Dr. K. Sadananda
The Divine Garland is the quintessence of Shree Goda Devi’s (Andal’s) thirty Pasurams of Tiruppavai, with an underlying theme of sharanagati or complete surrender to the Lord as a last resort for salvation, as advocated in Geeta in the sloka, ‘sarvadharmaan parityajya…’.
Shree Kuntimaddi Seshasarma, a well-known scholar in Telugu and Sanskrit, authored Melinomu, an extensive commentary of Tiruppavai, in Telugu, published by TTD. Dr. K. Sadananda, his son, who also published extensively on Vedanta, now with the help of his siblings provided a free translation of this work here, under the title, ‘The Divine Garland’.
Dr. K. Sadananda is a Material Scientist by profession, and worked at the United States Naval Research Laboratory as Head of Deformation and Fracture published extensively in Science, and received many awards.
He retired in 2005, and now works as a private consultant in the United States for six months of the year. He was also a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
He is a disciple of Swami Chinmayanandaji, was a founding trustee of the Chinmaya Mission’s Washington Regional Center as well as Shree Siva Vishnu Temple, Maryland, USA. He served as Secretary and Treasurer of SEVA, Inc., a philanthropic organization formed around 1980 by Chinmaya Mission, to fund projects in India and elsewhere. Currently, he is an Acharya or spiritual teacher of Chinmaya Mission, and splits his time between the USA and India. Advaita Academy has been sponsoring many of his talks on Vedanta and has made them available on You-tube under Acharya Sadaji. He is also author books, Introduction to Vedanta, three volumes of ‘Journey Beyond: A Non-Dual Approach, available on Amazon, USA, UK and India. He is married to Mrinalini Sadananda, who is a well-known Kuchipudi dancer and Choreographer.