Blog Archives
October 31, 2002 
"The superconscious mind and the body of the soul have been around a long time. This immortal body of yours has been around a long time, and it's seen many lives come and go, many experiences pass by the windows of its eyes. Some need no explanation, because they are the playing out of vibrations. Others do need an explanation, the explanation that would come and impress you intellectually from your superconscious, would give you power maybe to face an experience that was yet to come. So, don't analyze every nuance of a reaction or try to anticipate the next series of experiential patterns, for life is a series of experiences. They are all great experiences.
"Hold your center. Find the place within you that has never ever changed, that's been the same for many lives, that feeling that has been the same within you since you were a little child up to this very time. Find that! Catch that vibration, and you've caught the vibration of the soul and identified it to your intellectual mind and your instinctive area of the mind. Then build on that. Work with that. Say to yourself, "There's something within me that never changes, no matter what happens."
Gurudeva
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Bodhinatha watches as Jahanan from California performs the Parampara puja at the newly finished shrine for Gurudeva. The "blinding light box' you see hanging above has a transparency photo of Gurudeva. We have 24 of these and will change them every month. Well, I guess the camera can't pick it up, so for now it will be "rahasya" except to those who actually come here.
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Title: "Good" and "Evil" People |
Cybertalk: That there are good and evil people who should be treated differently is not the correct Hindu perspective, and we don't want this to go into the minds of our children. This is the subject of Bodhinatha's next Publisher's Desk article for Hinduism Today. Everyone is a divine soul. Though their actions may be low-minded, we should act toward everyone in a way that encourages them to improve their behavior.
Cybertalk Ends"
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In the center of the shrine is a kumbha pot into which the ceremony invokes the presence of the Nandinatha Sampradaya and in particular the Kailasa Parampara. During the puja Janahan invokes Nandinatha, Tirumular, Rishi from the Himalayas, Kadaitswami, Yogaswami and Gurudeva. Janahan performs a wonderful puja and stops periodically during his chanting to explain what he is about to do and what the mystical significance is. During the puja the whole congregation of devotees repeats with him the mantra to bring shakti into the kumbha: Aum Hreem Namasivaya, Sivayanama Hreem Aum!"
The final arati is performed by Bodhinatha.
Everyone is asked to visualize the presence of the line of Gurus.
Ahhh... so the camera can pick up Gurudeva's transparency photo after all! The puja was completed and the Kumbha pot will remain in place until Gurudeva's murthi arrives from India which we hope will be in two days time. Then, the kumbha, which represents the presence of Gurudeva and the Guru lineage will be used to bath the murthi at the temple door before installation. Jahahan says "Thus, the whole Parampara will be welcoming Gurudeva's murthi from India."
Morning activity today included a class by Paramacharya Palaniswami who shares with the group the life and times of Gurudeva.
Pilgrims from Canada, Malaysia and mainland USA.
At 11 :30 am the monks gathered in the temple to give a shum chanting experience to the group.
Yesterday afternoon, Sadhaka Jothinatha had a mini-Hinduism Today sales and seva conference. Here gathered are some of the dedicated souls who serve tirelessly to see that Gurudeva's flagship publication makes its way around the world. We have several members from California, Brahmacharini Chudikadevi from Malaysia where she heads up Sanatana Dharma publications there and has a big team. Rohini Shanmugam from Montreal, Canada. And our strong team of Kauai ladies without whom a lot of the office work would not be done and the Dandapanis from Alaska who handle a lot of details remotely. Sadhaka also called in by teleconference, our Singapore team and others who could not come to Kauai. Everyone shared ideas. Have you subscribed to Hinduism Today? Yes? Good! No? uh oh.... mmmm......very important... go now and make sure that each issue of this important tool for the future of Hinduism in your life, home, family and community arrives without fail, year after year, Subscribe today!
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This is the closing series of our documentary on shipping to Hawaii. Here is Jiva Rajasankara our carving site manager giving a final check of the lorries before they leave.
He writes:
This is the last set of photos on the four containers.
It was taken at about 12.10 am in the morning.
An arati was shown around the 4
containers and a coconut was broken to invoke the blessings of Ganesha
and our Gurudeva so that the containers reach safely without any
problems.
the team watches as years of work, organization, carving, culminates in the departure from Bangalore.
Hawaii, here we come!
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transcription begins
Date: October_15_2002
Title: Choose Realistic Goals in Meditation
Category: The Spiritual Path
Duration: 6 min., 3 seconds
Date Given: October 7, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
There were some devotees last phase and something about being on the path came up. What someone experiences, everyone else does too. Part of the spiritual journey is that, it is not unique. Everyone goes through the same steps, the same stages, the same experiences. So, this one of course, we have all encountered before and I am sure you are familiar with it.
A very sincere devotee, a woman, was asking about the spiritual path, spiritual life and spiritual striving. Certainly, she was sincere in wanting to have deeper spiritual experiences which was all really, really wonderful to see. But, she also had a sad attitude. She was sad because her spiritual experiences were not deeper than they were. Here she was on the path practicing very sincerely everyday and having this concept in mind that, "All the great spiritual experiences that are there toward the end of the path that I am not having. I am not having them. So, I am sad."
So, she was creating a sad journey for herself. That is a pretty long journey from where she was to this end-of-the-path paradise, blissfulness, all-pervasiveness and so forth that she wanted to experience more of right now. So it made me think about that.
Of course, it is not Gurudeva's attitude. He says, "Life is meant to be lived joyously." He does not say that we should be sad until we experience Parasiva or until we are all-pervasive or something. No, he does not say that. He says, "Life is meant to be lived joyously." Meaning, when we are on the spiritual path, we should enjoy it. We should not parade concepts that make us unhappy because of what we are not experiencing. Why do that? That is an understanding of the spiritual path which is flawed. We want to look at it so we not only enjoy the end of the path, but we enjoy getting there. We want to have fun on this journey, enjoyable journey. Laugh, smile, enjoy ourselves. Not just hold our breath, cry and feel unsatisfied till we finally get to the end of it. That is a long time away.
One example of that is our morning meditation. You know, the monks meditate every morning. We are all trying to realize Parasiva. It is an important part of our discipline. I don't know if any monks look at it this way. We could have the attitude, "I am meditating, I am going to realize Parasiva." If we come out of the meditation and we haven't realized Parasiva, we could be sad, right? We could be frustrated. "So, I didn't realize Parasiva again, this is terrible. Another day without Parasiva. Life is barely worth living." We could create that attitude by how we look at it, without even giving much thought to it.. We frustrate ourselves and we don't enjoy the journey along the path.
I explained this to one of the monks. You can set it up so that you have more than one goal in meditation. Create some easy ones, some harder ones and some very hard ones. For example, easiest goal is sim shum bee see, feeling the spiritual energy of the spine. That is easy to do, anyone can do that. But, it is also worthwhile. Just really going into that spiritual energy, becoming centered and content and so forth is something any of the monks can do in any meditation. So, do that first. Get the satisfaction of that. Get the success of that and say, "OK, this is great. I feel wonderful and fulfilled. I am not frustrated. I am fulfilled. I experienced sim shum bee see."
Now, let us see if we can go deeper. Let us strive for the inner light. Try and go into the intense inner light that we try to go in our morning meditations. Maybe we won't get there. We will get there on some days and not on others. If the mind is a little bit disturbed, we won't see the inner light. The mind has to be calm, in order to see it. If we get there, fine. If we don't, that is fine too. "I, at least got to sim shum bee see. It was a worthwhile meditation."
Then, we try and go deeper yet, we try and experience Parasiva. Well, that might not happen that often but we try for it anyway. If it does, great. If it does not, we are still happy. We set ourselves up, so we feel fulfilled, not frustrated by the meditation we experience. Just because we didn't experience Parasiva, we are not heartbroken, crushed and sad the rest of the day. That sounds silly, you can laugh at it. But, still you can set yourself up that way if you are not careful and fail in meditation, fall short and therefore, feel frustrated and lacking. Whereas, meditation should never make you feel that way. It should always make you feel fuller, more fulfilled, more content than you were before you started, not less content.
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Innersearch 2003-4 in India!
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