I had a delightful evening in Singapore devoted to this great saint and grand-father of Carnatic music recently. The celebration was held in the beautiful Sempaga Vinagar temple.
The opening song sung by Mrs. Bhagya Murthy and her disciples (including Mrs. Lata Vishwanath whose family had so kindly taken me there), was "Ura Devara" - audio linked here MusicIndiaOnline (M.S.Sheela)
I was at once struck by the profundity of meaning and how one can relate to this song at many levels.
I can see how Purandara is summing up the devotional yoga extolled down the ages.
To a casual listener, the words convey that Purandara is advising a villager to find a way to bring the village temple with animal sacrifice etc. into his own mind and worship God to get rid of his troubles. But at a different level, he is referring to a number of great concepts. These are beautifully covered in the Bhagavadgita, and he refers to ideas there in several places.
sarva-karmAni manasA sannyasyAste sukhaM vaSI
nava-dvAre purE dehI naiva kurvan na kArayan (Bhagavadgita V.13)
When the embodied living being controls his nature and mentally renounces all actions, he resides happily in the city of nine gates [the material body], neither working nor causing work to be done.
And then, the need to meditate on the chosen deity by focussing on the inner eye ( bhruvor madhye prANamM AvESya samyak sa tam param puruSham upaiti divyam BG VIII.10).
Purandara is also referring to worship of the deity in the eight-petalled lotus in Sri Chakra. He also hints at the spiritual progress by traversing upward through the Kundalini chakras.
Also, when he refers to the inevitability of Death and the need to develop detachment to the external world (symbolised by the dearest ones in life - wife and children) he is in fact recalling the words from the Gita:
asaktir anabhiSvangah putra-dArA-gRhAdiSu
nityaM ca sama-cittatvaM iShThAniShThOpapattiSu
mayi cAnanya-yogena bhaktir avyabhicAriNI
vivikta-deSa-sevitvaM aratir jana-saMsadi ( BG XIII. 10,11)
Nonattachment to children, wife, home and the rest, and evenmindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; constant and unalloyed devotion to Me, resorting to solitary places, detachment from the general mass of people.
The final words in the song beautifully describe the devotional path. Purandara Dasa says that by forgetting the hardships of the past, and not being swayed by the promise of future glories, we need to focus now on the worship of the Real and Absolute, the abiding principle that guides our lives and liberates us.
