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Talk to young people in your community. Tell them, "Think about it. Only you can make the decision. No one else can make it for you." You can't convince a young person here on the island of Kauai to surf on a fifty-foot wave. Youths also don't drive a hundred miles an hour down the winding mountain road from Kokee. Why? Because they know the consequence. They are well educated. They know the consequence and, be they 12 years old, 16 years old, 20 years old, 24 years old, they make the proper decisions about such things."

Selvi Jutikadevi had the last day of her pilgrimage with us and returned to Michigan today.

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Special Announcement! Bodhinatha Video On-Line

We are happy to announce that we have put Bodhinatha's Sun One Talk on the internet. Periodically, hopefully weekly, if our systems are all go...we will post the latest Sun one talk as a video.

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Using the latest technology: MP4 and Quicktime 6.0 we are able to serve you a 30 minute talk in a file that is only 9 megabytes.
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				Live Web Cam Pix!

Sivananda Katir is home for a break in his army training. He is working to get into the Special Forces. Here he sits with his father and Acharya Kumarswami... the recently rainy weather had cleared up and we are enjoying a cool, brilliant sunny day.

Today is the last day of this phase. This TAKA will remain up until Friday, January 3rd.

Our tour day brought quite a crowd!

Fresh mung bean sprouts are regular fare... here Sadhaka Tejadeva does one of the thrice daily honors: watering the bottles of sprouts.

These mung beans have been soaking over night and are ready to be drained.

Two days later, they are half way sprouted... in another two days they will be ready for a very tasty and nutritious curry.

Walking along the path on the way to the temple.

The property was really looking beautiful today and our guests were very uplifted.

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On the way to the temple....

The silpis have uncrated the new ceiling beams... which are really awesome to behold.

Our silpis at work.

They are doing some finishing work on the top of the 15th course.

This edge has to be taken down a bit to receive the beams that will be placed here later.

These are smoothing chisels. The chisel is rotated as it is hit and the hatches slowly smooth the surface. Progressively small hatches are used for a finer and finer finish.

Course 15.

This face of the retaining wall will be removed soon.

Mr. and Mrs. Baskaran from Edmonton, Canada were very impressed.

The Baskarans are key members of the Maha Ganapati temple in Edmonton which was supported and guided by Gurudeva through the years.

These are bases for each of the pillars

This water tank is filled from the nearby stream with a pump and services the silpi's cement and washing requirements. Stay tuned... two more containers will be here shortly and we will all see the face of the temple sanctum unveiled next week... have a Happy New Year night!

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Date: December_06_2002
Title: A Solution to Emotional Problems
Category: Temples and Temple Worship
Duration: 8 min., 25 seconds
Date Given: November 21, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha

Quite often individuals write in on e-mail or talk to me and there is some emotional problem that they are working through. Tending to get angry, tending to get upset, kind of depressed, fearful, whatever. I always give the same remedy, no matter what. I ask myself, "Is this an emotional problem?" If the answer is, "Yes", if their emotions are upset, then I say, "Well, spend extra time worshipping Lord Ganesha." Of course, if there is a temple nearby where they live I say, at the temple. That is the same idea as Gurudeva saying the temple is the psychiatrist.

In Western tradition, if you have problems you go talk to someone about them, you can help me solve my problems. It can be a psychiatrist, it can be a friend but you feel a need to talk over your emotional problems with someone. But in the Hindu tradition as presented by Gurudeva, we can talk it over with Lord Ganesha. It does not have to be a physical person.

Why does that work? Because Ganesha brings us up into the muladhara consciousness, if we are below it. He helps us center ourselves if we are disturbed. That centered, peaceful, contented consciousness is something we can all attain, if we lose it, through sincere worship of Lord Ganesha. In that sense, Ganesha is our psychiatrist as well as the temple.

Received some beautiful photos recently from Easan Katir, of his daughter Venita, dancing. Did we share that with everyone? She is very accomplished. Looked up her age and found it was eighteen and I said, "She is much older than I thought. I remember her when she was younger, in London with her British accent." Anyway, it was very nice and, of course, Bharatanatyam is one of the traditional forms of cultural accomplishments for Hindu girls in the Southern tradition. She a good example of that.

I don't know if we shared what Easan said. He seems to have had a chance to give a little talk there as well. He was promoting our pamphlet on the 'Nine Qualities to Cultivate in Children'. He stressed the point that if you follow these nine keys to raising children, then they become cultured people who when they are adults, don't argue and fight. That is how he was summarizing the cultured person. A cultured person is someone who does not argue and fight. If you argue and fight, you are not cultured, is what he was saying in a nice way.

He also made a statement, I don't know if he made it up or Gurudeva said it but it is really nice. "Culture is the integration of the Divine in everyday life." Isn't that nice? Culture is the integration of the Divine in everyday life. Meaning, sometimes we don't. There are parts of our life that we are integrating the Divine with, maybe everything we do at home. But, we go out the door, we forget that and become a different person. At school, at work, socializing, we are not following the same cultural practices we do when we are home. Or maybe we do it at one place when we are out but we don't do it at another place. We do it when we are at work but when we socialize we kind of forget about our cultural traditions.

So it is an interesting exercise to do, to look at the various areas of your life. Look at home, school, work, social situations and see, "Are there any parts of my life, where I am leaving out my Saivite culture? Just acting in an externalized, non-religious way, fitting in with the American non-culture. Are there any places?" You might find some and if so, you could give it some thought.

One idea that works very well in this sense is the idea of worshipping Lord Ganesha. The creed says, "Siva's followers all believe in the Mahadeva Lord Ganesha, son of Siva - Shakti, to whom they must first supplicate before beginning any worship or task."

So that means any task, right? Every single thing we start, we need to worship Lord Ganesha first. We are taking a test in school, we should be worshiping Lord Ganesha first. We are starting a new project at work, we worship Lord Ganesha. Of course, we don't have to do a half-an-hour puja before our test or at work, but at least in our minds, you know we are taking time to visualize Ganesha, in some way touch into His vibration to bless the project.

That is an example of integrating the Divine with everyday life. It is good to think about. This one particular belief is very helpful in that, lots of actions would never get instigated if we were worshipping Lord Ganesha first. You can't pick up the phone and scold somebody if you worship Lord Ganesha first. You just would not do it. You would think twice. You would say, "Gee! I can't do that. I want Lord Ganesha's blessings to call someone and scold them, who does not really deserve it."

You can see how integrating culture with life sometimes changes our actions for the better, which is the idea. There should not be part of our life that is ordinary and uncultured and other parts of our life which are cultured. We should try and put the religion, put the culture through all of our life in an appropriate way according to where we live, of course. We can't all wear three stripes and a pottu and traditional clothing and go downtown. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about acting in a refined way, following our religious beliefs and worshipping Ganesha and so forth, as is appropriate throughout whatever we are doing during the day.

Or said another way, we learn culture at the temple. Then, what we learn to do at the temple we repeat at home, at school and in the work place. We carry the culture out. Such as, worshipping Ganesha first, which we always do. For the puja, Tyaganatha starts with Ganesha, right? You can't start with anyone else, you have to start with Ganesha. So we learn in the temple about culture, through the pujas, through the traditional art forms of dance and music and everything. We try and take those principles out and make sure we are applying them to the rest of our life.

I really like that statement by Easan. "Culture is the integration of the Divine in everyday life." Integration is an excellent word, meaning the two are one, they are not separate. We have integrated it, we have made it absolutely part of everything we do throughout the day.

Have a wonderful week. Aum Namah Sivaya!

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MORE UPLIFTING THINGS		Innersearch 2003-4 in India! We just completed the July 17-23 Kauai Innersearch, 2002. Bodhinatha will lead the next Innersearch to India, between Dec 2003 and Jan 2004. We will visit Bangalore and the Iraivan Carving Village, and settle in the South in Tamil Nadu, Click on the above for details on what will be an inspiring journey to our holy land of Bharat!
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