The story

At Kanchipuram, before his move to Srirangam, Sri Ramanujacharya was served — and served — by Kāñcīpūrṇa, the devotee better known as Thirukkacci Nambi. Every day Nambi would go to the Devaraja temple and wave the fan (āla-vaṭṭam) over Sri Varadaraja Perumal. The Lord, tradition holds, spoke to him in the sanctum, and when Ramanuja's mind was clouded by six particular doubts, it was through Nambi that he placed them at the Lord's feet.

The Govindacharya biography and the Guruparampara Prabhavam preserve the six questions and the six replies almost identically. The replies — spoken by Sri Varadaraja and conveyed to Ramanuja the next morning — are these:

1. The Supreme Reality is Sriman Narayana. Not an impersonal absolute; the saviśeṣa brahman of the Upanishads is the Lord of Sri.
2. Distinction between jīva and Īśvara is real. The soul is eternally distinct from, and dependent upon, the Lord, even in the liberated state.
3. Prapatti — total surrender — is the means. For those who cannot sustain the rigor of bhakti-yoga, taking refuge at His feet is itself sufficient.
4. Remembrance of the Lord at the final moment is not required. He carries the one who has surrendered, regardless of the state of mind at death.
5. Release is attained in this very body. Liberation does not wait for the shedding of the body; the body simply falls away when its prārabdha is exhausted.
6. Take refuge at the feet of Mahāpūrṇa — Periya Nambi. Approach the living acharya at Srirangam; it is through him that the teaching will reach you.

The naama devarājakṛpālabdhaṣaḍvākyārthamahodadhaye — "the ocean of meaning of the six sentences obtained through the grace of Devaraja" — seals this episode in the 108 names. Six sentences; an ocean.

Contemplation

Sri Ramanujacharya did not settle his doctrinal uncertainties by winning a debate. He asked the Lord through a humble devotee who never learned Sanskrit but fanned the archa-vigraha every day. From that exchange, the entire siddhānta of Sri Vaishnavism received its backbone: Narayana as the Supreme, the soul's real distinction, prapatti as accessible refuge, and the authority of the living acharya. The devotee who contemplates this naama learns that the deepest answers come through bhagavad-kaiṅkaryam lived simply, not through argument alone. Offer the 108-chant of this naama when your mind is divided by six, or sixty, competing doubts.