Introduction to Section 3.4

In the preceding decad, the Āḻvār was all agog to serve the Lord, at all times and in every conceivable manner, without break or blemish. Profoundly impressed by the intensity of the Āḻvār’s yearning for Divine service, the Lord very much wished to make his task easy and so threw into focus His unique faculty of omnipresence, pervading all things, all over and at all times. Coming face to face with the Lord’s immense ubiquity in various forms, the Āḻvār was in the same predicament as the one gathering the fruits dropped down the trees in a violent gale, finding it difficult to pick and choose. The phenomenon before him was so amazing and of such astounding dimensions that the Āḻvār, who resorted to singing the Lord’s glory (which is also a form of service, namely, service by word of mouth—Vācika Kaiṅkarya), just didn’t know where to begin and what to say. It is the Lord’s immanence that the Āḻvār attempted to sing about, in this decad.

One of the Lord’s several names is ‘Ananta’, the endless. He is limitless and immeasurable, not being circumscribed by space and time. The unique feature about the Supreme Lord, Mahāviṣṇu is that He is not only not circumscribed by space and time but He also abides in all, without any exception, the sentient beings and non-sentient things, one and all, constituting, as it were, His bodies. This is, in fact, the keynote of Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy. The ‘Śarīṛa-Śarīri bhāva’. This was mentioned in passing, in the first decad of the first centum itself. And now, this is being elaborated upon, in this decad.