A KORA OF KORAS

Ramana Maharshi
The ashram of Ramana Maharshi, one of the greatest sages of the 20th
century, lies just outside the town of Tiruvannamalai on the site of an old
graveyard at the foot of the holy mountain. Ramana spent nearly his entire life on
or around Arunachala. Devotees walk around his maha-samadhi22 site inside a
temple-hall built over the spot where his body was buried.23
Beautiful, compassionate and extraordinarily simple in the way he lived and
brilliant, insightful, profound and sometimes humorous in his teaching, Ramana
was not a teacher of acquired wisdom, he was a Maharishi, a great Realizer, an
embodiment of what he taught who only after realization found confirmation of
what he had realized in books.
The Maharshi realized or had become one with Reality or what is called the state
of non-duality or Advaita,24 and was and is considered a divine incarnation.
Towards the end of his life before he passed away from cancer, a devotee,
overwhelmed by the thought of his Master’s dying began to cry. Ramana looked
at the man with great compassion and remarked, “Where could I go? I am always
here.” Such is the paradoxical confession of Advaita, absolute non-difference
from the world.