[Advaita-l] About Late Sri Devanathan

[V Subrahmanian]

Recently this forum was informed of the sad demise of a member Sri
Devanathan.  I had a few interactions with him through email and also
g-talk and had found him a very soft natured person.  I am forwarding to
this forum a post containing some details about Sri Devanathan.  May his
soul rest in peace.

subrahmanian.v

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 12:24 AM
Subject: Re: Personal - about Late Sri Devanathan
To: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>


**
He was the only son and was born in a devout sri vaishnava (iyengar)
family. His grand mother taught him ashtapadhi when still a small child. At
11, he attained awards for excellence in understanding of vishishtadvaitam
from ahobhila mutt. He also excelled in carnatic music - vocal and veena.
He had samashrayanam from andavan swamigal. He went to study engineering
but deciding not to pursue that path went on to study advaita in madras
university. He got narasimha mantrOpasana from krishnamurthy sastrigal if I
remember right. He had undergone kidney transplantation and suffered poor
health from 90 days. He did not expect to live long but wanted to use the
available time to study advaita vedanta. He was doing research on narasimha
tapani upanishad. He also did a study of sanat sujatiya. He has read a lot
of works in advaita over two decades. He was teaching sanskrit at chinmaya
mission toronto for 3 years as he was doing Ph. D. there. He also got
admission in Oxford but as it came late, he did not pursue it.

We have discussed a lot and even argued. I have made fun of him many times
also. His last post on face book was semmangudi srinivasa iyer's on sunday.
He did not speak to his mother that afternoon and was found sleeping
forever in his bed on monday by his room mate. The cause of death is said
to be heart attack. If he had lived longer than 30 years, he planned to
complete Ph.D., take sanyasa and do service to society until death. He had
discussed that with his parents and paramarthananda saraswati, I think. He
resisted getting married - sensibly so.

His father said 'perumal sweegarichunduttaar enna panna mudiyum' (The Lord
has taken him back/accepted him.  What can we do?") Pray for him. The best
to do is to console his parents, I guess.

>From Sri Devanathan's correspondence with another member it is known that
he was just around 30 years of age.  I have uploaded a few pictures for
those interested to view them.  In one photo he is seen delivering a talk
in the presence of the Hariharapura Mutt Swamiji:

http://www.mediafire.com/?606ad5qm6vm0whx

This was his latest profile:

Devanathan.J
Doctoral Student,
Centre for the Study of Religion,
Jackman Humanities Building,
170 St. George Street, floor 3,
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8.