurumurtam. He is steeped in austerities like the youthful Dhruva, mentioned in the puranams. If you go and serve him and adhere to him, your life would serve its purpose." Others also mentioned to Palaniswami about the glorious state of Ramana who needed a full time attendant to look after his body. At his very first visit Palaniswami was certain that he had discovered his guru and saviour. For a little while he continued his worship at the temple of Ganesha. Later he felt that Ganesha himself had led him to Ramana and thus then, became a fulltime personal attendant to Ramana. In 1928 a person that became to known as Swami Annamalai particpated as an attendant as well, although a majority of his duties focused on the construction of the ashram for the Maharshi. In 1938 under the grace of Sri Ramana he attained Enlightenment and shortly thereafter left the ashram. It is not recorded if Palaniswami reached that same goal.
Palaniswami is most often cited as the person responsible for the Maharshi getting his name. When the young sannaysin first arrived at Arunachala he was known by his given name Venkataraman. While secluded in the caves on the sacred mountain he was visited by a Sanskrit scholar of great reknown and powerful Siddhi master by the name of Ganapathi Muni. Ganapathi asked Palaniswami about the young Swami's former name, Venkataraman, then he cut out Venkata, added Maharshi and renamed him Sri Ramana Maharshi, or Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
While still with his family at home as a young teenager, Sri Ramana, at age 17, with no known major spiritual background or training, had a Near Death Experience that has come to be known as his First Death Experience. That NDE is widely accepted as bringing about his Awakening and sending him on his journey to Tiruvannamalai and Arunachala. However, what is not so widely known is that while still living in the caves under the watchful eyes of Palaniswami and well before the death of his mother, the Bhagavan, in 1912 at age 32, had a Second Death Experience. The following is what has been written about what preceded that experience:
"He set out from Virupaksha Cave one morning for Pachaiamman Koil, accompanied by Palaniswami, Vasudeva Sastri and others. He had an oil-bath there and was nearing Tortoise Rock on the way back when a sudden physical weakness overcame him."
Even though he was known to have been fully Awakened to the Absolute, that second experience still somehow apparently had the ability to modifiy his long standing approach to obscurity and life. It seemingly opened the door for or an embracing of family and outsiders that previously had not manifested itself in Ramana's previous outward actions.
Palaniswami was a Malayalee. What is a Malayalee? They come from the Malabar coast in Southwest India from what is now known as Kerala, the new political unit of the ruling states of Travancore and Cochin and the Malabar province of the erstwhile Madras Presidency. They speak Malayalam. The Maharaja of Travancore, in the early 19th century, went on a sustained campaign of education, which has continued since, and not just in Travancore, that education remains a major priority. One import of that, for a long time, was that Kerala was the one State which provided much needed technical and other skills for other parts of India, the Middle East, the Malay Peninsula and elsewhere.
Malayalam is a highly developed language, whose origins remain obscure. There is doubt whether it is an offshoot of Tamil or of Sanskrit, although conventional wisdom is that it is developed from Tamil and evolved from Sanskrit, then the court language, in the last thousand years. Another theory suggests that the Tamils of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, are not really from Tamil Nadu but from Kerala. There is enough evidence of that in the Tamil spoken there to suggest that it is, but this view is disputed by many, though not all, Tamil scholars and politicians.
But the point is that Malayalees are known for their ability to adapt and merge with the surroundings. Their cultural and social traditions have led them to independent thinking that has been a hallmark of Kerala history from the earliest times.
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Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
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