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Living with Siva.
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As we write our beloved Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and his mission team, Sannyasin Muruganathaswami and Sadhaka Jivananandanatha are resting in California just before taking their long trip to Mauritius which leaves for Taipei at 1:30 AM , Monday morning.

Sadhaka Jivananandanatha sends us two reports starting with yesterday and then today.

Bodhinatha's Sun One Video. Most Recent update: July 30, 2003. Bodhinatha speaks on Japa, Mantra Repetition, niyama # 9, elucidating the many dimensions of the sacred science of mantrams, chanting a holy syllable, word or sentence again and again. 14 minutes, 2 seconds

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Saturday, August 23rd.

"We had a wonderful day. Bodhinatha had some inspiring meetings with quite a few people this morning. For lunch he met with Deva Rajan, Dr. Sunder, Suriyakumar and some others for a productive Iraivan Temple fundraising meeting.

At 4pm Venita Katir's arangetram started with an arati done by me. (pictures coming in a few days) It was a great dance performance. Venita's movements--especially arm and hand movements--were smooth and fluid. Her style is more theatrical than most Bharatanatyam with an extra emphasis on her mouth. One dance was sweetly dedicated to Bodhinatha to the music of "Engal Gurunathan" a story of Yogaswami in Jaffna. The music included a vina, mridangam, bamboo flute and cymbols--Siva's instruments. It had an elegant softening to the whole musical performance. Afterwords we had nice dinner in a private room, then drove home in Easvan's car.

Bodhinatha's talk at the dance performance was powerfully delivered and very well received. Each word clearly rung out to every corner of the auditorium. It compared learning and mastering dance to the spiritual path. It was a great intro to Hinduism for much of the audience and an inspiring, practical glimpse into being a more spiritual person. Many people appreciated the talk. We heard one story of a nonHindu man telling his children in the middle of the talk, "Come, come. Listen carefully to every word this man says."

Today was the big Golden Gate Mission satsang. It started at about 9am with a beautiful pada puja in Easvan Param's home. Bodhinatha went into deep meditation during the ceremony and his blessings were powerfully felt by all.

Tons of honey and ghee and other items were poured over his feet. He then gave a nice talk on resolving disputes and misunderstandings which was well received. He also talked about his upcoming trip to Malaysia and Mauritius.

Yoganathan Palani takes his brahmachariya vrata.

After the pada puja and talk, we were graced with a vina concert by the same young man who performed at last night's arangetram.

Paramjothi also sang a beautiful natchintanai, Engal Gurunathan--not the one we normally sing, but another work written by Yogaswami. He was accompanied by the vina.

We were also graced with one who Gurudeva referred to as the 2nd best dancer he has ever seen, Asako. Each step and movement was beautiful. She combined extraordinary power with a soft gentleness rarely if ever found among dancers.

We will contact you again in a few days...

Bodhinatha at the Iraivan fund raising meeting.

Back at Kauai Aadheenam today... The Hemant Rao family from New York.

Mr. Palendira and his wife are here for two days visiting from Sydney, Australia, with their daughter Polil. They have always wanted to come to Kauai Aadheenam and are happy to finally be here. Amma sends her warmest alohas to her son Mainthan in Sydney who was not able to join them for the journey.

Here is the design for a 16-feet-tall white granite archway and wrought iron entry gates, the new doors to Kauai Aadheenam which will be placed at the beginning of Tiruneri path at 107 Kaholalele Road.

The stone work is finished in Bangalore, and the metal craftsmen are beginning on the gateway....

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At the temple site today our ladies were undertaking their first attempts at making rubbings of the pillar art for sale to help Iraivan. Here is Isani Alahan working on a Shum mural.

Shakti Mahadevan at work.

Fine rice paper is placed over the sculpture and then colored waxes rubbed over them.

Here is Chudika giving it a try.

The flat surfaces with indented shum were the easiest panels from which to pull out a clear rendering.

Priya Alahan is working a more intricate sculpted image. These are much more challenging as there is no even surface. One has to make some artistic decisions in the process.

Isani working on another Shum mural.

Here is a sample of the finished work.

This is an image of Lord Siva, being worshipped.

No Audio Today

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Date: June_03_2003
Title: Affirmation Part 3-- Family affirmation, Sharing Life Decisions with God, Gods and Guru
Category: Self Improvement
Duration: 14 min., 15 seconds
Date Given: March 04, 2003
Given by: Bodhinatha

Gurudeva developed an affirmation for his married devotees and finished editing a final version of it about 6 weeks before his Mahasamadhi. He was inspired by the monks affirmation. The monks have an affirmation that we repeat every morning of our kulam days, the days we don't have retreats, we all gather. We first worship in Kadavul at 5:30 and then we have a meditation in the Guru Peedam. But, before we start the meditation we do an affirmation. We do it three times, not 50 or 100. It is very long, 3 times is long enough.

This one I am going to read. 3 times is definitely long enough for the families here. So you are not trying to do the same thing as the short one. The short one is like you don't have any muscle and you are really trying hard to rebuild it. You don't have any confidence, you are really trying hard to rebuild it. This is more when things are going along fine and we are just making sure that they continue to go along fine, reminding ourselves of what we want to do and what our goals are for our family. It goes like this.

"We the ..... last name of the family." We will call ourselves the Shivam family. We are all part of Siva's family.

"We, the Shivam family, beseech the grace of Panchamukha Ganapati to manifest His five shaktis of peace and harmony within our home and to joyfully fulfill the goals of grihasta life, as outlined in the 365 Nandinatha Sutras. We dedicate ourselves individually and together to work closely with Gurudeva in every aspect of our lives. Knowing that bonding is essential, we hold daily family meetings and Monday Home Evenings to cooperatively solve problems and create a loving, uplifting atmosphere in which each member develops discipline, responsibility and the spirit of divine service. We remain close-knit and cultivate unity by talking together about the experiences of our day, extending our affection and harmony to all other families of our church. We take time for training and we value mistakes as opportunities to learn. To us, the guest is truly God, welcomed and honored with heartfelt hospitality. Through our thoughtfulness, care and compassion, we allow an abundance of gold to accumulate within our home. We tithe our income monthly and tithe our time weekly in the service of our noble Saiva Siddhanta Church. We are filled and thrilled with the cosmic energy of God Siva, creatively alive and in tune with the universe."

Isn't that nice? Very inspiring.

Some of our members have this, at least, the previous version and I got a question on it recently. This is a very sincere member and he was reading it literally. "Working closely with Gurudeva in every aspect of our lives," and visualizing himself sitting there at his email all day long, trying to tell us what was going on in his life. It is very time-consuming to share your life. So he was saying, "What exactly does this mean? How many hours a day am I supposed to sit here at my email or whatever and share my life?"

So we wrote back, "It was good hearing from you again, as to how often and what detail you communicate. As you have already realized, detailed communication takes time even via email. Therefore, it is not really practical to do except in dreams. " Things happen quickly in dreams, you can tell your whole life in a second in a dream. "What is practical, is to be sure to communicate on important items. This is what Gurudeva really meant."

Important items to communicate on are,

1. Medium and large decisions which have options. For example, starting a new business, selling a home and moving to a new city, having a major illness treated, selecting a college for a son or daughter.

2. Second area, a tendency one wants to help to overcome, such as excessive worry or anger.

3. An aspect of Saivism where you feel your understanding is not complete.

Those are off-the-top-of-my-head examples of major items in someone's life. The reason it is important is, how what we do in major situations, really impacts greatly how the karma works out, how the karma flows, what we end up experiencing. There aren't that many major decisions in one's life. Just a few decisions, a choice of career, a choice of where to live, choice of this, choice of that, influence our life more than anything else. Therefore, wanting the karma to flow as smoothly as possible, it is shared with the Aadheenam.

One of the common problems or probably the common problem is a better way of saying it, in communicating between the Aadheenam and initiates, is that sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't, there are gaps.

Going along initiates asking everything and then we don't hear for six months and find out, "Oh, we moved, we changed jobs, we did this, we did that, here we are again." There are gaps. It is very hard to give good advise when there are gaps.

In that regard, I was responding to a gap that occurred. Here is an email I sent recently on how to maximize the support of the inner world. Sometimes also, initiates are very concerned about getting the support of the inner worlds, sending notes to the devas and everything and other times they just immediately make a decision. Shift jobs, do this do that without any sharing at all. So, we are trying for consistency in that regard as well. To get the full guidance and blessings from the inner world, this is an email, it is good to do the following before making every important decision.

1. Send a note to be burned in the Kadavul homa, which is burned a minimum of 72 hours before you need to make a decision. 72 hours is a minimum, longer is better, much better. The idea is, there is a writing from the devas which says, "You send us a note. Even though we act on it immediately, the result does not manifest in your world for 72 hours." An example we have given in the past is you look up in the sky and you see the stars. You are looking into the past. There is a time delay. It takes a certain amount of time for what is up there to get here. Light from the sun takes so many minutes and so forth. Stars take years, light years, there is a time delay. So we need to give notice, plan ahead 72 hours.

2. Include in the note a number of specific options. For example, in this case other job possibilities. Do not just ask if you should take this one job or not. Again, that is advise from the devas. "I have a job opportunity should I take it?" Not the ideal way to express it. The ideal way to express it is, "I have a job opportunity here. I am also thinking of doing this, thinking about doing that and this might manifest as well, then something is going on over here." Give all the options that are really under consideration and don't just ask, "Yes or no", on one option.

3. Do some special Ganesha worship, ideally at a temple. That helps us approach it with better timing, ideally perfect timing and with greater wisdom and less emotion, when we involve the worship of Ganesha first.

4. You can, in addition to this, ask my opinion after you have done all the above. Sometimes I get asked first. It is better to ask me last, after all of that has been done.

If you follow these steps then you can be assured you have done what you can to solicit the help of the inner worlds in your decision making.

The way Gurudeva taught us is, not to be passive. "God Siva, Gurudeva, devas, tell me what to do." That is being passive. We are not trying to be passive here. We are not trying to be helpless. It is a partnership. It is like husband and wife, they share things. It is not that one is trying to be passive by sharing. It is a partnership so you share. Husband and wife share, talk over things before doing something. Business partnership, you share, you talk things over and then you make a decision.

So this is a partnership between us and the inner worlds. We share, we talk things over. Because the inner world beings, Gurudeva, the devas, the Mahadevas are all working with us on the inside. We want to keep them informed and enable them to help and participate in our life. But, we don't expect them to tell us what to do. We just expect them to help us make a better decision, to help us be in the right place at the right time, whereas we might be in the wrong place. So, help it all work out better than it would without their support.

As we mentioned before, continuity is particularly important in delicate matters, sharing all the major events such as a serious illness. Quite often, there is a reluctance to share the problem in the first place, as well as, the tendency to not be consistent in sharing important details. Of course, we don't give specific medical advise. We can make sure a variety of opinions is being sought and the full range of treatments are being considered.

This is explained in Sutra 193. "Siva's devotees know wellness is balance. If the imbalance called illness occurs, they apply self-healing. Then resort as needed to such arts as ayurveda, acupuncture, chiropractic, allopathy, pranic healing or massage. Aum."

That is the idea there, that like in anything important you don't want to rely on only one opinion. In particular, we found that sometimes the opinion of one western physician might not be that close to how we look at it. It might be but it might not. So a couple of opinions in any serious issue, talking about medical issues is very valuable in different traditions, western opinion, eastern opinion. At least, get three opinions like you would in any other important matter. You would not just get one opinion and then look at the various options of treatment. Sometimes a combination of treatments can be helpful in solving the problem and not just one.

The key there again is consistency in communication. That is the major point we are making. Major medical issues, major employment issues, things like that. It is good to share and when we get a note, we always print it out and bring it to the Sun One homa and burn it to make sure that in case the devotee didn't do that, make sure Gurudeva and the devas have that knowledge and can keep continuity. That is what I call it, keeping continuity with everyone's life, in all aspects.

Have a wonderful day.

Aum Namah Sivaya.

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