Place · ashram · India
Ramana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai
The ashram at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, around the sage Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), who arrived at the Arunachala temple-town in 1896 at the age of sixteen and never left — spending the first years in a cave on the hill, then an ashram at its foot for his last fifty-four years. Ramana's teaching — 'Who am I?' as the sole investigation — made the Advaita non-dual tradition accessible to a global audience through visitors like Paul Brunton, Somerset Maugham and later Western Advaita teachers. The institutional centrepiece is the Girivalam — the 14-kilometre pradakshina of Arunachala on every full moon night, drawing hundreds of thousands.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Advaita; Arunachala tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 12.220, 79.070
Connections (1)
- Ashram atTiruvannāmalai
Ramana Maharshi arrived at Arunachala in 1896 at sixteen and stayed fifty-four years without leaving, which is why a hill the tradition describes as self-manifest fire is also now a twentieth-century ashram with an international following. The two coexist without much friction: the Deepam festival lights a beacon on the summit each Karthigai, and the fourteen-kilometre girivalam round the hill is walked by both sets of visitors.
Sources
Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai
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