 Satguru Siva Yogaswami Jaffna, Sri Lanka  Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami Hawaii, USA |
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 Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami Kauai's Hindu Monastery, USA 
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March 9, 2002
March 9: Uttarashadha until 12:44PM HST March 10: Sravana until 3:17PM HST Hindu Year 5103: Vrisha, the "Year of Fulfillment" |
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 We count 39 temples that Gurudeva was involved in... many of them received their first image of Ganesha from Gurudeva, who always directed fledgling societies to "start the worship... I will send you a Ganesha. First you can put Him in your homes and have Satsang together and move Him from home to home, then later when the land is purchased you can begin to do pujas there."
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
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Cybertalk: Gurudeva said there is a need for religion. Gurudeva at first just taught meditation, but then later he started teaching devotion and had everyone building temples. Gurudeva realized his devotees needed a foundation of devotion without which meditation wouldn't really bear fruit. Devotion gives us something to fall back so we don't go down in consciousness. Chellapaswami said, "We do not know." This means that the deepest spiritual experience transcends the intellect, memory and reason. Prapatti, total surrender, softens the ego. We also need religion so we can get some help from the inner planes.
" For more information about listening to Gurudeva's talks online and to hear them in other formats, click here.
And click here for an Index to All Past CyberTalks.
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Bodhinatha will be happy to hold "Prasnottara Satsang" -- "Questions and Answers" over the telephone with any Hindu religious societies, Hindu youth groups, Radio talk show hosts etc. All you need is a phone with a speaker and an enthusiastic audience. Arrangements may be made in advance by sending email to Sadhaka Mahadevan
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The "Param Clan" from California have arrived early for the Sivaratri festival that is coming soon: Easvan and his wife Devi, Easvan's two sons, on the left, Chandra and Steve and their wives Sahanadevi and Courtney and three grand children, Jeyandra, Bhajana and little baby "Trinity." In the back is Easan Sankar and his wife Gowri from Malaysia. Easan works for Easvan.
Also attending the morning Siva puja was Mr and Mrs Nair from Salado, Texas.
and Mr and Mrs Vignarajah from Baltimore.
The Wailua river and the pool that is formed just below the monastery. This pool, though small, is over 300 feet deep at the center and suspected to be an ancient lava tube.
These orchids are doing beautifully, they are simply attached to a tree, no soil needed... they "live on air."
Bananas are an important crop for the monastery and we have them here and there and everywhere. When the green fruits start to "swell" outward on the sides, you know they are ready to pick and hang up. After a few days they begin to ripen and turn yellow.
 The Remarkable Vision |
Iraivan Temple Progress Update |
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Jeff Griffin, our local contractor for Iraivan Temple, came today to work on reinforcing the wooden structures around the temple sanctum. As the temple rises the weight of the sand in the retaining wall builds up enormous pressures and so we want to make sure our "crystal egg shell" remains safe and sound until the last course is placed on the top.
Giant 4 X 12 beams are being raised and then "wired" together with cables.
The beams have been doubled up and the cables go across the top of the temple.
The beams will have "no place to go" as the outward pushing forces of the sand increases.
No, Jeff has no plans to try to walk across the cable...
Meanwhile in Bangalore the amazing "pillar project" continues. Here is full length shot of one of the pillars. You can see the square faces that are receiving special treatment.
Each "panel" holds a symbol and each symbol has a story.
This is very, very careful work. Recently, after being asked to spend more time to make the joints between the stones, even more perfect, Sthapati said: "You know normally people are telling us to go faster and faster. How wonderful that you are telling us to take the necessary time to do such a superior job."
We had to hire more carvers in Bangalore to meet the deadline... as the temple rises in Hawaii, the point will come when the roof level is reached... then we will need some finished pillars here on Kauai. We have over 108 carvers now working in three locations: Kauai, Bangalore and Chennai. Please give generously!
Each of the pieces of art for the temple was conceived here at the Aadheenam, then we asked our artist A. Manivelu to execute a final drawing, these in turn were further adjusted here and then sent to Bangalore. We are quite amazed at how well the final carvings are turning out.
in the Indian Ocean near South Africa
This is a very special day at the Spiritual Park. Every first Sunday of the month there is a Ganesha Ceremony at the Spiritual Park that starts at 10.30 am. This is a very nice public event that visitors all over the island look forward to. Here is a view of the visitors seated in the Mandapam. They are singing bajans while others are preparing the fire pit for a homa. After the homa devotees are invited to give testimonies about how Lord Ganesha has helped them in their life. We would like to hear your testimony too when you come next time....Remember the first Sunday of the month...
It is always a joy to worship at the Feet of the large Pancha Mukha Ganapathi. Devotees can bring love offerings of fruits and flowers. Here the group are happily enjoying the darshan of the Lord of Obstacles while Brahmachari Vel Mahalingum is performing an arathi.
The Ganesha ceremony is an opportunity for families to invite their friends. Here are special guests...Mr. Marday Gopalsamy, his wife Roubi and two children Kelina and Kelvin are very happy to be with other visitors. They are having a nice time and are very happy to be at the Park.
This is Lomavadee Moorooven, on the left, from Triolet with her relatives. They too have had a wonderful time at the Ganesha ceremony. They have been serving prasadum to the guests after the final arathi around noon.
Our happy group of children are playing a special game on Dharma with a ball. They have just studied that lord Ganesha is the protector of Dharma from their Master Course studies at the Dharmasala. It is really encouraging to see how children can learn important philosophical concepts through simple games! Here they have been told to conceptualise Dharma as a ball which they should not allow to fall on the ground....and much more...
Gurudeva teaches about the five shaktis of lord Ganesha in a very interesting book Loving Ganesha. These shaktis have five colors: red, blue, yellow, green and orange. The children have easily grasped this concept and are playing a colorful shakti game at the Pancha Mukha Ganapathi murthi. Lord Ganesha loves children and they know it too...
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Date: March_03_2002
Title: Austerity - Part 1
Category: Change and Transformation
Duration: 6 min., 1 second
Date Given: March 01, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
I thought I would speak a little bit about austerity.
It is the tenth and final niyama. Austerity is performing sadhana, penance, tapas and sacrifice. So, we have a four-fold definition of austerity here - sadhana, penance, tapas and sacrifice.
Why bother? It sounds like a lot of work, sounds like it might be unpleasant. I will just watch TV. Why bother with the whole process? What is the benefit?
Well, it is increasing our speed on the spiritual path. Said another way, it is increasing the rate at which our soul body is maturing. Put in gardening terms, we are fertilizing our soul body. It is going to grow a lot faster. We are fertilizing it. We are giving it what it needs to grow. Sadhana, penance, tapas and sacrifice.
What else are we doing? We are resolving our karma at a quicker speed, which means it takes less lifetimes to go through the process. If we want to hang around a lot, see what is going on here. If we are still curious, okay. But if we are wanting to move on, experience the grandeur of our spiritual being sooner, then this is definitely the fertilizer we need.
The theme which goes through all four aspects of austerity is purification. There is a nice verse in the Tirukural, "As the intense fire of the furnace refines gold to brilliance, so does the burning suffering of austerity purify the soul to resplendence."
So purification can sometimes cause a sense of suffering. But it is for a good cause. It is getting rid of the impurity. Not just suffering because you are supposed to suffer, it is a reaction to the process of purification.
The simplest form, of course, is our daily sadhana. In our case, Gurudeva has given us the sadhana of performing early morning vigil, doing our pujas, doing our scriptural study and so forth on a daily basis. For someone who is on the spiritual path, the easiest way to stop making progress is to stop the daily sadhana. Daily sadhana gets us going at a certain rhythm, a certain smoothness in life, a certain rate of moving forward. But, that is all based upon maintaining the daily sadhana. If we stop our sadhanas, our life is going to change. It is being supported at that level of sublimity, that level of success, by our sadhana.
We are also encouraged to go to the temple once a week, at least and attend festivals. The yearly pilgrimage to a far-off temple is the last part of that.
Penance, of course, is atoning for misdeeds. It is easy to know if we should do penance because we feel bad about something we did. We cannot get it off our mind. It is just sitting there, nags us. Wake up in the morning and there it is. Dream about it at night, think about it during the day. The subconscious is telling us, "Hey, there is something down here to be resolved." It keeps throwing it up. So, it is easy to know when penance should be performed and doing so softens the karma, mitigates the karma involved in whatever it is that we have done.
Simple penances as we know are like prostrations, a hundred and eight prostrations. A little more intense is walking prostrations. We have the ability here to do walking prostrations on San Marga.
Thai Pusam is a time of penance, traditional time. It is interesting that it is such a strong tradition in Mauritius and Malaysia. We even have children and teenagers, writing in for blessings to do penance of one kind or another during the Thai Pusam season.
| MORE UPLIFTING THINGS |
Innersearch 2002 in Hawaii! Our next Innersearch Travel-Study program will be held right here on the island of Kauai in the summer of 2002. It's the first such program on the Garden Island since 1974! From July 17 to July 22 we will enjoy daily classes with the swamis, join in the annual Guru Purnima festival, be inspired by local culture, explore the lush tropical island in exciting and non-touristy ways, and more. Be prepared for a wonderful spiritual experience in paradise with meditations, seminars and sacred ceremonies at the Siva temple of Kauai's Hindu Monastery. Many have applied already, and there is a limit of 50 participants, so we recommend everyone apply as soon as possible. Interested? Please request an application from pilgrim@searchbeyond.com |
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