The story

Among the one hundred and eight names of Bhagavad Ramanuja, one stands apart for the sheer drama of the moment it commemorates: Goṣṭhīpūrṇa-kṛpā-labdha-mantra-rāja-prakāśaka — "He who, having received the king of mantras through the grace of Goshthipurna, made it blaze forth to the world."

The Guruparamparai Prabhavam records that Sri Ramanujacharya, already installed at Srirangam and acknowledged as a teacher, still sought the secret eight-syllable mantra — Oṁ Namo Nārāyaṇāya, the Aṣṭākṣara — from the acharya Thirukkoshtiyur Nambi, also honored as Goshthipurna. Eighteen times the young Yatiraja walked the long road from Srirangam to Thirukkoshtiyur. Eighteen times the acharya sent him back.

On the eighteenth arrival Goshthipurna at last consented. He gave Ramanujacharya the mantra, and with it a grave charge: this jewel was to be whispered only to a worthy, tested few. To reveal it carelessly, the acharya warned, would cost the teacher his place in Sriman Narayana's eternal abode.

Ramanujacharya received the teaching with folded hands. Then he walked to the temple tower, climbed the gopuram, and called the people of the town — the learned and the unlettered, the high and the low — to gather below. From that height he proclaimed the Ashtakshara aloud, so that every ear that heard it might be saved.

Word reached Goshthipurna, who summoned his student in anger. Why had he violated the command? Ramanujacharya bowed and answered, in substance, that if one soul should be kept from Sriman Narayana so that he himself might reach Him, that salvation was not worth having; let him alone go to hell, if by this act countless souls could be lifted to the Lord's feet.

The acharya's wrath dissolved into tears. He is said to have embraced his student and declared that such a heart was greater than any rule, and from that day the name Emperumānār — "our master, greater than the Lord" — came to rest upon Ramanujacharya.

Contemplation

This naama holds the whole shape of Bhagavad Ramanuja's life in a single image: a teacher standing atop a temple tower, giving away the most precious gift he had ever received, for no reward but the liberation of others. To chant Goṣṭhīpūrṇa-kṛpā-labdha-mantra-rāja-prakāśaka is to remember that the path of kainkaryam begins where self-interest ends, and that true sharanagati is the willingness to let even one's own salvation serve the salvation of all. Let the devotee chant the Ashtakshara — Om Namo Narayanaya — one hundred and eight times, in grateful memory of the one who called it down from the gopuram.