Blog Archives
April 12, 2003 
Sadhu Paksha Last Day
Gurudeva wrote: "Children should be taught giving at a very young age. They don't yet have the ten restraints, the yamas, to worry about. They have not been corrupted by the impact of their own prarabdha karmas. Little children, even babies, can be taught dana--giving to the temple, to holy ones, to one another, to their parents. They can be taught worship, recitation and, of course, contentment--told how beautiful they are when they are quiet and experiencing the joy of serenity."
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Bodhinatha is in his third day of events in Toronto. This report just arrive a few minutes ago with photos.
Here is Bodhinatha with T. Sivayogapathy, president of Sivathondan Society.
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Title: Results of Self Realization |
Cybertalk: If the Self is nothing, how do you know you have realized it? One way you know is the sense that you have stepped out of time, form and space. And when you return to the consciousness of time, form and space, your perspective is changed. You now see the transcendent reality, the Self, you have experienced as Reality, and understand the consciousness in time, form and space to be unreality. Another result of realizing the Self, Parasiva, is that jnana, wisdom, develops. As the Self is regularly realized, you develop an encyclopedia of inner wisdom.
Cybertalk Ends"
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Breaking news from Toronto:
"Today we first went to the Varasiddhi Vinayagar Temple for a short darshan and arati."
"It is a nice temple in a rented warehouse, with very nice priests, and after the arati the devotees who were present came up for vibhuti blessings from Bodhinatha."
Then we drove to the Vishnu Mandir where a homa was already in progress. We joined in the homa and then went over to the new beautiful granite Karttikeya murthi which was in a small South Indian style shrine.
The priests and Bodhinatha climbed up a ladder and poured the kumbhas over the top cover of the shrine. Many bhajans to Muruga were sung by devotees and many archanas performed. Then Bodhinatha gave his wonderful talk on tolerance and everyone lined up afterwards for vibhuti.
They were getting posters signed by Bodhinatha too. Dr. Dubay, head of the temple, is a tall man with a strong personality and he is very much in charge of the whole place.
After some vibhuti darshan, Bodhinatha was called to give an interview downstairs for a local Canadian TV station called Vision TV which rotates through reports on all religions.
The lady doing the interview was having her first experience of Hinduism by coming to the temple, so she ended up asking good questions as a result! It was a very nice interview.
The lighting man sets up for the show.
Bodhinatha on TV in Canada in the days to come. Watch for it in the local Toronto area on "Vision TV."
Later, over lunch Dr. Dubay shared with Bodhinatha about his project of building a Hindu museum and he asked for help to create the exhibits. After lunch we toured the museum structure which is under construction, a large facility.
In the afternoon several families came to visit Bodhinatha at the hotel. The Siva Markandu family who recently pilgrimaged to Kauai Aadheenam for Sivaratri.
Our long time friend and associate in Toronto, Thiru Satkunendran. Satkunendran has been helping with coordination of events and distribution of literature for Gurudeva for many years in Toronto.
Satkunendran's relatives come for darshan and vibhuti.
On the left Rogini Shunmoogum has come down from Montreal to join the events.
Rajamohan family. Rajamohan is secretary of Sivathondan Society.
T. Sivayogapathy, president of the Sivathondan Society.
At the monastery it has been a quiet day. Yesterday was the wonderful day of Yogaswami's Annual Maha Samadhi. We are ever grateful to the great ones who have gone before us. Only by his grace are we here today and are you reading this tale of the events of Kauai Aadheenam everyday. Yogaswami, the giant seer of Sri Lanka granted us the heritage of the precious Saiva Neri. Jai Satguru Siva Yogaswami Ki Jai!
It is three days before the full moon and during this phase we have our traditional monthly Ashram Sadhana Day. Cleaning, repairing, putting things in order and tackling some cleaning and maintenance tasks we may not otherwise be able to fit into the regular course of our day to day routines. Sannyasin Natarajnathaswami has the responsibility to take care of the temple pool and Sadhaka Tejadeva has experience with pools.
The pool seems to be losing water at an abnormal rate. The challenge is to find out where it is leaking.
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transcription begins
Date: March_30_2003
Title: Don't Get Stuck in the Mud
Category: Change and Transformation
Duration: 7 min., 24 seconds
Date Given: February 10, 2003
Given by: Bodhinatha
Feeling unworthy and giving up.
Lots of reasons to give up and of course, that is one of the challenges in life when we hit difficulties. Not to give up, not to get despondent and give up on a positive plan for our life.
Of course, that is a time when family, friends, monks and gurus are all helpful to help us not go through that natural reaction, which we would go through if we were alone. If we were alone, we would just give up. But, it is times like that when everything went wrong, or we are in a state of negativity that we really need other people.
A pattern of the soul is to go along performing deeds which are to one degree or another selfish and adharmic, without the least sense of regret. Kind of stuck in actions that are not right but we are convinced it is just fine, until one day there is a switch in our consciousness. All of a sudden, what we were doing which seemed perfectly okay, now seems terrible. We feel badly. We are not bad, we feel badly.
So we are weighted down by this heavy subconscious feeling. We were going along just fine doing these little things that were wrong and no problem. All of a sudden we say, "These things are wrong. I feel terrible. I am a terrible person. Everyone else is so pure and here I am so impure. Everyone else is so worthy and here I am so unworthy."
We end up in this state of mind which is a reaction, a natural and a healthy reaction. It is our conscience coming through.
Okay, that is good but what is the problem? Well, the false concept is, "We should stay in the mud." Here we are, fallen into the mud of despair and unworthiness and the false concept is, "Well, we should stay there. Because I am a bad person. I am bad, I am unworthy." That is very distinct from, "I have done bad things. I have done unworthy things."
The two are not the same. When we say, "I am the bad person, I am the unworthy person," it sounds like it is unchangeable. We are stuck forever in this condition, it is hopeless.
That is the false concept.
The quote we read on 'Darshana' had a beautiful statement at the end, which I will repeat. "In the Orient, whenever the cloud of despair covers the soul of a devotee, the darshan of a guru is sought. Whenever it becomes difficult to meditate, his grace is hoped for to lift the veil of delusion and release awareness from the darker areas of mind to soar within."
That is the point, that is the correct attitude. We go along, we do something that is not quite right to one degree or another. We react, we say, "I have done the wrong thing."
The correct attitude is to pull ourselves out of that reaction, to purify the mind, to do some penance to make up for the misdeeds in appropriate ways and move on, not get stuck there.
For monastics, the Saivite Shastras gives a very specific pattern to accomplish this, which is the giving of tapas.
I will read from the Saivite Shastras. "Each one given tapas or Mahatapas with no explanation or reason, therefore looked directly at his worldliness and inwardly and up at the glorious Holy Feet of Siva for release. When the grace of release was attained, tapas was lifted. He redyed his orange robes and came forth in the brilliancy of the noon day sun."
So, the point of that quote is not that he stays on tapas forever, right? It does not say that. "When the grace of release was attained, tapas was lifted." The blessings, the darshana we are talking about of the guru or the Deity. When through grace we clear up this condition, it is gone and we move on. That is the point. We are not supposed to sit in this mud puddle, in the mud forever. We are supposed to pull ourselves out of it, through some spiritual practices and move on, a little wiser.
The last quote is from the Tirukural and it gives a very nice insight into the process of tapas. I know some of you look at it as the favorite quote in the chapter on tapas.
"As the intense fire of the furnace refines gold to brilliance, so does the burning suffering of austerity purify the soul to resplendence."
A little suffering involved, but it is short-lived. You move on and start a new cycle of mistakes. A new cycle of cleaning them up, moving out of them and a new cycle of mistakes and a new cycle of cleaning them up and so forth. The process does not end, the mistakes just get more subtle.
The important point there is, don't get stuck in the mud. Pull yourself out and Gurudeva has given us lots of tools and the focus in his quote of the day was on darshan, the blessings of the Deity and the Guru. How they can be very useful in lifting these conditions and changing one's perspective instantaneously.
Again, that is a beautiful statement, the way Gurudeva puts it. Instead of looking at things from the outside in an external way, in one second your perspective can change. You can look at things from an inner perspective and see how it all fits together and see how it is time to move on.
Aum Namah Sivaya.
transcription ends
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