After Ugadi and the Tamil new year, in the month of chittirai (or chaitra), an important festival is Ramanavami. The Sri Ramanavami festival falls in the sukla paksha on the navami, the ninth day of the month of chaitra (Hindu lunar calendar). On this day, we worship His incarnation in the form of Sri Rama.
Where is Sri Rama mentioned in the scriptures?
Paramatma, of His own volition, incarnates in different forms. Sri Rama is one such avatara or incarnation. This is substantiated in the following scriptures: Krishnopanishad, Muktikopanishad, Rama Rahasya, Ramayana Balakanda, Yuddhakanda, Uttarakanda, Mahabharata Sabhaparva, Vanaparva, Srimad Bhagavatam, and in works of our Azhwars and Acharyas, such as Periya Tirumozhi, Sri Adi Sankaracharya’s Ramabhujanga, Srimad Ramanuja’s Sriranga Gadyam and Sri Madhvacharya’s Gita Bhashya.
How should Sri Ramanavami be celebrated?
The celebration mainly includes the following and usually begins on Ugadi day and culminates with grand worship on Sri Ramanavami:
1. Ramayana Parayanam - reading Ramayana
2. Rama Katha Sravana - Hearing the story of Sri Rama
3. Depict Ramayana in musical forms
4. Various types of pooja or worship at home and temples - Types being abhisheka, aradhana, and archana - religious bathing, propitiation of the deities, venerable worship may be using flowers.
5. Worship with upachara - honorable worship - including dana - donate - things, fasting to enable meditate on rAma, distribution of prasada- food offered to god- and other food.
6. Remember His glorious qualities such as humility and modesty.
7. Dhyanam or meditation
9. One of the important aspects also is bhagavad aradhana and bhagavata kainkaryam, honoring His ardent devotees. Each deity in Hindu philosophy has inherent attributes. Primary goal of human being is - Paramatma Sakshatkara - beholding the deity with one's own eyes inwardly (or external as the case may be with individuals).
10. Accordingly, to activate the brain centers, and create the required state of mind and expand consciousness for the Sakshatkara of that particular deity, the scriptures specify dravya - the type of food.
These applicable foods should be offered - naivedya - to appropriate deities. That food should be taken as gift from god. Such functionality will generate necessary and required thrust toward worship of the deity. This thrust continues during and after meditation that takes through the journey of life on this planet earth.
Food offered to Sri Rama, by innate nature, are kosambari, a mixture of moong or chana daal and cucumber with garnish, panaka, beverage drink could be of various kind such as lemon and sugar or "red kallu charkarai", "valangai and jaggery", diluted butter milk with garnish. Partaking these with pure mind generates a mental state conducive for Sri Rama dhyana - meditation - and worship.
--summarized by by Smt. Bharathi Raghavan