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Bodhinatha In Guyana

A quick report from Bodhinatha:

Mon Aug 8th flight Trinidad to Guyana. Evening satsanga at a nearby Mandir with lecture (pravachan) by me. Some excellent singers performed as well.

Shanmuganathaswami report on events of the today, the 9th:

We are now driving back from the Krishna Mandir. We arrived there at about 16:30 and were met by Pundit Arjun.

The afternoon began with a small bhajan group along with a very talented one-man synthesizer. Everyone enjoyed the music while we waited for the bulk of the crowd to arrive.

We gave pundit our business cards so he could introduce us. He was so happy to have us coming from Hawaii and praised the Guyana Hindu Dharma Sabha for sending us to their mandir. Lord Krishna was on the altar with all of His Deity friends, and we felt right at home.

I gave a short introduction of who we were, and when asked if they knew where Hawaii was nobody knew. But they understood my accent. I told them “we are living proof of reincarnation” which received a few smiles, but some further explanation was required. Pundit said they rarely have swamis visit their part of Guyana, if at all, and he asked if Bodhinatha could speak about what a swami is.

Bodhinatha carefully crafted his response, like a bird would build his nest, one twig at a time. First was an explanation of the four goals of life, followed by a definition of grihasta dharma to finally compare the role of the sannyasin as a renunciate and teacher. We then handed out 48 of the “Trini” flyers with the four facts and nine beliefs to a group of about 80 people (20 of whom were men.)

While Bodhinatha was speaking I wrote down pundits name and the name and address of the temple so we could send them copies of Hinduism Today. When we showed the group a copy of Hinduism Today and asked them if they had seen a copy, not one hand went up. So I asked pundit perhaps we should send you more than one copy?

Punditji closed the session with more words of praise and was especially impressed with Bodhinatha’s analogy of the soul being like a bucket of water taken from the ocean of God; the soul was divinity, not a sinner. The closing was a well rehearsed series of prayers, songs and chanting. Then the crowd was invited to stay for prashadam; very thick roti, potato masala, giant vadais and sweet rice.

Punditji insisted that we return for another visit and bade us farewell. Of course we had to stop for “just one more photo.” As we departed the mandir with smiles and waves of goodbye we reflected on the humility and simplicity of this fine group of “down home folk” out here in “Western Guyana – God’s Country.”

Ekadanata Kulam News

* Basanti, Dipanjali and Jayendra Mardemootoo are here from Mauritius to visit their grandparents Deva and Amala Seyon, so we took the opportunity to give them a training session on using our new private SSC website

* processing incoming Master Course Self-Evaluation Study worksheets and discussing progress with students
* new paper mail processing
* recording incoming Satguru Purnima rededications, which includes checking if they request to prepare for diksha, and then communicating about it.
* coordinating and being present at some darshan meetings with Bodhinatha. Showing more of the grounds to a family afterwards
* coordinating details of November Mauritius visit schedule.
* Formatting Bodhinatha’s souvenir message for Adelaide, Australia temple kumbhabhishekam
* writing to sishyas whose credit cards were declined in July, and encouraging them to switch to PayPal for submitting tithing.
* some details notes for Mauritius COM meeting about new guidelines for SSC mission satsangs and student study pattern.
* replenishing self-guided tour sheet supply in minimela
* sorting out growing pains with setting up email notification for changes to collaboration pages on SSC website
* adding news and tweaks to new Saiva Siddhanta Church website .
* communications with people about pilgrimage and entering that info in visitor calendar.
* scanning old paper documents

Himalayan Acres Nursery Developing Well!

A short tour of our Himalayan Acres nursery and specimen tree plantings. Here we’re looking down the rows of about 1,000 pots mostly with agaves, sansveria and a few aloes and cactus, all plants with very low water requirements.

This sanseveria is a popular ground cover. It started out as just one shoot and has in a few months developed several more. Soon it will fill the pot.

This is one of the agaves we bought as “tissue culture.” It was a very small plant when it arrived, and has, for unknown reasons, remained so…

Another of the tissue culture agaves is growing fine.

as is this one

At this end we’ve planted “song of India” in 20 gallons plastic bags. This variegated dracaena is very popular.

Agave geminflora doing well.

Agaves in the double row to the left, ferns next, geminflora and barefly visible on the right is aloe candy corn.

aloe candy corn

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