Satguru Siva Yogaswami
Jaffna, Sri Lanka
Satguru Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami
Hawaii, USA
Click for San Marga Iraivan Temple News
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Kauai's Hindu Monastery, USA
June 8: Satabhisha until 1:02AM Wed HST
June 9: Purvaprostapada until 12:48AM Thu HST
Hindu Year 5106: Tarana, the "Year of Safe Passage" -- Site Map --
Bodhinatha continuing work on his Mantra Diksha pamphlet. And we also have more photos of his trip to the East coast.
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END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
Over our coming two-day retreat,
Until Dasami Tithi, Sun One, Friday, June 11th
Bodhinatha's next travel is to Vancouver and Edmonton, Canada. Please visit his travel page for more information.
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Click for most recent TAKA page with an Iraivan Temple progress update. |
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We continue with our series of photos from the inauguration of the new Siva temple in Atlanta.
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Dr. Raghu, who is President of the temple, sits to the right of the swamis.
After the day's ceremonies the swamis posed with some of the Saiva priests outside the yagnasala.
More Sanskrit chanting and homas on the second day.
Everyone is happy with the uplifting events.
This is Sandi Shastri who flew in from San Diego to help with the ceremonies.
The vibration in the yagnasala became stronger and more intense as the priests continued with the chanting and homas.
He is very devotional and dedicated to the temple.
A view from the parking lot up to the temple area.
Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami felt very blessed to sit at the homa fires.
The chanting continues...
Devotees watch and worship from the sides of the yagnasala.
Chanting praises of Lord Shiva.
Walking to the Balaji temple.
Inside the Balaji temple the utsava Deity is prepared to pradakshina around the temple.
Outside Bodhinatha fans the Deity as they walk slowly around the temple.
At each corner coconuts are broken and fireworks are displayed.
Here the Vaishnava priests make offerings to the Deity during the procession.
Bodhinatha in a contemplative mood walks alongside.
The swamis help to carry the Deity.
Back inside the temple the priests rock the palanquin, symbolic of four walks of God. Here God is walking like an elephant with large strides. The musicians play the nadaswaram and tavil to time the rocking of the Deity. These are joyful moments with smiles and laughter. After all, religion is supposed to be fun.
Sri Nath, the priest on the left, is very knowledgeable about Hindu liturgy and gave a presentation at the meeting of spiritual and religious leaders at the UN in 2000. This is the meeting in which Gurudeva gave his speech, "For world peace, stop the war in the home." In the temple, Sri Nath explains to the people about various aspects of the ceremonies and temple protocols. He is a wonderful priest and a teacher.
Bodhinatha fans the Deity at the final ceremony of the day. The devotees present appreciated that the Saiva Swamis participated and joined in the worship of the Vaishnava Deities.
Bodhinatha meets with Ken Stewart at the hotel.
During the day Bodhinatha met with Mr. and Mrs. Reddy, both trustees of the temple. They came from Auburn, Alabama for the ceremonies.
This is Phillip Wilson. He is studying The Master Course and explained to Bodhinatha he is working to fit into the Hindu community in Miami, Florida.
Back at home today at the Aadheenam:
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Amit and Krishna along with their daughter Misha spent their morning here at the aadheenam. They were here all day yesterday too - walking the grounds and worshipping at various shrines. They fly home to North Carolina this afternoon so they came for one last darshan this morning. They had a nice meeting with Paramacharya Palaniswami and asked him lots of insightful questions. They are a wonderful family that spent most of their week at our aadheenam.
This is Mr. and Mrs. Senthil and Shiva (in red sari) Kumaran from Minnesota visiting for the day. They found us on the web.
 The Remarkable Vision |
Iraivan Temple Progress Update |
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| New Beautiful 2004 Calendar Now Available. Seeing out fast! | ||
Other TAKA pages with recent Iraivan images. | ||
Preparations being made at the base of the side gopurams.
Silpi Sankaran
Silpi Sinnakkannu...
The bottom courses of the main sanctum of Iraivan
A Lion pillar for the side gopuram has two columns carved out of a single piece of rock.
The top of the pillar is to the right. You can see the two columns inside the one stone. To ensure against breakage during handling and transit, a small section of stone between the two column is left intact. This is now being removed... Adaickan at work.
You can see here the piece that spans the span.
This acts as a brace and is now being carved away.
In an hour or so, the two columns will be completely independent of each other except at the top and bottom.
We also have two giant Bhadra pillars that go directly in front of the sanctum, but we will need to wait as the crane will need all the room around the temple to raise the capstone to the top of the Vimanam
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Date: May_20_2004
Title: Drawing the Lesson from Each Experience
Category: Self Improvement
Duration: 8 min., 22 seconds
Date Given: April 20, 2004
Given by: Bodhinatha
Good Morning, everyone! Good Morning to our guests, welcome! It is nice to have you both with us this morning.
We give a small talk after the ceremony. We are in our Daily Lesson sections in the Nandinatha Sutras. We just started the second section of five sutras which is called 'Facing Life's Challenges'. So I thought I read today from the first two of those and give some commentary on them.
The first one is Sutra 6. "Siva's devotees cultivate a contemplative nature by meditating daily, seeking the light, drawing the lesson from each experience and identifying with infinite intelligence, not with body, emotion or intellect. Aum."
The first part of that is, "Siva's devotees cultivate a contemplative nature by meditating daily, seeking the light."
What is a contemplative nature?
A contemplative nature is, of course, a peaceful nature and this sutra shows the relationship between being peaceful and being regular in your morning worship.
Recently a young Hindu family man asked for suggestions on remaining peaceful, despite our fast paced modern life. I asked him if he worshipped in the morning before going to work and his answer was that he did, some times. So I suggested he be regular everyday in his morning worship and also go to the temple once a week without fail and in this way find greater peace in modern life.
"Drawing a lesson from each experience."
If we take the time to draw the lesson from the experience, we improve our behavior as a result. If we don't take the time then our behavior remains the same, without improvement. To bother to take the time at all and draw the lesson from each experience, we have to understand the importance of this process to our spiritual advancement.
I know many people to whom spiritual life is their meditation practice or time in the shrine room and the rest of their life is school, work and at home is not considered spiritual life. They have yet to understand the point that the experiences of life offer us opportunities to learn and thereby refine our behavior and become a more spiritual person.
The powerful analogy in 'Dancing with Siva' is that the world of maya is the classroom. We or anava are the students and karma is the teacher. In experiencing the reactions to our actions, the ill-conceived actions eventually create a negative result. In understanding this, we are motivated to not do them anymore. Likewise the well conceived, unselfish actions eventually create a positive result. Therefore, we are motivated to do more of them.
The last idea in this sutra is, "Identifying with infinite intelligence, not with body, emotions or intellect."
We know, of course, from Gurudeva's teachings that we are a spiritual being, as is stated in 'Dancing with Siva', Sloka 1, "Rishis proclaim that we are not our body, mind or emotions. We are divine souls on a wonderous journey. We came from God, live in God and are evolving into oneness with God. We are, in truth, the Truth we seek. Aum."
The first line of the Bhasya is also good to read. It says, "We are immortal souls living and growing in the great school of earthly experience in which we have lived many lives."
A few lines later we have, "Deep inside we are perfect this very moment, and we have only to discover and live up to this perfection to be whole."
It is easy to grasp intellectually the concept that you are a spiritual being. The challenge is to actually feel that way about yourself throughout the day, everyday. Often, the unresolved burdens of the past discourage us, other times the challenges of the present overwhelm us.
How then can we actually successfully feel that we are a spiritual being, perfect on the inside at this very moment?
It is by regularly utilizing the many tools that Gurudeva has given us, such as, temple worship, vasana daha tantra, affirmations, color meditations and japa.
Moving on to Sutra number 7.
"Siva's devotees accept all experiences, however difficult, as their self-created karma, without cringing or complaining. Theirs is the power of surrender, accepting what is as it is and dealing with it courageously. Aum."
So the first idea here is, "Siva's devotees accept all experiences, however difficult, as their self-created karma, without cringing or complaining." There is a relevant verse in the Tirukural on this idea. It says, "Why should those who rejoice when destiny brings them good, moan when that same destiny decrees misfortune?"
The Kural points out that it is human nature to only want to experience good fortune and to want to avoid misfortune altogether. This, of course, is not realistic. Our past is a mixture of wisely-conceived unselfish actions and ill-conceived selfish ones. Therefore, the karmas that come to us from those actions are both positive and negative, making us experience both gain and loss, joy and sorrow.
As we often mention, our karma comes to us through other people and it is natural to see other people as the source of what happened to us. They did it, right? So it is their fault.
However as we know, whatever happens to us is our karma, our creation and the other person is simply the vehicle through which the karma comes back to us. As the second principle in Karma Management says - Accept Responsibility.
The next idea of this Sutra is, "Theirs is the power of surrender, accepting what is as it is and dealing with it courageously."
Quite often, our initial response is to resist accepting what is and to want it to be something better, less problematic. Parents are not willing to accept the mistakes the children are making and simply respond with blame and shame rather than helping them understand what they need to know to improve. Teachers find their students to be not as interested in learning as they had hoped and give up on them. Supervisors at work find their staff does not pay attention to the corrections that they make and try to solve the problem by yelling at them.
Gurudeva made an interesting statement in this regard. He said, "Problems are not problems. They are a repetition of the past that needs to be adjusted."
I will read that again, Gurudeva-ism there! "Problems are not problems. They are a repetition of the past that needs to be adjusted."
In other words, labeling certain actions as problems can be an obstacle in solving them. It is as if we are supposed to be perfect and if we make a mistake, that is terrible. However, the truth is that none of us are perfect. Otherwise, we would not be born on earth in the first place. Learning from our mistakes, actually adjusting the repetition of the past needs to be the focus, totally free of any blame and shame in any sense, the problems should not exist.
| MORE UPLIFTING THINGS |
Color Trilogy Complete! We are happy to announce that the new edition of the enormously popular Dancing with Siva is now available in hard back with all new color artwork. It's truly an amazing and beautiful work, with more art than any of the collection. This completes the fulfillment of the vision that Gurudeva had of his Master Course Trilogy being produced in full color. In addition, Bodhinatha is taking pro-active steps to bring Gurudeva's teachings out in a new forms that can be broadly disseminated in the mass mind. With this in mind we, are also pleased to announce that the Dancing with Siva pocketbook is also available. Keep the three-pound book in your shrine room, and take the little one with you on the airplane or subway! How little? It's just 3" by 4.5" -- truly pocket-sized, and just over half an inch thick. Yet it is a full 375 pages, containing ALL of the 155 sutras. Available now at our online store. The complete Trilogy is being offered at a discount. |
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