Marriage
After his return from Madurai in 1614, Sri Venkatanatha married Smt. Sarasvati Bai in the same year and had a son Sri Lakshminarayanacharya. After his marriage, Sri Venkatanatha and his family went to Kumbakonam where he studied the Dvaita Vedanta, grammar and literary works under his guru, Sri Sudhindra Tirtha.
Sri Venkatanatha was already very well versed in bhashyas and consistently prevailed over renowned and reputed scholars, irrespective of the complexity of the debates. He was an ardent devotee of Sri Moola Rama and Sri Panchamukha MukhyaPranaDevaru (the five-faced form of Hanuman - Pancha meaning five, mukha meaning faces). He spent a large part of his Purvashrama life teaching Sanskrit and the ancient Vedic texts to children.
He never demanded any money for his services and endured a life of poverty along with his wife and son. They went without food several times a week. On occasion, his wife did not have change of clothes. This forced her daily change of wear to be dependent on when the clothes dried. She would wear 1/2 the sari, wait for the other 1/2 to dry and wrap it around her. But he was so devoted in his quest for a higher spiritual plane that these obstacles never deterred his faith in the Lord
Read more about this topic: Raghavendra Swami
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believes in its inconceivable purity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have seen that men are learning that work, productivity, and marriage may be very important parts of life, but they are not its whole cloth. The rest of the fabric is made of nurturing relationships, especially those with children—relationships which are intimate, trusting, humane, complex, and full of care.”
—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)