Mauritius devotees celebrated Guru Purnima on Sunday, the first day of the Guru Purnima Festival. Sishyas met at the Ganesha Mandapam where a special peedam was set for the Pada puja…

A cool morning and silence pervaded the Mandapam while the pada puja is being conducted.

The Guru’s Holy Sandals….

Kulapaties Manon, Koothan and Kulagan…

Devotees sang Narchintanai….

The arati…. everyone chanted the Guru Mantra…

Kulapati Mardemotoo gave a talk from two sections of the book “Living With Siva”. Emphasis was on the nature of God Siva and the need to spread the Guru’s teachings through inviting everyone to have a copy of the Saivite Trilogy.

Devotees are listening….

The Tiruvadi is covered with flowers…

Happy Guru Purnima to Beloved Satguru Bodhinatha from Mauritius sishyas…

Time for everyone to prostrate at the Holy Tiruvadi…

The youth joyfully waiting for their turn to prostrate at the Holy Tiruvadi.

Master Course, Level 2 student, Mootoocurpen leading a Natchintanai.

Devotees come forward for the flame and other blessed items.

Ravind Doorghiat and his wife have joined the Church membership. They are from Kulapati Koothan kutumba and have been long time dedicated arulsishyas of the Church. A happy Saivite family now… Congratulations!

Here Panshula meets with Shanmuganathaswami. Panshula Ganeshan explains how much Gurudeva changed his life for the better.

About 7 years ago, Panshula spent a few months here on task force. Pansula explained how, by following Gurudeva’s advice and staying in close communication, his life was transformed and continues to transform. The monks are so happy to hear his testimonies. Thank you Panshula!

Tour day brought many, many visitors.

Sun Three: The Pilliyar Kulam gave their news today. The major work of the Kulam has been the upgrade of the 4D Data base, which has been consuming all of Shanmuganathaswami’s and Yogi Jivananandanatha’s time. Shanmuganathaswam is also getting ready for a number of trips he will be taking later this year. Yogi Jothinatha continues to work on filling Hinduism Today with the advertisements needed to support the magazine.

Another major advancement by the Pilliyar Kulam is the establishment of two remote distribution centers. One is In India and one in Malaysia. The Malaysia store front just opened on the web this past week or so. Shanmuganathaswami has been working on this for over a year or more. Inventory of Himalayan Academy Publications are not available locally in both countries making the prices for items very inexpensive because there are no exorbitant shipping charges. Go to “http://www.minimela.com/” and if you are in India or Malaysia, click on the small link in the upper right corner. You will go to a web site with local prices and your items are shipped from our centers in Chennai and Kuala Lumpur.

Trishul joined the video team this morning, for the first screening of the monthly “Kauai’s Hindu Monastery” summary. This is also Trishul’s last morning with us. He leave to go back to Florida to return to medical school in a few days. Thanks for all the help Trishul!

It’s a video version of the newsletter the monastery produces each month, plus a wonderful excerpt from Gurudeva.

This morning Jon Letman came to interview Palaniswami about Hinduism Today. Jon is a Kauai journalist and is doing a feature for Pacific Business News magazine, so this will be the story of the business side of the magazine.

Jon has written stories about us for many years, and now serves as one half of a two-person team that does all of the media and publications work for the National Tropical Botanical Gardens here on the island. Jon loves India, where he has traveled frequently, and his 3 1/2 year old son is named Kailash.

After several years of work and coordination, Sivakatirswami is finally releasing some of the Natchintanai work. He prepared a small Natchintanai PDF booklet to be used for this summer’s children’s camps in Toronto. It fits on just six letter-sized sheets, is 24 pages long and contains 13 popular songs (just the first verse of the very long ones). You can go to http://www.himalayanacademy.com/natchintanai/ and click on the link to download the PDF’s. The file is already “bookletized” and you will need to take it to Kinkos to get copies printed (on both sides), folded and saddled stitched.

Swami has also posted 180 audio songs of Natchintanai on the web site. Special thanks to Mrs. Meena Thavaratnam in Toronto for all her recordings and Tiru Satkunendran for coordination and support.

Sri Subramuniya Kottam – Siva Yogaswami Guru Puja

We have received these two photos from the Sri Subramuniya Kottam in Sri Lanka celebrating Paramaguru Siva Yogaswami’s Guru Puja this past April.

And below we are happy to announce that the Cyrillic Version of Merging with Siva is nearing completion in the Ukraine. This is the fruit of years of work by Gurudeva’s lone Sishya and spiritual anchor for Saiva Siddhanta and the Kailasa Parampara in Eastern Europe: Chandra Shekharan. Congratulations Chandra and to the hIka publishing team!

It is Sun Two and Ekadanta Kulam of two gave it’s news. Sannyasin Saravananathaswami has been handling all the incoming Annual Rededications from sishya around the world. He sends a special thanks to everyone who sent in an updated digital photo for our database. He is also working on advance planning for Bodhinatha’s future events and travel.

Sadhaka Dandapani continues to do more work on our web site to refine and improve the pages with guidelines for visitors. He is also working on a super slide show of the last Innersearch, soon to be released.

We begin a new six-day phase today.

Saravanathaswami performs the homa.

In his talk this morning, Bodhinatha explained how he would respond when someone says they have lapsed in their sadhana. He said he always encouraged them to associate with those who are doing their sadhana, because they would be a positive influence on him. He said it was always best to do sadhana first thing in the morning. On a second topic, he explain that people should not try to get rid of their desires, but to transmute their desires into something hire. Desire, he said, follows the chakra which is most active. If we are in a low chakra, we might want to express revenge; but in a higher chakra we would want to express a divine love. It all depends on what chakra we were in.

The yantra that is in front of the Maha Spatika Lingam. This will one day be in the Iraivan temple.

Today Sun One report was from the Lambodara Kulam. Ceyonswami has been continuing coordinations with Selvanathan Sthapati in India on the final stages of the Auvudiyar (base) for the Maha Spatika lingam; Sadhaka Haranandinatha continues to log and keep track of all the incoming donations for Iraivan. He is also getting the list together for the next Iraivan day which will on this coming 3-day full moon retreat. Brahmachari Tandavan attends to his cooking duties and then helps Haranandinatha on data entry for guests. Brahmachari Nandi is also in the kitchen much of the time is researching new, non-aluminum baking pans and learning how to do bulk food orders. The two of them, are turning out some really great meals!

Sun Five, last day of the phase. The Ganapati Kulam gave their report today. Lots of work on video, the next school book history, lesson, articles for the coming October issue of Hinduism Today and many web projects.

~~~~~~~~~~~
END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming two-day retreat,
until Dasami Tithi, Sun One, Friday, July 11th.

Our sevaks in Malaysia are ever busy serving the mission. Ravichandran Ceyon writes:

I’ve created another new blogspot to update ourselves on the various activities done here while serving, doing sadhana in a ‘synergy loop’ , http://sivatondar.blogspot.com/ apart from the earlier http://iraivantile.blogspot.com/. I’ve posted a log of information on Satguru’s impending visit and talk in Johore Bahru, on August 25th.
Aum Sivaya,
Ravichandran Ceyon

Lord Pancha Mukha Ganapati July Homa at the Spiritual Park of Mauritius drew a large crowd of devotees as usual. The sun looked radiant in the morning and a cool sea breeze blew over the Ganesha Mandapam.

Before the ceremony starts the place is already full of devotees. Here are the devotees seated on the steps and under the tent outside.

The inside for devotees coming very early…

Bhajans helps build up the vibration before the Homa is lighted….

Devotees come up with all kinds of offerings to be used during the ceremony…

A few metres down, the land has been cleared and heaps of macadams are waiting there to be used to surface the platform down the river…

The platform down the river where devotees will collect water for abhishekam …

Steps will be built to go down to the slope…..

Families are devoutly worshipping at the Narmada lingam…

In the meantime archanas are being received at the small Ganesha Mandapam….

Devotees with their offerings…

Everyone has to queue up….

Near the Mini Mela a small murthi of Pancha Mukha Ganapati is on sale…

Sishya Magadevi Canagasby is taking care of this sale.

The Homa is now in progress. Thousands of prayers were sent into the inner worlds on that day.

A testimony about someone whose relative successfully underwent a delicate surgical operation and the family are very thankful to Lord Ganesha whom they prayed for help.

Kulapati Manon with the usual Talk from the Guru’s teachings.

At the Himalayan Academy Sales booth outside…

The ceremony is now over, and devotees are distributed blessed sweets at the main gate…

Sun Four…

The Siddhidata Kulam gave their news today. Yoginathaswami is ever busy at the temple site. For the past month the team had set aside most of their projects to focus on Iraivan Temple and the four stone lifts. Now they are free a bit more to work on other tasks. His team has started on a renovation of our outdoor laundry drying area. In an effort to save on energy costs we are expanding the number of clothes lines for hanging out monks clothes to dry in the fresh air. Because of our frequent showers we have to put these underneath tents.

Of course work in the Anna Purna gardens is a regular program. All the plants are doing really well with our warm weather.

It was tour day today. Both the 9 am and 11 am tours were busy.

A three-day Saivite Summer Camp was held in Chicago on June 13th, 14th and 15th. Twenty-eight children of all ages attended this year’s event which was conducted by Rishi Thondunathan. Children were instructed about the Nine Beliefs of Hinduism, karma, Dharma, Yamas and Niyamas, and more from Gurudeva’s book, Dancing with Siva.

Children performing the morning worship.

Children are introduced to the Himalayan Academy web
site where they can download Hindu teachings or purchase books.

Older children at the camp.

Younger children of the camp.

Last day at a public event where the children gave their presentations.

Parents and well-wishers at the event.

Sun Three today… The Pillaiyar Kulam shared news on its work. Shanmuganathswami reports on his preparations for a planned giving seminar in California later this year. He’s also been deep into programming our 4D Database which has a completely new engine which has switch to SQL as the data format for storage.

Muruganathswami and Yogi Jivananandanatha have also been working on testing, de-bugging and re-writing various parts of the new data base.

Yogi Jothinatha’s has been getting his web coding skills up to speed and his recent new HTML Himalayan Academy email newsletter which has all kind of interesting things about what is going on is generating a good response. This is something new and a lot of you may not know about it. You can sign up for this an all our other digital newsletters at this universal log in page If you are already getting other newsletters, Master Course or HPI, it’s OK and you can choose the ones you are not getting.

Task forcer Trishul spends his mornings in the Ganapati Kulam, helping with various jobs and is also working on an article for Hinduism Today on Hindu Youth in America. He will be talking with youth who have basically decided to stop following their tradition and with those, like him, who have stayed with it. He’s drafting an outline and preparing interview questions. He’s in med school now.

Our father Ralph Whitten came to visit today, he’s the dad of one of our swamis and here he is visiting with Palaniswami in the Ganapati Kulam.

With the help of some experts in the Los Angeles area, we got an utterly fantastic microphone… the NEUMANN BROADCAST MICROPHONE BCM 104.

It’s very unusual because you speak into it at a distance of about 1 inch away from the mic.

It drops out all the ambient noise in the room. For example even air conditioners, computer fans etc… all “disappear” and you have just the pristine sound of the narrator’s voice.

Palaniswami is working on a video that shows the silpis drilling a hole through granite. Coming to YouTube soon.

It is Sun Two and the Ekadanta Kulam gave news of their activities today. Saravananathaswami explained how he was working to implement the new digital Master Course. Students fill out their self-evaluation pages for the Master Course lessons in the computer in PDF’s. In Mauritius, not everyone has a computer so those students without computers are getting printed sheets and filling them in and then students with computers are teaming up to help them fill them in on screen and send them back to the Aadheenam.

Sadhaka Dandapani is focused on the Kauai Aadheenam monthly newsletter which is also a PDF that is put on our web server. He has also upgraded our visitor’s web page area to make our guidelines clear. There are two sections, one for pilgrims and one for casual visitors. Our retreat days are also shown to show when the monks will be unavailable and the San Marga grounds are closed.

He has also created a “mini-tour” map that details the area out in front of Kadavul, for arriving visitors. It shows the Banyan tree, Arumugam statue there, Kadavul Temple, the lookout to the river and Mini-mela.

Sun One begins a new phase with Bodhinatha looking bright during his weekly upadesha after the homa. He spoke this morning on Gurudeva’s teaching that one must become simple, direct and uncomplicated in order to experience Parasivam. It is the intellect that makes things complicated. “Concepts are not the goal,” he explained, “we must transcend the intellect to experience God.”

Nina Anand family and relatives visited for the first time from San Francisco Bay Area. They are friends of sishyas Hotranatha and Punita Ajaya. Had a wonderful visit to Iraivan and first darshan with Bodhinatha. Nina’s family recently became lifetime subscribers to Hinduism Today.

It’s the height of summer and the sun is already up at 6 am.

Trishul Siddharthan is here from Miami on a 10-day task force program.

Blue is a popular color today…

Something from the past… a picture of adoration…

On February 16th Bodhinatha was invited to be present for the inauguration of a great, new Siva temple being opened in Karnataka state. The inspiration behind the temple is none other than our own Sri Sri Balagangadharanathaswami, who has been so instrumental in the building of Iraivan over the years. This photo is taken at a high point in the consecration ceremonies.

Lord Siva is said to sit under the bilwa tree. This year one of our trees out by San Marga is giving a lot of fruit.

The flesh inside is highly potent and highly prized for it’s medicinal value.

As a side project, Kumarswami made a cricket bat for the silpis. Cricket is one of their favorite sports. Tourists and local marvel at their games at the beach on their outings. Here Manickandan is holding the finished project, made from cyprus wood.

Manickandan was the mastermind and designer of the bat. A couple retreats ago he was talking to Dandapani about a bat to replace the makeshift one they have been using, and Acharya handed him a piece of lumber that seemed to be about the right size. While other silpis continued chatting, he went off to the side and began making pencil marks on the board to indicate where to cut and trim. Thus, a bat was marked out, in silpi style. They are all delighted with the outcome and look forward to their next game!

It is the last day of the phase and the Ganapati Kulam gave their report at lunch. While they are doing many, many projects the big innovation of the day in our media world is a major shift into video production. Here we are in the Guru Peedam for a session this morning with Bodhinatha. Lights, teleprompter, “Action!”….

As the publications team dives deeper and deeper into film-making as a way to convey the profound teachings of Saiva Siddhanta, we see movie software on the screen more often. Today Palaniswami is making a short film that explores the ancient art of drilling a hole through a granite block, by hand!

In the Guru Peedam this morning, Bodhinatha inaugurated another movie first.

It is a teleprompter which allows him to prepare his talks, port them to the computer and have them displayed in large, legible type on a moving screen. Here Satyanatha controls the scrolling speed and Senthilnathaswami mans the video camera and lights.

Using these tools, Bodhinatha can make highly professional movies for his seminars, for YouTube, for conferences and other needs.

The words appearing on the Mac are duplicated on the Teleprompter screen.

The camera looks right through the screen to record. That way, Bodhinatha is looking right into the eyes of the viewers and making a more direct visual connection than can otherwise be achieved.

A marvelous upgrade for us. And Bodhinatha had a lot of fun being so professional.

Sadhaka Dandapani visits the Ganapati Kulam, working on a special slide show gallery for the 2008 Asian Odyssey.

Paramacharya Palaniswami has been honing his video production skills. One of the new productions is a quarterly video summarizing the content of the latest issue of Hinduism Today. Watch it in the YouTube video below.

Another stone lift today.. .the kodungai-sun shade stones for the east side of the temple went up.

The gardens are in full bloom now. These anthuriums always get visitors’ attention. They last for many months.