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"Anyone can strengthen another's faith through encouragement, personal example, good natured humoring, praise, flattery, adulation, or take it away by the opposite methods. Many people with more faith than intellect are pawns in the hands of those who hold great faith, or of those who have little faith, or of those who have no faith at all. Therefore, we can see that a clear intellectual understanding of the philosophy is the bedrock to sustaining faith. Faith is on many levels and of many facets. We have faith in a person, a family, a system of government, science, astronomy, astrology. Faith in philosophy, religion, is the most tenuous and delicate kind and, we must say, the most rewarding of all faiths, because once it is sustained in unbroken continuity, the pure soul of the individual begins to shine forth."

Today's Sun One saw the next stage of completion of Gurudeva's shrine in Kadavul Temple. We will bring you bigger pictures tomorrow.
But the big news is all about Iraivan. See below.

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A scintillating homa was followed by an excellent discourse on the subject of desire by Bodhinatha. Stay tuned in the days ahead for the audio and the transcripts.

Bodhinatha also elucidated beautifully the power of strengthening memory and reason as tools to close off the lower chakras. Just as children are taught some things through sheer memorization, so too we can memorize positive things to enhance our spiritual life.

The first day of our just-completed 3-day full-moon retreat was Iraivan Day and all hands were on deck to work on temple projects. The main task of the day is the monthly mailing. Here Sadhaka Jothinatha folds the newly printed Iraivan Building Fund Progress Report, listing donors from around the world.

In a recent upgrade the report has new color art, has been expanded to three pages and includes an annual temple calendar for pilgrims with dates for all Sun One homas and special pujas throughout the year.

Meanwhile on the archana desk the annual archanas for the coming month of November are prepared. From our database is printed out a small form with the person's picture, name, nakshatra and address. Vibhuti prasadam is affixed to a gift card and the card is put into an envelope and clipped to the archana form. Daily the pujari takes the forms, performs the archana in the person's name and burns the form to notify and invoke devonic blessings. Most of these are performed on the individual's birthday. The card and envelope are put on the altar during the archana to get charged with the shakti and then sent off in the mail. Many are the testimonies that have been received of miraculous power of the vibhuti from our temple.

Bodhinatha and the stewards on their way to a meeting swing by San Marga to watch the somewhat challenging feat of moving the tent over Iraivan up another 8 feet over supporting wires to allow more room for the temple to go up.

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You can see here the quick tent covering has been removed and the supporting frame of pipes is visible just a few feet above the last course. Time to move it up again!

Looking down at the top of the temple. Platforms have now been arranged all around the edge.

The exquisite work of Iraivan ornamentation.

You can see at the very top connecting wires between beams on opposite sides of the temple retaining wall. These are to prevent the retaining wall from pushing outward. Our team now has the challenge to move the quick tent up and over these wires. We are 20 feet up in the air now and working at these heights is challenging and a bit breathtaking considering the long fall that is possible.

Our team in Bangalore has sent a long series of photos which we will share with you in the days ahead. They detail the preparations for the next shipment of stones and recent festivities held for the silpis.

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Ceiling beams for the roof of Iraivan.

These are giant stones and the next group of stones on their way to Kauai. Handling these mammoth pieces 18 feet in the air is no easy feat!

Moving beams, crating

There are dozens of these beams.

These beams reach out from the main sanctum and are supported on pillars.

As we speak four containers are sitting in Chennai ready to move out of port tomorrow for Kauai.

Because of the West Coast strike by dock workers we are working on a special sea routing to take the stones from India to Malaysia and then direct to Honolulu.

The global communications tool: cell phones are everywhere. The lorry driver checks in with his HQ.

Containers loaded and now off to Chennai.

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Date: September_24_2002
Title: Naalupada Saivam
Category: God and Lords of Dharma
Duration: 5 min., 1 second
Date Given: September 1, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha

The second theme was Lord Ganesha. The third theme is the spiritual practices of Saiva Siddhanta. This is for a book release event in Kuala Lumpur. If you remember many months ago, maybe about four months ago, this talk was given on Sun One. It is called 'Naalupada Saivam', the spiritual disciplines of Saiva Siddhanta.

It was written in a way as a little bit formal but it is also easy to translate into Tamil. So, Appaswami Kuppuswami is translating it into Tamil for this occasion. Lots of it is drawn from 'Dancing with Siva' which he has already translated into Tamil. It was not that much work for him to do the talk because three quarters of the talk was word for word out of 'Dancing with Siva', on purpose to make it easy to translate.

That is coming together and I thought I would just read one section of that. The section that compares the Siddhanta and Vedanta paths.

"Siddhanta's difference from Vedanta. These four padas are quite similar to the four yogas of Vedanta - karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga. However, there is one key difference. Whereas in Vedanta you can choose to follow just one of the yogas, in Siddhanta we need to pass through all four padas.

A simple analogy will illustrate the difference. The goal is to walk across a shallow stream on a path of river rocks. Vedanta gives us four separate rock paths to choose from, one for each of the four yogas, all of which lead across the river. Siddhanta only gives us one path for crossing the river which consists of four stones - chariya, kriya, yoga and jnana."

So that is a simple analogy to try and get that point across. That is not that well understood. Vedanta concepts are definitely much more broadly impressed in the mind and the idea of the four yogas, choose your path. You can be just a bhaktar, just a karma yogi and so forth. It is very strongly in the mind, at least in Malaysia. It is like a default understanding that everyone has, it went in there first. So we want to supplement that with the Siddhanta.

Then, of course, the talk goes on to describe each of the four padas - chariya, kriya, yoga and jnana - in detail. It encourages people to practice. These are the disciplines we want to practice, the point is to do these things. That is our third theme.

Fourth theme was just last week, for Grand Bay, remember? God Siva as the perfect parent. So that is our fourth theme. It is for a Siva temple in Grand Bay, for a short talk to be translated into Creole.

One part of that was, "The easiest way to understand God Siva's nature is to think of Him as the parent and yourself as the child. As a parent, He is both father and mother to you. God Siva is your parent because He created your soul. He is the Primal or Original soul who has created all other souls. In fact, God Siva is the perfect parent because no matter what we do, Siva always sends blessings and love to us. When we make mistakes, He never becomes angry with us or punishes us. He continues to love and bless us no matter what. God Siva's love is perfect love, meaning it exists at all times for all souls."

That is trying to eliminate any sense that God Siva punishes us or there is some reason to be afraid of God Siva. "Watch out for His anger or wrath or something." Sometimes, people hear that kind of folk concept about Siva somehow. He punishes or we have to watch out or something. But this is speaking out against that and is talking about Siva in the sense of perfect love at all times to all souls.

Those are our four different themes. You can see we have been working on them for four or five months, this last phase. Different themes for different situations and I think it will all come together quite nicely.

transcription ends

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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