Today is the official release of the monastery new virtual tour! View 98 unique locations around the monastery in a full 360 degrees of freedom. Look up! Look Down! If you are feeling adventurous you can even zoom in! This digital clone of our monastery is open 24/7 and you can even wear shorts. Come sit in Kadavul and listen to chanting, step into the banyan mandapam to hear a talk by Gurudeva, follow along to a guided meditation under the Shanmuga banyan tree, or see a beautiful photo collage created by one of our devotees at the temple builders pavilion. What are you waiting for? Click the link below to teleport! We hope you enjoy your visit and please leave any feedback or ideas you have in the comments.

https://www.himalayanacademy.com/monastery-tour/

Jai Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami!

Enjoy today’s sun one talk! Aum Namah Śivaya

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Siva. Here, Satguru discusses “The Eternal Now,” based on a series of talks given in 1961. Enjoy! 🙂

 

One of the creative things happening at the monastery is the golden Rudraksha beads. Our trees are now in full blossom with more flowers than we have ever had since the forest was planted in 1978. Of late, we are experimenting with applying 23-karat gold leaf to the home-grown seeds. They are beautiful, something never done before, so still a bit experimental. They make wonderful gifts, a precious combination of spiritual meaning and sheer beauty. To one of the monks, "These should be in a Gucci shop in Milan. They are that elegant." But, for now, they are only in a humble MiniMela shop on a little island in the Pacific Ocean.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami giving his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai's Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Siva. Here, Satguru discusses "The Eternal Now," based on a series of talks given in 1961.

God can be discovered only by God. - Yogaswami

Aum Namah Sivaya
A while back, Natalie Levin, who did the artwork for Gurudeva's Seven Dimensions of the Mind created this wonderful sketch of Yogaswami of Jaffna. Upon sharing it with T. Sivayogapathy in Toronto (who had personally known Yogaswami), he had this to say:

Aum Namasivaya
First of all, Mikka Nanri for sharing our Parama Guru's New Sketch, which looks very Natural, as to how our Parama Guru was in his latter stages while in this World!
Especially, how exactly, he was looking like,
from the time he had the physical fall in the Cattle shed, up until his Body departed from this World!
The sketch really reflects how His Holy Face showered His Blessings of
GURU ARUL, to All his Devotees! It was something Great,
beyond Our thoughts!
Aum Siva, Siva!
Aum Parama Sivam! Aum Shanthi!
Anpudan,
Siva,
(T.Sivayogapathy).
Toronto.

Today we received wonderful news from Kopay Kottam in Sri Lanka. This is the place where Gurudeva established the Shanthi Lingam back in the 80s and where the two Innersearches visited in 2018 and 2019. Here is the letter from Thondunathan that tells the tale.

Greetings:

A few months ago, I received a phone call from a lady in the United States who told me that she obtained my phone number from my friend who is a Buddhist monk. She introduced herself as a Sinhalese Buddhist originally from Sri Lanka and now living in the USA. Recently, she had a dream in which she saw a meditating Siva sitting next to a waterfall. She now had this desire to install a Siva statue in the hill country of Sri Lanka and she asked my help to find a Sthapati who can create the statue for her out of cement.

I approached Purushothaman Sthapati who is a well-known sthapati from India and has been building temples in Sri Lanka for the past 15 years. He agreed to create the statue, and within two weeks he made a beautiful, 6-foot tall statue. Because of the COVID-19 lockdown, we couldn't transport the statue right away to the hill country, so Sthapati brought it to our Sri Subramuniya Kottam for temporary housing. We sent pictures to the lady from USA who had ordered the statue.

A month ago, I received a phone call from her telling me that she now feels that the Siva statue should remain gracefully in our Sri Subramuniya Kottam and this is a gift from her to the Kottam. Everyone, especially our Kottam boys, are overjoyed with this generous gift.

We decided to build a rock mountain (Kailas) on which to place the Siva statue. During the mountain construction, Sthapati suggested that traditionally, when you build a meditative Siva statue, you also install four meditating sages in front of the Siva statue.

I suggested that instead of making the four sages, we could make statues of four of the gurus in our lineage--Kadaitswami, Chellappaswami, Yogaswami and Gurudeva--and place them in front of Siva.

Sthapati and his team successfully completed building the rock mountain and the statues, on July 24th, the auspicious Guru Purnima Day. We ceremoniously installed the statues on the rock mountain.

We never planned to have a Rock Mountain and Siva statue at our Kottam. Truly, it feels like this was Siva's will.

May God Siva and the Kailasa Paramparai Gurus grace flow through Siva's Mount Kailas in Kopay.

Rishi Thondunathan writes to us from Sri Lanka:

"When Kadaitswami arrived in Sri Lanka from India, he lived in a little hut on a small island called Mandaitheevu, off the coast of the Jaffna peninsula. He would regularly travel back and forth from Mandaitheevu to Jaffna.

After Kadaitswami's Mahasamadhi, devotees of Mandaitheevu maintained the small hut and performed pujas there. In 1982, I visited the hut.

because of the war the entire population of Mandaitheevu was forced off the island and for two decades is had been all but abandoned. However, a few years ago people started returning to the island to rebuild their lives.

In 2010, I travelled to Mandaitheevu in search of Swami's hut and saw that the land was completely overgrown and the hut destroyed. A few devotees who had returned to the island constructed a small shelter at the site with a coconut leaf thatched roof and had resumed worship.

Each time I return to Sri Lanka, I now visit Mandaithee. I encouraged the local devotees to rebuild the hut and in 2012 we gave a small donation to initiate the project. Though the devotees living in the vicinity are not well off financially, they are rich at heart. They contributed by whatever means they could to successfully rebuild the hut and install the statue of Kadaitswami in the shrine.

On the 30th of September, 2020, we celebrated Swami's 129th Guru Puja (Mahasamadhi anniversary) in the re-established hut at Mandaitheevu. The devotees cooked under the trees and the puja was performed in Swami's shrine. Annadhanam was then offered to all who were present.

It was a soul-satisfying event for us because when Kadaiswami was alive, one of his favorite events was the mass feedings conducted at this very Mandaitheevu hut.