Today Gurudeva gives a special message to all the dedicated silpis, traditional stone carvers, who have been carving the Iraivan Hindu temple in Bangalore for the last 10 years. Today is a special day for them, when they have special pujas and they honor and bless all of their tools, thanking them for their service and starting a new year together. Today, the silpis are blessing their tools, and Gurudeva is blessing the silpis!

Unedited Transcript:

We have a cyberspace from our Bangalore temple building site in India asking for the blessings for the slipis and those are the stone carvers that have been working for ten years building the Iraivan temple. At this time of the year they have a great ceremony blessing all of the tools that they use in their advanced craft.

We want to bless each and everyone of you who have revived and kept going and trained your sons. We have 75 of you now and we hope to have many, many more in the future. You've all served with great loyalty and dedication. Under the expert leadership of Sri Ganapati Stapati and your own Jiva Rajesankara the Iraivan temple is being built and will be a credit to each and everyone of you in your future lives. We do not want to compromise the artistic workmanship in finishing up Iraivan temple but we are finishing the temple, it's over half finished now and we know that you'll continue as you have been, expert artistry and we know that Iraivan temple will be India's gift to the Western world and those who come on pilgrimage each year worshiping at this wonderful temple some of the blessings with go to each and everyone of your families generation after generation. Aum Namasivaya