As you can see from the banners atop our pages, the monks have begun our 60-day Digital Dharma Drive to push forward on our web resources and presence. Like Wikipedia, we have decided to not advertise on our sites, and to not charge for our Hindu resources, art, videos, magazine, books and .... well, everything.

Still there are not-so-trivial costs involved if we are to keep Hinduism's flagship sites among the best in the world. We have over 100,000 visitors to our sites each month. And if you Google the single word "Hinduism," you will find (on most days) two of our sites in the top ten returns. A great accomplishment, yes, but to keep us there we need to not let up. So, we are turning to our CyberCadets (a Gurudevaism that we like) to help us evolve in the year ahead.

We present here a small slideshow of some of our pages. Also a before and after of the main room in the Media Studio, which will partially benefit from this drive. Please read Bodhinatha's and the editors' letters giving details of our DDD past and present, what we have done and what lies ahead. We urge you to consider the Digital Dharma Drive in your holiday giving plans.

Mahalo nui loa--that's our Hawaiian thank you!

At a public function held in Kottayam, known as the media capital of Kerala, on Nov 24th, Kerala State's Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan honoured G. K. Nair, the Hinduism Today correspondent for his contributions in the field of spiritual journalism, i.e. Hinduism Today, by wrapping a shawl around him. Others in the picture on are Prof Sreepadam Easwaran Nampoothiri, an academic poet and on the right, Prof Reghudev, Editor of Devaja, the publication which was recognizing Mr. Nair. Prof Reghudev dedicated the auspicious event in the premises of Sree Mahadeva Temple, at Thirunakkara, Kottayam, at "the lotus feet of Jagadguru Sivayasubramuniyaswami and all the Rishis of the Kailasa parampara." Mr. Nair explained that it was his first meeting with the Jagadguru that changed his and his family's life. "It was, indeed a watershed in our life. The continuous guidance of Satguru Bodhinatha Veylan Swamiji, the present Dharmacharya and Madhadhipathi has placed us on the right path of Saiva Dharma. Mr. Nair said it was their blessings that brought him here to be honored by us," stated Prof Reghudev.

Vinay Kumar Bansal family from New Jersey on right side of photo, and Indu and Chandra Mundra family from northern California on left side of photo.
In the next photo is Ramachandran and Priyanka from Phoenix, Arizona, making their first visit. They attend our 6am homa and public tour the other day, then returned this morning for darshan with Satguru Bodhinatha.

In September of 2011 Paramacharya Sadasivanatha and Sannyasin Senthilnathaswami flew to Toronto, Canada, for a rare meeting and interview with Dr. James George, who spent many moments with and was profoundly influenced by Yogaswami in the early 1960s when he was the Canadian High Commissioner to Ceylon. (A lifetime scholar and diplomat, he was at other times the High Commissioner to India and Iran as well.) Here is their tale: We embarked in the morning and ended up in his apartment in a tightly-secured and upper-crust building in the city, an apartment filled with ten thousand artifacts, most of them of a spiritual nature: thankas (old ones) covering the walls, at least the walls not covered with his vast library of religious and spiritual books. We set up to interview him about his time with Yogaswami near a window in his dense office, amongst computers and printers and papers and files. We thought the morning would be a journey into history, capturing his times with Yogaswami. It was that, but far more. At 93, Dr. George is a bright light, capable of imitating Yogaswami's raucous laugh and powerful voice, inclined to take each question we asked and make it a reflection on life and truth and life's search for truth. Our queries would stop him and for a full minute he would look off, not so much into the distance as into the inner sky, then finally he would return with a gem, some insight into consciousness, some delightful comparison of George Gurdjieff, the Russian mystic who stressed the now and the Great I Am.  On and on it went, question after question, all captured on our camera for you to enjoy later. Mostly he was thoughtful and faithful to the task of describing his times with the Lion of Lanka (who did roar, he said), but now and again he exploded: his voice rising, his eyes gleaming, his body leaning forward to convey a moment when Yogaswami said something potent to him. It was so evident that those moments are still alive in this wonderful soul, that, as he told it, they changed his life and his family's too. Here is a man who can field the most sophisticated question on consciousness, who can set two spiritual traditions side by side and compare them, who can speak of presence with perfect presence, a kind of soft intensity you rarely encounter, who knows what not knowing is, who believes the universe is ultimately perfect and yet bemoans the "rise of negativity in all spheres." Fun, gracious, "What would you like in your tea?" humble, "I hope your journey here from Hawaii has been worth these small remembrances" generous "Taxi? No, let me take you back to your hotel.." Our interview with Jim, as he insisted we call him, turned out really to be a satsang of kindred souls, of those who explore consciousness and who strive as often as possible, as much as possible, to heed Yogaswami's stern yet utterly simple instructions: "Summa iru. Just be."

This morning during the chitra nakshatra, the monastery observed its monthly padapuja for Gurudeva. Nirvani Nilakanthanatha and Natyam Rajanatha performed the puja, invoking Gurudeva's light and blessings.

"So great is the Sanatana Dharma that it defies all who doubt it, all who disdain it, all who disregard it, all who degrade it, with personal realization of its Truth." - Gurudeva