Blog Archives
Today is “Ashram Sadhana” day in the monastery, when everyone is cleaning, cleaning, cleaning…. Gurudeva says:
“A clean personal environment, wearing clean clothes, bathing often, keeping the room spotless where you meditate, breathing clean air, letting fresh air pass through your house, is all very important in the fulfillment of purity.”
Meanwhile we have another wonderful series of photos from the mission to Mauritius…and the final departure mission day in Singapore
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Bodhinatha at the Hindu Center in Singapore giving his talk on “Parents are the First Guru.” (see below)
Cybertalk: Bodhinatha speaks a bit about the Jivana Ritau and its focus on looking at areas we are weak in and trying to upgrade. The yamas and niyamas are the ideals we are striving for, and it’s alright to fall short. Don’t get stuck in feeling bad for falling short. Try again, and try to do better each time.
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Shailesh Trivedi, our new task forcer is having classes daily in the afternoon with the monks who are on vigil from 3pm to 6pm. Sadhaka Jothinatha reviews our monastic vow books with him. Shailesh has expressed interest in monastic life, so now’s a time for him to learn what it is all about.
Gurudeva’s spiritual center in the island country of Mauritius
in the Indian Ocean near South Africa
We bring you more pictures from Mauritius… the final afternoon in the North and the day in the South. Here is Bodhinatha with Prithviraj Putten Deputy Speaker of the House, Government of Mauritius and a long time student of Gurudeva’s teachings, with his son. Prithviraj says that he has made his platform in politics standing on Gurudeva’s Nandinatha Sutras as his guiding principles.
Mr. Krishna Peramal, the owner of Residence Peramal in Grand Baie, who graciously offered two of his bungalow/apartments for Bodhinatha and the monks to use during their stay.. Thank you Mr. Peramal for your generous gift which gave Bodhinatha such a beautiful, tranquil and private place from which to conduct his mission in Mauritius.
Beautiful Shum embroidery that was made by Lomavadee Moorooven and now hangs at the Dharmasala.
Bodhinatha gives a talk about Business ethics to the Indoe Businessmen of Mauritius at a luncheon which was organized by Kulapati Manon Mardemootoo and his son Sivakumaren Mardemootoo of Mardemotoo Solicitors. The luncheon was attended by top business leaders of Mauritius. The Consulate General of India was also present. His talk was very well received.
After the luncheon, Bodhinatha met the President of Mauritius at the Clarisse House. The President felt that the loving atmosphere in the family unit are lacking these days. Fathers working overtime, mothers working outside the home causing a rift in the relationships between parents and their children. Often times he said this is caused by parents who do not have time to talk to their children because they come home feeling exhausted or come home and watch TV with the little time they have in the evening rather than having a family dinner to bind the family. We shared with the President of our Church policies concerning family unity such as once a week Family Home Evening where all members of the family gather and have fun and limiting TV viewing to two hours a day.
The President also asked that Bodhinatha pray for the welfare of the people of his country and for peace.
Bodhinatha appears on Mauritius Broadcasting Company’s Meera Vyapooree talk show where he spoke about the Nine Key Qualities to Cultivate in Children, which was a theme throughout his trip.
Rajen Manick and his wife Premila Manick, our dynamic TAKA reporter for our activities in Mauritius with Bodhinatha.
On the last day in Mauritius, our team went to the south of the island … here is Bodhinatha with our Church members of Chemin Grenier, Mauritius.
The temple trustees of the Maha Mariamen Temple of the next door town of Chamouny invited Bodhinatha to bless the murthis and yantra that will be installed in temple. Gurudeva had gifted a large Ganesha murthi to this temple years ago. Here he is paraded to the temple and was received by the temple priests who came from all over the country to help with the Mahakumbhabhishekam. Bodhinatha’s presence was truly appreciated.
Here are the murthis for the temple. The large Ganesha was sent by Gurudeva. Traditionally Satgurus were invited to preside over the Mahakumbhabhisekam so that a strong link is established in the inner worlds with the temple. The priests felt that it was auspicious that Bodhinatha happened to be travelling to the South on the day before the kumbhabhishekam and immediately sent an invitation.
Bodhinatha blesses the mystic yantra diagram that is etched in metal which will be placed underneath the Deities.
Saiva Siddhanta Church
Singapore Mission
The final day of the mission before returning to Kauai was in Singapore. Here we are on September 15th at the Hindu Center in Singapore where Bodhinatha gave his talk “Parents are the First Guru.”
A small but very attentive audience listens carefully as Bodhinatha elaborates on his themes of positive discipline. Click here to read about these principles.
Sannyasin Shanmuganathaswami listens as well. Swami has been working closely with Gurudeva and now Bodhinatha, for many years, handling the communications with all the sishya around the world.
Satsang Dinner with Singapore members
Dohadeva Samugam gave a gift to Bodhinatha of a gold ring in the shape of a Vel.
Bodhinatha remarked with a smile: “This ring on the right is Bodhinatha and the ring on the left is Veylanswami.”..
As usual the Singapore Mission, being at the “gateway” to South Asia are on hand to receive and to also host the departure of our Satguru and monks on their way to and from Kauai Aadheenam. And what a beautiful group and city it is! Thank you all in Singapore, Malaysia and Mauritius for making this trip such a great success and taking care of Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami! Gurudeva is blessing us all with great joy from within his inner world, no doubt proud of all that you have done.
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transcription begins
Date: August_11_2002
Title: 2002 Kauai Innersearch Day 2, Part 1
Category: Karma
Duration: 8 min., 41 seconds
Date Given: July 19, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
Some of you may not have been here yesterday. So, we are going to review just a little bit as we go along. We are looking at karma and the understanding of karma as a three-fold process. The first step is to rid ourselves of any misconcepts, get rid of the false concepts, the popular stereotypes that are incorrect. The second is to understand the correct concepts and we are taking a few of those everyday. The third is to apply those correct concepts to our everyday life.
If we understand the concepts, that is good but that is not enough. We have to actually apply them to our everyday life, in order to receive the benefits of the whole process. To apply them, we have developed ten principals for ‘Effective Karma Management’. We looked at two of those yesterday and we are going to look at two more of those today.
We are starting with a misconcept. So I will ask you after I read this, how many of you have ever heard this? “My life is in a state of chaos. Everything is going wrong and it all started three months ago when Saturn entered Taurus and my karma changed.” Okay, some of you have heard this. “I have been advised that if I can successfully appease Saturn through having a priest do regular Sani puja, my problems will go away. Therefore, that has become the entire focus of my religious life at this time.” How many of you have ever heard that statement? Okay, quite a few, quite a few.
This is based on a true story, as most of these items are. Sometimes I don’t tell the true stories because there is not enough time. But we have enough time, we have five classes and it is fun to hear the real story, right? The real story happened in Kuala Lumpur probably five or six years ago. A very sincere, young Hindu man I think, about age thirty, came and visited. We had a great talk together. He had been reading Gurudeva’s books a little bit, was very interested in the teachings and was very busy. You know how life is. You work long hours and then you go home and have your family duties and sometimes you have a commute too. Between all three, there is hardly any time to do anything else. He was in that situation but he was proud. He said, “Even though I am so busy, I still go to the temple every Saturday so I can do Sani puja. I can have the priest do Sani puja every Saturday. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Here, the only religious practice he was doing was attending temple so a priest could do a Sani puja to fix his karma, because things were going poorly in his life because of his astrology.
Of course, that is off base. If our only practice to be that, we are missing the point. What is wrong with this approach? It attributes the problem to the planet Saturn. Saturn is the culprit. If we could only fix our relationship with Saturn everything is okay, which of course, is not the point. Our own karma is the culprit. We are looking in the wrong place entirely. We are looking outside up into the sky and saying, “You are to blame.” We are not looking inside and saying, “I am to blame.” We are missing the whole point here.
We have an analogy. Remember these analogies work better in the full text because they go in a certain order. This one is slightly out of order but it still works. It is like being in jail and what are you doing? You are pleading with the jailer to let you out. “Please let me out, this is a terrible place. I really don’t like it here. Just please let me out.” That is like talking to Sani, Saturn. “Please change my karma. Oh, this is terrible. I don’t like this at all.” What is the problem with that? It is missing the point of why you are in jail in the first place. I mean, simply to be in jail and say, “Let me out, it is unpleasant,” you have forgotten an important point is something put you in jail in the first place, something caused you to go through this experience and you are forgetting all about it. You are looking in the wrong place. You are looking at the jailer, saying, “Let me out”, rather than looking at yourself and saying, “Now, what did I do to put myself in here? Maybe I better recall. Maybe I better do something in that regard.”
Sometimes it is looked at that, astrology is controlling our karma. Let me say that another way. Sometimes it is looked at that, astrology is creating our karma. There we have in the astrology a certain alignment and that is creating our karma. Whereas, the correct understanding is, our karma created our astrology. So that is what we always have to remember when we think about astrology. We look at it and we can learn quite a bit about astrology. Astrology can be quite helpful and we will look at that, I think it is tomorrow, it is a topic coming up. Astrology can be quite helpful. We are not saying that it cannot. But, you have to always remember that astrology does not create the karma. Our karma created the astrology. So, we have to remember that and focus on the karma, use the astrology to understand our karma.
There is an interesting practice going on quite a wide scale. Transcendental Meditation movement has an interesting program which relates to this idea. They have a ‘Sponsor a homa’ program to fix your astrology. How many of you have read their literature or heard of their program? I was looking for the literature on my desk, I could not find it. I was going to bring it and read something from it. It is quite expensive, it is a good fundraiser. But, it has the problem that it is having you focus on the wrong cause. If things are going poorly in your life, “”Of course, your astrology is to blame. All you have to do is fix your astrology by doing this sponsorship. You can do a homa, sponsor a homa. You will fix your astrology and everything in your life will go fine. It is just your astrology.”
That is missing the cause. The cause is your karma. The approach we would say is, well homas are great. If you are going to sponsor a homa, fine. But don’t do it to fix your astrology, do it to worship God. We encourage homas, sponsorship of homas too, but not to fix what is going wrong in your life, not to fix your astrology.
To fix what is going wrong in your life, you have to first of all attribute it to your karma and then work with your karma. You can change your karma, you don’t have to experience it in its crudest form. You can change it and that is called mitigate, lessening the impact of your karma. You don’t totally rewrite it but you make it work out in a more refined way.
That is a very important point we are looking at as part of these classes, the concept of lessening our karmas. If things are going wrong in our life and we know it happened because our astrology changed, don’t focus on the astrology, focus on the karma.
transcription ends
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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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From Our Gurus' Teachings
Archives are now available through 2001. Light colored days have no posts. 1998-2001 coming later.
