CIF- The Personality of Adi Sankara Nilayam
The very ambience of Adi Sankara Nilayam, home to Chinmaya International Foundation cannot be underestimated.
Raging with fever, when he first set foot on the grounds of Melpazhur Mana (now Adi Sankara Nilayam), he spent over an hour there. Trustees and devotees tried their best to dissuade Gurudev who was adamant. He traveled the 30 kilometers out of Cochin and reached the Mana, the overgrown shrubbery and dilapidated state not bothering him.
He was wading through the overgrowth, briskly communicating with the ground under his feet, a ground that his feet seemed to know, recognize, trust and want.
His body burning with 104-degree fever, Gurudev himself was distinctly comfortable, in communion with the land and turned to his devotees who were pleading him to stop his tour and said, “Let my footprints be here.”
Thus, Adi Sankara Nilayam gained a physical personality that is indelibly etched.
This property now made doubly holy with Gurudev’s consciously affirmed footprints, was once uniquely home to the young Sankara and his mother, the devout Aryamba. This ground is naturally richer and auspicious with Adi Sankara’s footprints and his first intonation of the Gayatri mantra, is what fills the air with purpose and direction.