 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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September 8, 2002
September 3: Punarvasu Until 11:45AM HST September 4: Pushya Until 10:12AM HST Hindu Year 5104: Chitrabhanu, the "Year of Varied Splendors" |
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 Tomorrow is Chitra nakshatra and our monthly padapuja invoking Gurudeva. We all look forward to this day once a month for Gurudeva's special darshan. This will be a very special day this month as it will also be Ganesha Chaturthi, the day of the annual festival for Lord Ganesha. Gurudeva placed great importance on the worship of Lord Ganesha... here is what he has to say in Merging with Siva: "Lord Ganesha is the first God a Hindu comes to know. As the Lord of Categories, His first objective is to bring order into the devotee's life, to settle him into the correct and proper flow of his dharma--the pattern of duties, responsibilities and expectations suited to the maturity of his soul. As the Lord of Obstacles, He deftly wields His noose and mace, dislodging impediments and holding avenues open until the individual is set in a good pattern, one that will fulfill his spiritual needs rather than frustrate them. Always remember that Ganesha does not move swiftly. He is the elephant God, and His gait is slow and graceful. As the God of the instinctive-intellectual mind, His darshans are carried on the slower currents of mind, and so His response to our prayers is usually not overnight or sudden and electric, but more deliberate and gradual. Yet, our patience is rewarded, for His work is thorough and powerful, of matchless force persisting until our lives and minds adjust and our prayer has become reality."
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
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Cybertalk: Bodhinatha speaks about Hinduism's revealed scriptures, the Vedas and Agamas. These are called sruti, "that which is heard." This ties into the 6th niyama, siddhanta sravana, which is literally scriptural "listening." The transferrence of subtle knowledge from knower to seeker occurs through listening, which is why Gurudeva would always associate with an expert, a teacher, in a given subject if he wanted to learn it. He always went beyond the book.
" 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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At the Aadheenam here in Hawaii we also had a lively day. This couple, Boodhi L. and Dhanmatee Ramoutar, are relatives of Ashwinee Ragoonanand in Trinidad.. They came for a visit to Hawaii and are now going to Canada. They are retired and spend their summers in Toronto and winters in Trinidad.
They are ebullient with love for their country of Trinidad, saying it is truly beautiful, very religious and "wherever you go, at any time, you will find a religious ceremony going on." There is abundance in the country, he said, and other than a few political and social problems the people are basically happy. He cited their four children who are all parents and professionals. Though they had ample opportunities to seek greater fortunes anywhere in the world, all decided to remain in Trinidad. Here they are with Sannyasin Saravananathaswami and Sadhaka Jothinatha..
Our Kauai Mission members are all excited about Lord Ganesha's imminent visit tomorrow and are going all out to decorate for the festival. Here Deva Seyon and Durvasa Alahan work on decorating the palanquin that will take the Ganesha murthis to the river after the puja.
Garland making and preparing floral decorations for the Ganesha shrine in Kadavul Temple.
Work on Gurudeva's shrine in Kadavul is proceeding well under the energy and guidance of Acharya Kumarswami who has finished all the tile work for the peedam and the floor in front. John Anderson our Kauai resident expert in interior renovation has been called in to re-install the carpet.
Meanwhile Acharya Kumarswami is working on parts for the overhead structure that will go above Gurudeva's murthi. He is cutting pieces with the band saw out of this very, very hard piece of African Mahogony.
in the Indian Ocean near South Africa
More captions from Mauritius where the action is with Bodhinatha:
A group of devotees were waiting for Bodhinatha outside the airport building. They all immediately rushed forward to meet the Satguru with love, garlands and flowers as the car came up and stopped near them. It was a short meeting with the devotees before Bodhinatha and the monks drove in the new Mercedes to the Kylasum Temple in Port Loius.
Immediately upon His arrival at the Kylasum Temple, Bodhinatha was kindly requested to plant a sacred tree in the Temple yard. It was a very emotional moment when Bodhinatha was watering the plant at the sound of the South Indian traditional drummers and nageswaram players. The island main Television crew was there to record all this.
With the drummers and nageshwaram players, Bodhinatha is traditionally paraded into the temple.
Here the priest of Kylasum Temple washing Bodhinaha's Feet before asking Him to get into the Temple through the newly built and finely carved Temple gopuram.
After walking around the Temple Bodhinatha went inside accompanied by all those present.
Once inside a puja was performed. Here a puja is being conduted for Lord Ganesha inside the sanctum. The devotees present sang beautiful Thevarams which spiritually uplifted everyone.
Bodhinatha was invited to give a talk. The Satguru spoke on a very interesting topic: " PARENTS ARE THE FIRST GURU". Bodhinatha said: " When we think of parents as gurus, we are automatically thinking of teaching, thus looking at parents as gurus highlights the importance of what parents teach their children, grandchildren and possibly even their great grandchildren. Parents teach in four ways: by example, explanation, advice and direction." At time Bodhinatha would ask a few questions to the audience. Rajen Manick translated the talk into CrÚole, the island local French dialect.
Here are a few children in the crowd seeking the Satguru's Blessings. Bodhinatha spoke of the nine qualities parents to develop in children. " What we want our children to possess to be happy, successful and religious when they reach adulthood":
1. Positive Self-Concept
2. Perceptive Self-Control
3. Powerful Self-Control
4. Profound Self-Confidence
5. Playful Self-Contentment
6. Pious Character
7. Proficiency in Conflict Resolution
8. Parental Closeness
9. Prejudice-free Consciousness
Devotes present at the Temple came forward to prostrate and touch Bodhinatha's Feet while He was leaving. Everyone on returning home would surely remember what Bodhinatha said. Here are a few quotes:
"A wise man is not someone who never makes a mistake but rather someone who only makes a mistake once."
"We need to clearly distinguish between the person and the behavior. The behavior was foolish, not the person."
"We create a prejudice-free consciousness by teaching the children to avoid generalisations about people and, instead, to think about specific individuals and the qualities they have."
Bodhinatha and the monks were invited to have dinner at the Meenatchee Home for the elderly, built a few metres from the Temple and run by the Temple management. Here are a few happy "ammas" living so close to a Siva Temple.
| FULL INDEX OF 650+ CYBERTALKS  |
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Date: July_06_2002
Title: Vows (Foundation) Part 1 of 4
Category: Hinduism and Tradition
Duration: 4 min., 9 seconds
Date Given: July 4, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
Last week we enjoyed being with members in the San Francisco area. We drove through San Francisco over to Concord. We had a nice meeting too with Markandeya Peruman, got to visit him at his Rest Home there. He is very comfortable and he was very happy that we took the time to come by and see him.
One of the sites we passed the TransAmerican building which stimulated my muladhara. I remembered many years ago, watching it being built and specifically the foundation being built. I am not sure how many of us had that experience. First of all, they started out by digging a very, very deep hole. Much deeper than you would expect. Put steel in it and then filled it all up with concrete. They had this very long queue of cement trucks there, pouring all this concrete into the foundation. It was amazing, the size of the structure they created underground. Of course, they did that because the building was tall and subject to earthquakes and they didn't want it to fall down in an earthquake. So there it stands.
Likewise on the spiritual path, we need a strong foundation, just as a building needs one. Of course, as we have talked about before, on the spiritual path the foundation is good character. Strong character is being a disciplined, virtuous person. That is what provides us the foundation in our spiritual life. Some of you will remember, when Gurudeva returned from the European Innersearch, for one reason or another this was one of his core messages. He was saying particularly for new students, Master Course students should focus first on character building. In other words, let us start with the basics. Let us create the foundation first, which gives the stability.
If we don't have good character, if we have poor character and we try and pursue the sadhana marga, when we hit difficult times in our life - we could call them Karmic earthquakes, so to speak - if we have not created a foundation of good character, we are going to flounder. We are not going to be able to sustain our spiritual efforts. Our life is going to go into a state of disruption. We will start expressing some of our negative habits that we have not conquered. We will stop doing our sadhana and we will lose a good portion or possibly all of the spiritual progress we have made up to that point, simply because we don't have the foundation in place to sustain a bump, to sustain a difficult time. We have started not at the beginning of the path, we have started at the middle or the end of the path, in hopes of pursuing it with a shortcut. It takes a lot of patience to actually start where we should on the path, to start at the beginning.
We have been talking a lot about building character the last few months and the most common way we have stressed is, observing the Yamas and Niyamas. That is a very important way to build up good character.
Today, we wanted to look at another way in which good character is built and that is through Vratas, Vows, religious observances.
| MORE UPLIFTING THINGS |
Innersearch 2003-4 in India! We just completed the July 17-23 Kauai Innersearch, 2002. Bodhinatha will lead the next Innersearch to India, between Dec 2003 and Jan 2004. We will visit Bangalore and the Iraivan Carving Village, and settle in the South in Tamil Nadu, Click on the above for details on what will be an inspiring journey to our holy land of Bharat! |
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