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 two paths—householder and renunciate—every young man has to choose between them. In Hindu tradition the choice is made before the marriage ceremony, and, if not, during the ceremony itself. The choice must be his and his alone. Though guided by the advice of parents, elder family members and religious leaders, the choice is his and his alone as to how his soul is to live through the birth karmas of this incarnation. Both paths take courage, great courage, to step forward and embrace the responsibilities of adult life.“
For many years we used a certain dirt road (in addition to other roads) for vehicles to go past Iraivan Temple towards the Swayambhulingam Mandapam and west borders of our property, but it was steep and consistently gouged from heavy rain runoff. It also negatively affected water drainage on the northwest side of Iraivan Temple, so we finally decided to close it off in preparation for creating a concrete utility road around Iraivan in the hopefully not-too-distant future. Dennis Wong recently brought in dirt and boulders to lift the area and close it. The photos show a few angles, plus a larger visitor group experiencing Iraivan due to the end-of-year holidays.
This morning during Chitra nakshatra we observed the monthly pada puja for Gurudeva.
We just recently completed generating the “Cognizantability” resource section of Merging with Siva in Gurudeva’s clone voice. This will appear on the audiobook page for Merging with Siva that is being created. Here are the first few sections:
The five days of Pancha Ganapati home festival have begun around the world. We have hundreds of extra visitors coming to our monastery temples during this holiday time until after January 1st, so we’ve put copies of the Pancha Ganapati article at the Kadavul Temple entrance threshold for people to learn from.
December 21, yellow: The family sadhana for the first day of Pancha Ganapati is to create a vibration of love and harmony among immediate family members. The day begins early, and the entire family works together to design and decorate the shrine with traditional symbols, rangoli, lamps and more. Then a grand puja is performed invoking the spirit of Pancha Ganapati in the home. The sadhana of the day now begins. The family sits together for the purpose of easing any strained relationships that have arisen during the year. They make amends one with another for misdeeds performed, insults given, mental pain and injuries caused and suffered. When forgiveness is offered to all by one and all, they speak of each other’s good qualities and resolve that in the days ahead they will remember the futility of trying to change others and the practicality of changing one’s self to be the silent example for all to witness. Gifts are then exchanged and placed unopened before Pancha Ganapati. As family harmony is important to all Hindus, this sadhana must be taken very, very seriously.
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.
“There are two traditional paths for the devout Hindu of nearly every lineage. The first is the path of the renunciate. The second is the path of the householder,who guides human society and produces the next generation. The ancient ṛishis evolved well-defined principles for both, knowing that unmarried aspirants would most easily unfold by adhering to principles of nonownership, noninvolvement in the world and brahmacharya, while married men and women would uphold the more complex and material family dharma. Though the principles or guidelines for these two paths are different, the goal is the same: to establish a life dedicated to spiritual unfoldment, hastening the evolution of the soul through knowledge of the forces at work within us, and wise, consistent application of that knowledge.“
As announced earlier, we have professionally cloned Gurudeva’s voice based on hours of Merging with Siva lessons he recorded in the late 1990s. We have completed generating the remaining lessons of Merging with Siva in his cloned voice, and we have completed about 5/6 of the 365 lessons in Living with Siva.
Right now the audio files are appearing in the daily Master Course lessons on our website and in the daily email version if you are signed up for that. We are also going to present each book as a audiobook on our website. In this context, we want to generate additional parts of the book. For Merging with Siva, this means generating the Introduction, the resource section called Cognizantability, and the Conclusion. We just recently generated the Introduction, which lasts an impressive one hour and twenty minutes. Here it is–
The Introduction contains some thoughts not found anywhere in the 365 lessons, such as this section called “Nine Ways of Merging with Siva”–
Nine Ways of Merging with Śiva
Merger—that is what this book, the third book in the trilogy of Dancing with Śiva, Living with Śiva and Merging with Śiva, is all about. Some of the big questions about something as wonderful as becoming one with the universe or with God are: Is merger something to accomplish in this lifetime, or shall we put it off to another round? Is merger something that can be achieved even in future lives, or should we consider that it might never happen, or that it just might happen unexpectedly? Is merger with Śiva complete annihilation, an undesirable nothingness that we should delay as long as possible? Shall we cease all striving for realization and wait for mahāpralaya, the end of the universe, the Great Dissolution commanded by Lord Śiva, when every soul, young or old, merges in the All of the All—no exceptions, no one left behind, the ultimate perk of the Divine Cosmic Drama, the guarantee of final merger of every soul? Fortunately, the next Big Bang may happen after Śiva gets lonely dancing by Himself and starts His creation all over again.
Merger on the great inner path described in this book is already happening in your life and in the life of every soul on the planet, in the natural course of evolution. In Sanskrit, we express “Merging with Śiva” as Śivasāyujya, “Intimate union with the Divine.” Nine progressive ways of merging with Śiva are possible today, in fact impossible to avoid. Shall we now explore these nine ways, the wonderful ways of merging with Śiva as we walk the San Mārga, the straight path of dharma?
A jīva, or soul, merges with his potential mother who gives a physical body to which his astral body is attached. This is the first merger. Then, when his first guru, the parents, train him to quell the instinctive mind and become a producing member of the family and the social and global communities, the second merger occurs. Why should these two developments be related to merging with the Supreme? It is because Śiva is the life of our lives, as the venerable saints teach. Śiva is the life of the life of all sentient and insentient beings, the sea of prāṇa, ever emanating, mysteriously, from the All of the Allness of His mystery Being, by which all life exists and all happenings happen. Therefore to merge energies with all other humans without making differences is to find Śivaness in all and within all.
Having merged with the biological and social worlds, it then is for the young jīva, embodied soul, to be introduced by the parents to the family guru for spiritual training. Obedience and devotion to the guru is again another merger into Śivaness, for the satguru is Sadāśiva, or Śiva in form, having realized Śiva in Formlessness. It is from the satguru’s constant, silent emanation that the śishya thrives, as do flowering trees, bushes and vines thrive and grow from the sun’s silent rays and the occasional showers of rain. No words need be spoken, for both śishya and guru know the same—the śishya having had his training in scripture, divine inspiration of song, meaning and dance from his first guru, the parents.
Having walked the San Mārga through the charyā and kriyā mārgas, and having disciplined mind and emotions, the śishya is ready for the fourth merger into Śivaness. This is accomplished through art, calligraphy, drawing divine forms, writing out scripture in one’s own hand and depicting through drama, by learning and playing music, by having all bodily currents move into the rhythm of the sounds of nature, for nature is nāda in the external. It has its own choreography, and this merger is with Naṭarāja, Lord of the Dance. It is also the merger with knowledge of all kinds, of language and mathematics, of the many sciences and arts.
The fifth merger is deeper: endeavoring to penetrate the intuitive world, communing with nature, encountering the many dreams, visions and other mystical experiences that await the seeker of Truth. It is merger with the selfless life, of seeing oneself in others, and others in oneself, of losing the barriers that divide one from another, and the internal world from the external world. It is living a harmonious life with a heart filled with love, trust and understanding for all, desiring to give rather than wanting only to receive. The light that lights each thought picture when traced to its source is the sixth merger—the yoga of detaching awareness from that which it is aware of and being the light that lights the thoughts, rather than claiming identity as being the thoughts, then tracing this light of the mind out of the mind into the beyond of the beyond. Yea, this is the sixth way we merge into the Divine. The Lord of the Dance emanates His own lighting effects, does His own choreography, creates His own music and enjoys, as the audience, His own performance.
The seventh merger is into the nāda-nāḍī śakti, that unrelenting sound heard as an inexplainable “eee,” of a thousand vīṇās being played simultaneously by Vīṇādhāra, another form of Lord Śiva, the maker of sound, the composer of the symphony. The nāda is traced to its source, deep within the within, the city of a thousand lights and sounds, for sound is light and light is sound in this sphere of Satchidānanda, all-pervasive oneness with all form, the Self flowing through the mind, untouched by it, yet sustaining it in a mightily mysterious way.
The eighth merger with Śiva is Paraśiva. Becoming and being timeless, formless, spaceless is the total transformation of the soul body, the mental body, the astral body, the prāṇic body and the physical body. It is the breaking of seals which subsequently makes changes never to be repaired. A new, an entirely new, process begins. It is the ultimate healing of all karmas, the ultimate knowing of dharma.
And now, lastly, once the soul evolves out of the physical, prāṇic, emotional, mental and causal sheaths—annamaya, prāṇamaya, manomaya, vijñānamaya and ānandamaya kośas—and they are needed no more, it evolves into viśvagrāsa, the ninth and final merger with Śiva, as an infant effortlessly becomes a child, a child a youth and a youth an adult. Yes, the soul, jīva, encased in five bodies, is indeed merged into the emanator, preserver and absorber of the inner and outer universes as simply as a drop of water merges into the ocean, never to be found again. This is the timeless path the holy Vedas of the Sanātana Dharma proclaim. As a seed becomes a bud, and a bud becomes a flower, these nine steps of spiritual unfoldment are inevitable for all humankind. A parallel analysis known as dasakariyam, “ten attainments,” is found in ancient Tamil texts.
