Part 4 of Bodhinatha's State of the Church Address for 2003 discusses sadhana follow-up for members, primary focuses being on the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra, the annual vasana daha tantra, and performing penance Gurudeva assigned which we have not yet completed. Bodhinatha concludes that we can look forward to a dynamic year with a little more expansion and new activities.

Unedited Transcript:

Last but not least, Sadhanas. You may have noticed in reflection there wasn't any sadhana follow-up last year. Have you finished this sadhana, did you do this sadhana? How about this, how about that? We gave you a break. One year break from sadhana follow-up! Of course, I think all of you here finished the sadhanas that Gurudeva gave. But some of the members particularly new members, have not done the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. So

that is our one focus. One sadhana for the year is to make sure that everyone who is a member has totally finished the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra, which includes any penance that came up that Gurudeva gave you which you haven't completed yet. For example, some of the members were asked to carry kavadi three times and they haven't done the third time. Maybe they have done one or two times, some of them are in that situation of one or more carrying kavadi still left to be done to finish out the penance side of the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. Everyone who has finished the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra should complete the annual Vasana Daha Tantra for the year 2002, if you have not finished it already.

So that sadhana, Maha Vasana Daha Tantra or Vasana Daha Tantra, is our one theme in the sadhana area for those that have not completed both of them. You will be hearing about it in Satellite News, pop up in talks here and there to encourage everyone. Sometimes the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra, you get stuck in the middle. You are going along fine and you hit a year you really don't like. "I don't want to think about that, that was the year of my worst behavior of my life. I am going to stop." For whatever reason, something unpleasant or a number of unpleasant things in particular years, can cause members to stop, which has happened.

It is our job to encourage them to continue and remind them of the importance of it, that it is really central to clearing out the subconscious mind and moving forward with our life. There is lots of resentments down there, lots of unresolved experiences if we haven't done a systematic sadhana like the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. Amazing, what it brings up! It forces us to look at relationships we think we have resolved and we find out we didn't. We find out there are people we still react to in our memory. We are still mad at them for what they did to us 25 years ago.

We can clear all of this out of the subconscious mind through this very simple practice of Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. Even Gurudeva did it, it is not like he just created it. He also went through the entire process, you know. It is a lot of years, seventy something years there. He went through the whole process. Think how lucky we are. ,We are only twenty, thirty, forty. Get it done while you are young, it takes less time.

Those are our focuses for the year and I think we will have a very dynamic year. I think it is a year of a little more expansion. It was a very conservative year, the first year after Gurudeva's Mahasamadhi. But I think we are all feeling more like expanding, more dynamic situations. We will be embarking on more new activities this year than we did last year. This isn't a complete list for our activities. It is just a list of some of the major focuses that involve the membership, so the members have some idea of what the focus is and the direction the Aadheenam is going, what direction the sadhana should go, how should we look at the membership of our Church.

Aum Namah Sivaya!