Over the decades we have commissioned a large amount of artwork by painter A. Manivelu for our publications, and we also hired sculptor L. Balachander to create the five forms of Siva placed in the niches around Iraivan Temple’s mukhapandam. These two artists are among six being honored by the Tamil Nadu government’s Art and Culture Department, Fine Arts Committee. They are receiving the Kalaichemmal Award for 2024-2025, which annually recognizes both traditional and contemporary artists in the field of fine arts for their exemplary achievements and contributions. The artists each receive a cash prices of Rs.100,000.
This morning we conducted pada puja to Gurudeva on Chitra nakshatra. Enjoy this randomly selected Q&A with Gurudeva in his final year, 2001–
What the soul learns; Being on the right path
Author: Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Description: A cyberspace devotee from India wants to know if the soul is also learning when the mind is being educated. Gurudeva says we are the soul and anything that is taken in through the layers of the mind the soul will be aware of it. In today’s second question a cyberspace devotee wants to know why there is sin and suffering. Gurudeva says the first thing to do is to define the path that you are on. The Saivite path looks at suffering and happiness as different intensities of the emotions.
The heavily used back road going towards the new Siddhidata Kulam building has a culvert to channel downslope rainwater. It’s easy for gravel and debris to be pushed off the road and start blocking the culvert. To prevent this, and also for the safety of vehicles crossing the narrow space, a thick cement barricade was created on the edge. The other side is being prepared for the same.
In the new Siddhidata Kulam building office, SSC sishya Easvan Param was just here with a team to install electrical materials for the office and also plan for a solar panel installation on the roof. After he finished, our employees and monks are just finishing installation insulation in all the walls.
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
“The grand old man of the East who ordained me, Jnanaguru Yoganathan, Yogaswami of Jaffna, used to say time and time again, “It was all finished long ago.” It’s finished already. The whole mind is finished, all complete, in all stages of manifestation. Man’s individual awareness flows through the mind as the traveler treads the globe. ¶Now we come to the real study, and this applies right to you and to you personally: the five steps on the path of enlightenment. What are they? Attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation and Self Realization. Those are the five steps that awareness has to flow through, gaining strength each time, on the path to enlightenment. When we first start, awareness is flowing through many areas of the mind. And if it is a mature awareness, we will say it’s a great big ball of light, flowing through the mind. And if it’s not a mature awareness, it’s like a little ping-pong ball, bouncing around. The little ping-pong ball awareness is not going to walk the path of enlightenment, so to speak. It’s going to bobble around in the instinctive mind, incarnation after incarnation, until it grows to a great big ball, like a great big beach ball. Then finally it will have enough experiences flowing through the mind to turn in on itself. When this happens, certain faculties come into being. One of them is willpower. And we learn to hold attention. We learn to hold awareness at attention. Awareness: attention! “
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
“When your awareness is in superconsciousness, you see yourself as pure life force flowing through people, through trees, through everything. I have seen myself, in a certain state of samādhi, as pure life force flowing through a jungle, through trees, through plants, through water, through air. That is superconsciousness. It is so permanent. It is so real. Nothing could touch it. Nothing could hurt it. In this state we see the external world as a dream, and things begin to look transparent to us. People begin to look transparent. This is superconsciousness. When we look at a physical object and we begin to see it scintillating in light as it begins to become transparent, this is superconsciousness. It is a very beautiful and natural state to be in.”
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami has returned to the St. Louis metro area on a short trip. He is chief guest for the prana pratishtha of the utsava murtis at the Murugan Temple of St. Louis. Flights were delayed, but he was able to attend the main event on Sept 15 from about 9am to 2:30pm. The event was the second yagashala puja followed by abhishekam of the utsava murtis. In the middle Satguru gave his talk on “Why Do We Need Hindu Temples?” About eight hundred devotees in attendance—they had expected five hundred.
There were three priests involved. One of them, Sivasri Muralidharan Bharadhwaj Gurukkal, had participated in Iraivan Temple’s prana pratishtha events last year.
