Blog Archives
October 14, 2002
Gurudeva sitting with some of his monks in the publications office last year. Ever open, ever loving, ever ready to strike up a conversation, one couldn't have asked for a more perfect example of how best to live life, for a more remarkable spiritual preceptor! How blessed we all are to have had him in our lives. A year ago today Gurudeva was in the third day of his fast.
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Bodhinatha receives the arati from Sundaram Achari at the powerful annual Ayudya Puja held this morning at the temple site by the silpis themselves.
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Title: Be Firm But Kind with Children |
Cybertalk: Bodhinatha gives a wonderful upadesha based on the Living with Siva lesson of the day (178) called "Be Firm but Kind." This is one of the Positive Discipline principles. Children today must be told the reasons why for instructions and directions given to them, and such directions must be given in a kindly manner. The problem of giving directions in the form of questions is also discussed.
Cybertalk Ends"
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Our morning began with an especially inner Sun One homa in Kadavul Temple.
Bodhinatha offers grains to the fire, which leaps through the air. Over the retreat, with the Shuba Sivaloka days, and today being a Sivaloka day, the temple was extremely potent, a clear connection with the inner worlds, opening doors, as Gurudeva loved to say, of the mind.
The silpis had gone ahead at 6 am to prepare for the ayudhya puja, which is an important annual religious event for them, and for all craftsmen throughout India. The monks and devotees gather to parade to the temple site.
Today is the ninth day of Navaratri, the nine-day celebration for Goddess Shakti. During the last three days of the festival, She is worshipped as Sarasvati, and on the very last day a special puja is performed to bless all tools, books, musical instruments... even taxi cabs and elevators.
In his talk this morning Bodhinatha shared two insights on this important day. By blessing the tools and implements, a year's worth of accumulations of negative odic force is removed and also the festival is a manifestation of Hinduism's bringing spirituality into everyday life.
Shanmugam Sthapati and Sundaram Achari, who are the two acting priests for the puja, offer their pranams to Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami before the rites commence.
First a small puja is done at the paturai... the forge where the blacksmith work is done to sharpen chisels. The forge is fired up, then coconut, incense, bananas and arati are offered.
Various tools have been brought before an altar with pictures of Sarasvati and Gurudeva presiding. The monks also brought some of their tools, including pica rulers from the publications team, carpentry tools and more.
Shanmugam Sthapati gives directions and Sundaram Achari performs the actions. Sambrani on the hot coals burns in billowing fragrant clouds.
In a talk at the end, Shanmugam Sthapati explains the significance of the puja:
"Just as we worship the Vel and that represents Muruga or Trisula represents Siva, the implements of the Gods are symbols of the Divine. So too on this day, our very tools are symbols of the Divine in action."
Sundaram Achari offers the Arati to the tools, then to Iraivan Temple itself and then to a stone. .
Sthapati continues: "These are the tools that feed us, through them we gain our livelihood, and today we honor them."
Shankar Nathan, from Koloa, films the entire ceremony.
At the end of the puja, a line is snapped on a stone and the stone is blessed.
A mark is drawn where a cut is to be made.
Then Bodhinatha and all the swamis, and everyone present come forward to chip the stone. Here our Task Forcer, Shailesh Trivedi, from California, takes his turn.
Shanmugam Sthapati is moved by the moment, as obviously the blessing of the tools, the divinization of the craft, the invocation of Shakti into the very implements of livelihood are a deeply important part of his life. He explains that writers will put their pens on the altar and also the book they have written and in the moment of ceremony the book itself becomes God. Stapathi makes a most cogent observation:
"With our nul (Tamil for thread), we make the stone edge straight. But with his nul (meaning his books on Siva), Gurudeva straightened out the very lives of those he touched."
After the puja, the silpis take great delight in feeding prasadam to one and all. Stay tuned for more wonderful photos from the events in Bangalore on this day.
This morning we had a sweet visit by Ganesan and Srividya Nagasubramaniam with their one year old daughter Aditya. At home in San Jose, California, they found us while searching the Web to see if Hawaii had any Hindu temples to visit while vacationing. He is from Karaikudi and she from Chennai, originally.
Ganesan came earlier in the morning by himself and witnessed the touching Ayudhya puja, tool-blessing ceremony, performed by our wonderful shilpis at the Iraivan site. He was impressed, and came back later with his wife and daughter to show them the temple site. They also took an adventure walk down our jungle path to the lake.
He said this is such a large, perfect, peaceful place and looks forward to coming back. Ganesan is planning to move back to Bangalore, India, permanently to better care for his parents.....a noble decision.
The honorable Mayor Marianne Kusaka has been in office for eight years and her term will be ending with the next election which is only three weeks away. She invited our monks to her farewell dinner that was attended by a crowd of over 600 people, including a dozen japanese dignitaries who flew to Kauai for the dinner.
Bodhinatha and Palaniswami attended the event. Bodhinatha remarked that he was surprised how many people approached him to offer their thanks for all that Gurudeva and the monastery had done for the Mayor's campaign to bring back the spirit of Aloha to the island. The contributions of our design and printing department which has created and distributed hundreds of thousands of small Aloha cards and large posters were a key element in bringing up the spiritual vibration of the whole Kauai community. A gift is given to the mayor of 24 dwarf ti plants from the monastery gardens, three each in 8 bouquets, one each for each of her years in office. The monastery has been honored to help in humble ways this marvelous human being, our mayor, who more than anyone we know radiates and exemplifies the island spirit of aloha. We remember with joy the night about 4 years ago when she and Gurudeva danced together, she guiding him through some hula steps and gestures, and he guiding her through the manipuri dance of India. That was on the occasion of Gurudeva's birthday party attended by 350 island friends in 1998,
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transcription begins
Date: September_12_2002
Title: Mauritius Talk on Siva Part 1
Category: God and Lords of Dharma
Duration: 7 min., 24 seconds
Date Given: August 24, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
Preparing this morning's talk, I was reminded of something Gurudeva used to do on occasion, go back far enough. He would be talking to the monks in the morning and getting awfully fiery and dynamic and we would wonder, "Gee, what did we do wrong? I thought everything was okay and all of a sudden Gurudeva was fired up." Then you realize that tomorrow he is giving a talk to such and such group. He is actually getting ready to get fired up at them, so you have to not take it personally and realize that he is just talking to the ethers and not to you personally.
So I thought, I would try the same here. But it is not a fiery talk, it is just a very gentle talk. Getting ready for the trip to Asia, it is coming up September 4th. So, starting to think about talks that will be given along the way. We are passing through Malaysia on the to and from Mauritius and then we are also passing through Singapore on the way back. But the trip is primarily for Mauritius. The idea is that most of the members in Mauritius are not able to come here, whereas in Malaysia and Singapore, a lot of the members do come. Every few years, they come regularly.
We are feeling a need, particularly with Gurudeva's Mahasamadhi and all, to strengthen our ties with the members in Mauritius. We plan to go there at Ganesha Chaturthi time this year as well as in subsequent years and focus on them. It is a wonderful time for the Mauritius members there, with the Panchamukha Ganapati mandapam in place. On Ganesha Chaturthi, I don't know exactly how many people but it is in the thousands, come to worship Ganesha there at that time every year. So it is a natural time for a public talk and a nice event, slipping right into the timing. Ganesha Chaturthi in Mauritius is a public holiday. That is a nice turn maybe someday, we will have a Hindu public holiday in the US. Deepavali or something, was Gurudeva's vision to be a holiday in the US, every year.
Along the way we are giving talks. One of the talks which we are giving on the way to Mauritius, in Kuala Lumpur at a Mission gathering is on 'Parents as the first Guru'. As you know, we printed up that little flyer which has the nine parenting points and so you might hear some about that in the next talk or two before we go, warming up for that. I will also be giving that talk in Mauritius. This talk here is designed for a temple in Grand Bay, which of course is where Sivakumaran and Kavita live. It is a Siva temple there and one of the Trustees of the temple, Mr. Perumal has generously given us his new bungalow, that is on the beach there in Grand Bay. Two rooms in his new bungalow for free for the stay. So we will be seeing the members, not in a hotel but right there in a private bungalow, which is very nice of him. He has invited us to speak at the Siva temple there as well, which Gurudeva visited and I believe we donated a kodimaram, . I will have to brush up on that before we go.
This talk is a very simple talk about Siva, trying to address any common misconceptions, because this will be a gathering of people in the Grand Bay area. It is not designed for our members, not a high powered , sophisticated talk. It is designed to be translated into Creole. So, here goes.
There are some who say that Hindus believe in a trinity of Gods. Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Rudra or Siva the destroyer. But of course, this is not true. The truth is that Hindus believe in a One God, who performs all three of these functions - creation, preservation and destruction. Of course, to Hindus of the Saivite denomination this one supreme Being is known as God Siva. In addition to these three acts of creation, preservation and destruction, God Siva also performs two more actions which relates specifically to the soul.
The first of these actions is that He hides Himself from us. That is very interesting, although He pervades the entire Universe, though He pervades us, He is within us, we cannot find Him. How is that? He has hidden Himself from us and this of course, is His action of the veiling grace. We cannot see Him, even though He is everywhere. A simple analogy is the parents and children. It is as if to a young child the mother and father are playing hide and seek. They have hidden and it is the object of the child to find the mother and father. They have hidden themselves from the child. It is a game, just like that.
The second of these two actions is that He eventually shows Himself to us. This of course is called His revealing grace. It is like the child successfully finding, in the game of hide and seek, the parents who have hidden themselves.
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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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