Sunshine through the rain !! - Purattasi Krishnapaksha Ekadasi 2025

How to live a luxurious life ! or enjoy the life as it is !!  ~  the immediate answer could be – ‘day-dreaming’ !  It does rain in Chennai during the month of Avani .. .. and rarely there could be rain with Sun too shining !! 

 

2) A young boy's mother tells him to stay at home during a day when the sun is shining through the rain, warning him that kitsune (foxes) have their weddings during such weather, and do not like to be seen. He defies her wishes, wandering into a forest where he witnesses the slow wedding procession of the kitsune. He is spotted by them and runs home. His mother meets him at the front door, barring the way, and says that an angry fox had come by the house, leaving behind a tantō knife. The mother gives the knife to the boy and tells him that he must go and beg forgiveness from the foxes, refusing to let him return home unless he does so.  

For almost all – dreams are but normal.  Have you ever had that trippy moment where, in the middle of a dream, you suddenly wake-up or  know you’re dreaming? Maybe you even controlled what happened next, flying across a cityscape, talking to a long-lost friend, or rewriting the ending of a nightmare.  There is popular saying that people go any distance – chasing their dreams !

 

Every night as I hit the bed, my eyes close and I fall asleep –  they start ! – almost unending .. .. when I get up whether in between in the dead of night or early morning, I can almost recall the story that was running !  … .. ‘dreams’ ! .. .. Dreams can be entertaining, disturbing, or downright bizarre. We all dream, even if we don't remember it the next day. 

 

Dreams are the mental and emotional experiences—a succession of thoughts, images, and sensations—that occur during sleep, most vividly during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage. While the exact purpose of dreaming is still debated, leading theories suggest dreams help the brain process information, solve problems, sort emotions, and even practice responses to threats. Dreams can range from pleasant to terrifying and often draw on recent experiences, though they can also be fantastical. 

Dreams are the stories the brain tells during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. People typically have multiple dreams each night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. Over a lifetime, a person may dream for five or six full years!!  How best to examine all that content remains a source of debate.  Almost by definition, a dream is something you are aware of at some level. It may be fragmentary, disconnected, and illogical, but if you aren’t aware of it during sleep then it isn’t a dream. Many people will protest, “I never remember my dreams!,” but that is a different matter entirely. Failing to remember a dream later on when you’re awake doesn’t mean you weren’t aware of it when it occurred. It just means the experience was never really carved into your memory, has decayed in storage, or isn’t accessible for easy call back. 

That strange in between state is called lucid dreaming, and it has fascinated scientists, psychologists, and sleep researchers for decades.  Most of the time, we drift through these dreamscapes without questioning them. But in a lucid dream, something remarkable happens, your brain becomes self-aware inside the dream.

Researchers say this awareness comes from the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s reasoning and decision-making hub flickering awake while you’re still asleep. Normally, this area takes a break during dreams, which is why your dream logic feels so bizarre (like not questioning why your math teacher just turned into a flamingo or playing a game of Chess with a person whom you briefly saw standing next to your bike in the signal this evening) 

There have been researches on lucid dreams in controlled sleep lab experiments, with  researchers asking  lucid dreamers to move their eyes in specific patterns once they became aware in their dream. A famous study even found that when lucid dreamers performed a task like “counting” or “practicing hand movements” in a dream, the same brain areas lit up as they would in waking life. The dream world, it seems, can mimic the waking brain surprisingly closely.   Science shows it’s a real phenomenon, not just a mystical idea. The human brain is wild enough to let you live two lives at once: the one where you’re awake, and the one where your sleeping self knows it’s in a dream.

 

Moving totally away, for Srivaishnavaite, be it thought, action, wisdom, plan, strategy or even dreams – life is all about thinking of Sriman Narayana, singing paeans on Him and doing kainkaryams unto Him and his devotees.

ஆள்கின்றான் ஆழியான் ஆரால் குறைவுடையம் .. ..

தாள் கண்டு கொண்டு என் தலை மேல் புனைந்தேனே  !!   

ஸ்வாமி நம்மாழ்வார் திருவாய்மொழியில் - எம்பெருமான் திருவடிகளை சென்னிக்கு அணியாக கொண்டு அனுபவிக்கப் பெற்றோர்க்கு  கிட்டும் கிடைத்தற்கரிய பலன்களை விவரிக்கிறார்.  எம்பெருமானிடத்திலே சரணாகதி  செய்தல்,  நாம் இடர்படும் போதும், மகிழ்வுறும் போதும் இறைச் சிந்தனையுடன் இருப்பது நமக்கு இடர் இல்லாப் பெருவாழ்வை அளிக்கிறது.

இன்று 17.9.2025  கிருஷ்ணபக்ஷ ஏகாதசி - இன்று புரட்டாசி மாச பிறப்பும் கூட. திருவல்லிக்கேணியில் ஸ்ரீபார்த்தசாரதி எம்பெருமான் அற்புதமான அலங்காரத்துடன், அழகான மலர் மாலைகளுடன் பெரிய மாட வீதி புறப்பாடு கண்டருளினார். இன்றைய புறப்பாட்டில் ஸ்ரீபார்த்தசாரதி எம்பெருமானின் திவ்யசேவை.

Allikkeni Azhagan, Sri Parthasarathi Emperuman is the saviour  ~ the great Emperuman to whom the celestials bow their crowned heads at His feet offering choicest fresh flowers.  Here are some photos of that great Emperuman at Thiruvallikkeni divyadesam. 

   

Before concluding – if you remember para 2 of this post : it was the plot of ‘Dreams’ - Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, a  magical realist anthology film of eight vignettes written and directed by Akira Kurosawa that hit the screens in 1990. Inspired by actual recurring dreams that Kurosawa had,  it starred Akira Terao, Martin Scorsese, Chishū Ryū, Mieko Harada and Mitsuko Baisho. It was the director's first film in 45 years in which he was the sole author of the screenplay. An international co-production of Japan and the United States,  it was made  with assistance from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and funded by Warner Bros.  the movie anthology addresses themes such as childhood, spirituality, art, death, and mistakes and transgressions made by humans against nature.  The film does not have a single narrative, but is episodic in nature, following the adventures of a "surrogate Kurosawa" through eight different segments, or "dreams", each one titled. The one described at start is from -  "Sunshine Through the Rain"  

அடியேன் ஸ்ரீனிவாச தாசன்
மாமண்டூர் வீரவல்லி ஸ்ரீனிவாசன் சம்பத்குமார்
10.09.2023