Siva's mount Kailas in Kopay
July 28, 2021Today we received wonderful news from Kopay Kottam in Sri Lanka. This is the place where Gurudeva established the Shanthi Lingam back in the 80s and where the two Innersearches visited in 2018 and 2019. Here is the letter from Thondunathan that tells the tale.
Greetings:
A few months ago, I received a phone call from a lady in the United States who told me that she obtained my phone number from my friend who is a Buddhist monk. She introduced herself as a Sinhalese Buddhist originally from Sri Lanka and now living in the USA. Recently, she had a dream in which she saw a meditating Siva sitting next to a waterfall. She now had this desire to install a Siva statue in the hill country of Sri Lanka and she asked my help to find a Sthapati who can create the statue for her out of cement.
I approached Purushothaman Sthapati who is a well-known sthapati from India and has been building temples in Sri Lanka for the past 15 years. He agreed to create the statue, and within two weeks he made a beautiful, 6-foot tall statue. Because of the COVID-19 lockdown, we couldn't transport the statue right away to the hill country, so Sthapati brought it to our Sri Subramuniya Kottam for temporary housing. We sent pictures to the lady from USA who had ordered the statue.
A month ago, I received a phone call from her telling me that she now feels that the Siva statue should remain gracefully in our Sri Subramuniya Kottam and this is a gift from her to the Kottam. Everyone, especially our Kottam boys, are overjoyed with this generous gift.
We decided to build a rock mountain (Kailas) on which to place the Siva statue. During the mountain construction, Sthapati suggested that traditionally, when you build a meditative Siva statue, you also install four meditating sages in front of the Siva statue.
I suggested that instead of making the four sages, we could make statues of four of the gurus in our lineage--Kadaitswami, Chellappaswami, Yogaswami and Gurudeva--and place them in front of Siva.
Sthapati and his team successfully completed building the rock mountain and the statues, on July 24th, the auspicious Guru Purnima Day. We ceremoniously installed the statues on the rock mountain.
We never planned to have a Rock Mountain and Siva statue at our Kottam. Truly, it feels like this was Siva's will.
May God Siva and the Kailasa Paramparai Gurus grace flow through Siva's Mount Kailas in Kopay.
A local priest and Thondunathan preside at the installation of Siva and the four Satgurus. Gurudeva is next to Thondunathan, upper right.
Abhishekam is performed.
The Gurus are Kadaitswami, Chellappaswami, Yogaswami and Gurudeva.
The head of Nallai Aadheenam was in attendance with priests, Kottam youth and VIPs.
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