To attend worship at Kadavul Hindu Temple make a reservation here
FRONT GROUNDS ARE OPEN DAILY FROM 9AM to 12PM WITHOUT A RESERVATION

Bodhinatha on his way home

Bodhinatha writes that he and Shanmuganathaswami are well and in transit, on their way home, evaluating the programs they had and what improvements can be made fo the next time. They arrive back at Kauai Aadheenam tomorrow.

Classes in Arizona

Chellappa Deva writes from Phoenix from their Sunday class at his home:

The lesson of the day was The supreme God is Lord Siva. We did Ganesha puja first then the color meditation.

Before the meditation We read from Hindu Metaphysics about how to improve our auras by visualizing bright colors in our auras and how a positive aura uplifts others.

Om Om Chellappa

Photos from Our Spiritual Park in Mauritius

Each month at our Spiritual Park in Mauritius, just off the coast of South Africa, over 3,000 of Lord Ganesha's favorite devotees come for darshan. Here we see two of His five faces, decorated with sandalwood paste and flowers.

They bring offerings, listen to an upadesha, enjoy a short puja and homa, walk the paths down to the river or the ocean, bathe the Sivalingam, and enjoy a spiritual moment in time and space, a respite from the tensions of life, a reminder of their eternality, their soulful qualities, their spiritual work.

This month a budding photographer captured the day. As we thumb through her photos, we offer Gurudeva's thoughts on what to do when you wish your karma was better. His bottom line is to worry less and take responsibility more.

"The wise never blame God, for they know misfortune to be the return of man's self-created karmas, difficult but necessary experiences for his spiritual evolution. Whenever we are injured or hurt, we understand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a karma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured.

(Ghee buckets for the homa) "If you take responsibility for all that happens to you, then you will have the power to deal with your karma through the grace of Lord Siva. He will give you the intelligence to deal with it as you worship Him in the Siva temple, contact Him within as the Life of your life and find Him in meditation. Let's take an example. Say I am holding a plate of rice and curry and I pass it to you."

"All of a sudden the plate drops on the floor between us. I blame you, and you blame me. I don't want to be responsible for dropping the rice and curry, and you don't want to be responsible either. So, we blame each other. The rice and curry is scattered there on the floor."

(The priest offers the written prayers into the sacred flames) "No one is going to clean it up until one of us takes responsibility and says, "I'm sorry I dropped the plate of rice and curry," and gets down on hands and knees and cleans it up. In the same way, only by taking responsibility, by recognizing what we have done as our own doing, can we begin cleaning up the results of our actions."

(The prayers disappear on this physical plane, to manifest in the subtle world of the devas.) "Those who do take responsibility for their own karma have all the help in the world. The sages say, "Bear your karma cheerfully." Each time you blame another person for what has happened to you, or cast blame in any way, tell yourself,

"This is my karma which I was born to face. I did not come into a physical body just to blame others for what happens to me. I was not born to live in a state of ignorance created by an inability to face my karma. I came here to spiritually unfold, to accept the karmas of this and all my past lives and to deal with them and handle them in a proper and a wonderful way."

Rajen Manick makes a few announcements to the group

It was a special day for all, captured so beautifully on film (OK, in pixels).

A little more advice from Gurudeva on how to face our karmic patterns.

Archives are now available through 2001. Light colored days have no posts. 1998-2001 coming later.

Subscribe to RSS Feed