Yesterday, during the retreat, we had a special event, unusual for our retreats. A wonderful Buddhist priest from Japan visited, Sensei Yokoyamasan. He is from the Shingon sect (Gurudeva mentions him on his audio message today and tells some of the story of his visit, so be wure to listen to that).

There was a tree planting, of a Ficus religiosa, called a Bodhi Tree or Bo Tree or in India a Peeple tree. It's a sacred banyan, with large heart-shaped leaves, and it has a home now overlooking the large valley, just behind the Agni Mandapam. Another addition to our wonderful gardens.

The monks lead Gurudeva and our very special guest on a procession that wended to the site, and later around the Path of the Nayanars.

That's Sensei with Gurudeva during the puja the monks performed prior to the actual tree planting.

Here is Sensei watering the new tree.

Sensei knelt and chanted a Buddhist blessing for the Bodhi Tree, and told the monks that the Buddha had directed him here on this day, not any ordinary reason.

Important notice: Many of you don't yet know that each day Gurudeva is recording a new and delightful MERGING WITH SIVA lesson. You can find this each day under the LESSON OF THE DAY button. go there and click on the audio track! Wow! it even has the text you can follow, or print out, or send to a friend if it is particularly relevant. We encourage everyone to go to this new audio lesson.

Today was a wonderful homa, Sun One. Afterwards Gurudeva spoke of balancing the man's and woman's energies in the home. During his talk he said:

"Just to hear of the realization of the self in this life is a great boon. And many never do hear about it. You are all fortunate...

In the homes of our families we need to have good balance of energies for the home to be solid and the members secure. The wife is living in the ida current and the husband in the pingala. together they create a spiritual dynamic and hopefully they can bring through to this earth plane sushumna children, spiritual children. How to do this. It is important to follow the dharma, our sutras, the laws of our elders and tradition. We can discuss the sutras. Perfect the sutras in our life."

Gurudeva also asked the members gathered in the temple to help him with the future Fair on October 11-13. He noted that the monks had worked with the Vision Team to get Dr. Robert Zelkowsky to make and edit a video of island folks giving their vision stories, their view of what the future should be like. This was a wonderful contribution of Robert's and the monks were being appreciated a lot on the island for engineering this for the Future Fair project.

He also stressed the positive effect in our families of Monday Home Evening, Siva's day, when emphasis turns to family matters, to sharing, to their Master Course study and such things.