Narayaneeyam! (extracted from e-mail msg's elsewhere!)

“Narayaneeyam in twelve skandha's has a pattern, which perhaps allows piece-meal reading to meet various prayer (or, research, or, other) requirements. the first skandha is an invocation, a prayer, setting out bhagavat swaroopa and maahatmya, in three dasaka's. could be read in any context, as a prayer. the second skandha is a description of ashtaanga-yoga-siddhi, in fourth to seventh dasaka's: origin of maya, early stages of creation, fourteen lokaa's, bondage of living beings with bhagavan, concept of hiranyagarbha, ie. Brahma as the one jeevatma of the three loka's, are some of the great contents in this part of narayaneeyam. Again, one could read, re-read these dasaka's at random. The third skandha, in eight dasaka's deals with brahmolpaththy and a description of the second brahma-kalpa. (the description of deluge herein, may particularly fascinate bible-reading scholars!). When one progresses towards the actual Creation, and, later, the story of hiranyaksha and hiranyakasipu, and then kardama and kapila and when one arrives at kapilopadesa, it is then that one feels the need for reading the text in a proper sequence, sothat the story has a flow! Conceptually, perhaps, the sequence may not be crucial for prayer purposes, as, indeed, "Bhakti is more important than Vibhakti", as raghu-chithappa advises!........... (i realise that i seem to assume a certain licence to go on beyond the frame work of sudha's invitation to comment! so i pause here, until/unless the moderator feels the Group could bear with me, so i could go on to the twelfth skandha in sequence ( twelfth skandha! the Viswa-roopa, the beauty of bhagavat-swaroopa, bhakthi-yoga, and then the finale, the kesadipaada-varnana!) ....pause...OM Namo Bhagavathe Vasudevaya!...........................................” – Raju Chithappa