Blog Archives
October 30, 2002 
During this week of Mahasamadhi observances and looking around at every pebble, branch, path of Kauai Aadheenam, we are filled with gratitude for what Gurudeva gave us. This song by Siva Yogaswami seems like it was written just for us. He was of course referring to his Guru and Sri Lanka... but, it is ever the same:
Where love's minstrelsy prevails--This is our land.
Where Siva favours to dwell--This is our land.
Where griefs are dispelled --This is our land.
Where rains the pure showers of grace--This is our land.
Where abundant crops do grow--This is our land.
Where deluding senses flee--This is our land.
Here with zest my Guru won me in melting love,
And revealed to me this benign land ours."
--Natchintanai, 22
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Our Mahasamadhi week began with Sun One homa and an inspired talk from Bodhinatha on "Mahavakiam" or the great sayings. He reviewed the famous four from the Upanishads and those of Chellappaswami and Yogaswami. and then gave a whole series of the great sayings that Gurudeva gave us, Such as:
"I'm alright, right now."
"Siva is the Life of our life."
"The purpose of life on earth is to realize the Self."
"Anbe Sivamayam Satyame Parasivam
God Siva is immanent love and transcendent reality."
"Life is meant to be lived joyously."
Stay tuned for the talk and it's transcript in the days ahead.
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Title: Mayor of Kauai Honoring |
Cybertalk: Bodhinatha gives news of a dinner at the Marriott Hotel which he and another monk attended in honor of our island's mayor who is about to leave office after eight years. Bodhinatha also talks about today's ayudhya puja to bless the tools that the silpis use for building the temple.
Cybertalk Ends"
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Visiting priest, Janahan who performed several ceremonies at Gurudeva's Mahasamadhi time has come once again.
Today Janahan sat by the homa fire and tomorrow will be doing a special Parampara puja.
A good view of Kadavul Hindu Temple from inside the main sanctum. Out in the distance is the huge Nandi, raised up high so that his right eye is looking directly into Lord Nataraja's right eye.
Bodhinatha's talk today was full of humor and had everyone's attention as he brought forward a wonderful vision of the gifts that Gurudeva gave us with all his key statements that are now indelibly imprinted in the minds of all his devotees.
Yogi Japendranatha receives vibhuti at the end of the talk.
Today's schedule for the pilgrims included a trip to Iraivan.
The silpis are not only great craftsmen, they know how to put on a show. Sthapati knew everyone was coming today at 9:30 so he arranged for his whole team to move a big stone into place while they were there. It is an ever amazing and fascinating sight to watch them deal with such mass.
A glorious day on Kauai.
Paramacharya Palaniswami talks with Janahan.
Next on the schedule was a viewing of 45 minutes of the video that Paramacharya Palaniswami has been working on for several weeks.
This is a three-hour tape of clips from all kinds of footage of Gurudeva. Much of it even the monks haven't seen.... it is a fabulous treat.
About twenty minutes before sunset. Mount Waialeale. Looking up at the ancient peak, we are reminded of Gurudeva's many great gifts. We would not even be here were it not for him. And the looking up at the mountain.... was what he inspired us all to do, to look up, to aspire, to be ever vigilant in the climb of the evolution of the soul, never for a moment forgetting Lord Siva and the spiritual meaning and goals of life.
Incoming decorations! The ever growing banana stalk is a mainstay for temple decorations and brings a rich fullness to any seen. Popular no doubt because when you cut down the stalk you don't destroy the plant, which simply pushes up new shoots right away.
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Iraivan Temple Progress Update |
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More great photos from India showing us in detail the whole process. Here we have a container full and ready to go, but more work has to be done inside.
The crates are lashed and blocked with pieces of wood.
It takes about 3 hours to do this work.
Putting blocking....
Each crate is also nailed t o the adjacent crates. With this plus the blocking, nothing will shift when the ship is sailing in high seas.
The work went well into the night.
No time to spare... we want to get these stones out on schedule.
Let's give a big round of applause for our team in India!
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transcription begins
Date: October_10_2002
Title: Bodhinatha's Travels to Mauritius Part 3
Category: Travels, Pilgrimage and Missions Abroad
Duration: 10 min., 3 seconds
Date Given: October 01, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
Then we flew back to Malaysia. We had a book-signing at the Kandaswami Temple. The Ceylon Saivite Association of Selangor, who some 20 years ago had hosted the famous, 'Two schools of Saiva Siddhanta Conference'. But, these days we are on the best of terms. The President was extremely respectful, Mr. Perambalam. The youth of the Temple and our own youth worked hard to coordinate the event. Gurudeva, on his last visit, went to the Temple. Times have changed, we are on the same side. That's nice.
You probably saw the pictures. That was the world's largest garlands there! I left them on. I was in a chair with a back and although I was like, "Unhh...", under a huge weight of garlands, they were so beautiful, didn't want to take them off. They came down to the ground and just weighed a lot. That was the talk on 'Naalupada Saivam', the 4 stages of discipline in Saiva siddhanta that you must have heard, drawing heavily from 'Dancing with Siva'. Sold lots of books, including 23 of 'Living with Siva', which was very good, an expensive book for Malaysia and the talk was well received.
We had a nice meeting with the youth group in Malaysia. Malaysia Youth Group is anyone under 30. A different concept of youth than here in the US, where youth is anyone under 20. The Youth Group is coming together in a dynamic way and had two 'Master Course Seminars', had the Family Retreat and honoring of mothers and fathers on Mother's Day and Fathers's Day. A lot of activity recently. They are planning an Iraivan Day for January, and lots of other wonderful activities. A very organized group and dynamic. The Kulapatis are happy to step back a bot and let the younger group create activities and are happy to supervise. They are coming together with a new energy, which is nice to see.
Then in Singapore, we pulled out our 'Nine Qualities' again and gave a talk at the Hindu Center, filled up the room, which was about 200 people. That was just in English, got the ideas out. Rajadurai was there, an elder in the community, comes for everything. This is the first time I have given a talk in Singapore. Usually, I have just spoken to the Members and this was reaching out beyond our own group there.
Just a thought here on one of the 'Nine Qualities'. Perceptive Self-Correction, the ability to quickly draw the lesson from each experience. and resolve how not to repeat one's mistakes. This quality is developed by teaching that mistakes are not bad, they are opportunities to learn and refine our behavior. Gurudeva calls them 'wonderful'. In 'Living with Siva', he says, "wonderful opportunities to learn."
On a number of occasions, I took a poll. I said, "Now, how many of you were raised to look at mistakes as wonderful opportunities to learn? Please raise your hand." I think I got 2 hands, out of the hundreds of people. It is not a common perspective. Somehow, the usual teaching is mistakes are bad, you are supposed to be smart enough not to make mistakes. Somehow, you are supposed to know so many things and never make a mistake. If you make a mistake, it reflects badly on the family and so forth, it is terrible.
That is not being realistic. The process of mistakes, that Gurudeva points out so wisely, from an up-down point of view, they are wonderful oppurtunitites to learn and that is how we improve. By making mistakes.
I told another story. I said, "Imagine this situation. A mother is at home with a young child. The child makes a huge mistake at 2, 3 O'clock in the afternoon. What does the mother do? The mother calls up the father at work.
"Dear, I have wonderful news for you. Our young boy made this horrendous mistake and we have a wonderful opportunity to teach a very good lesson here, so he doesn't do it again. I wanted to call you up, so that on your way home from work, you could start thinking about it and by the time you got here, you can figure out what lesson it is you need to teach the boy, so he doesn't do this again. Isn't this wonderful?"
Try and get a new perspective on it. Gurudeva definitely had that perspective, that mistakes are wonderful opportunities to learn. It is related to 'Positive Discipline'. Not the same subject, but looking at it from the teaching point of view, that is an obligation in any situation, a parent-child situation, to teach and to learn. When mistakes occur, it is the duty of the parents to teach something and the duty of the child to try and learn, so the child does not repeat the mistake again. Definitely, it is the whole negativity surrounding mistakes that makes this process difficult. Sweep that all away and take a fresh look at mistakes. "How wonderful! I made a mistake. I have a chance to teach something."
That is how progress occurs, right? If we never make a mistake, we are never progressing. We make mistakes, because we are trying to do new things that we have not done before. We are growing up and we don't know certain things. Mistakes are a natural part of human development. The whole idea about making them good is the first idea, erasing the sense of negativity. It applies in any teaching situation -parents to children, senior monks to junior monks, Talaivar to members of the Kulam, schoolteacher to children, supervisor to employee. All kinds of situations have this process involved and in each case, the senior one should expect mistakes and when they do occur, not put out a sense of something wrong or bad. Instead, try to figure out what it is that the person needs to learn, to not repeat the mistake.
Quite often with parents and children, the parents are assuming the child knows something he doesn't fully understand. They have taught it, either not at all or they have taught it incompletely or they have rushed through the lesson. The child doesn't really understand something that they think he does. Therefore, the mistake occurred. Having enough patience to ferret out what it is, what understanding is missing, is an important part. When all of that has taken place, then you get the quality we want in someone, Perceptive Self-Correction. As an adult, you develop a habit of correcting your own mistakes, because of how you were raised. When they make a mistake, they don't get depressed. They think about it. "What did I do wrong? How can I do it differently the next time and not have the same problem occur?" Just a way of thinking about life.
transcription ends
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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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