Happy Satguru Jayanti! Today is Bodhinatha’s birthday and he is receiving emails from all around the world…

This phase began with the morning homa in Kadavul Temple conducted by Saravananathaswami.

By now you may be wondering, “Wow! What happened to TAKA?” Since TAKA’s inception on August 16, 1998, the page has undergone a number of changes and one make-over. This year, as a special birthday gift to Bodhinatha, the mathavasis decided that we wanted to completely redesign the page from the ground up. We were inspired with the beautiful design of a web page done by Dave Shea, one of the web’s best designers, and we asked his permission to adapt it for TAKA. He told us he couldn’t think of a better use for his design. So, we went to work for a few weeks, adapting it to our special needs and graphics and here it is, inaugurated on the happy occasion of Bodhinatha’s 62nd birthday, a gift to him and to all cyber cadets, as Gurudeva loved to say. We hope you like it.

Our main goal was to simplify everything and dedicate this main column to photos and captions, focusing in completely on what’s happening here at Kauai Aadheenam as well as with Bodhinatha’s travels, our various missions around the world, the Iraivan Temple carving site in India, etc. When the transcript of one of Gurudeva’s or Bodhinatha’s talks is being posted here, it will appear at the bottom as usual. All the links to other areas you are accustomed to seeing throughout TAKA have been reorganized and now appear in the sidebar at the right. We invite you to take a look and see what’s there today. Try out some of the buttons and see where they go.

We especially invite you to check out the video button, which will give you a short movie on Iraivan temple which the monks produced recently for Bodhinatha’s travels. It shows the crane lifting the gold-leafed capstone into place on August 4th, and it has some nice insights by Gurudeva.

You will also find a new way to access TAKA archives. Instead of navigating through several windows, you can now just fill in the day, month and year you are searching for. Much faster that way. If you are looking for a recent page, say yesterday, you can just select the day of the month, which is now always displayed along with the days we posted new TAKAs. If you watch closely in the days ahead, there will be small, subtle changes that appear in the design.

When we post an audio inspired talk from Bodhinatha, the description and links to listen to it will be on the right side among the various buttons and resources, so look for talks there instead of in the main window as you are accustomed to. You might occasionally find some other surprises waiting for you there, so keep a close eye on it from day to day!

Today Bodhinatha shared with all the Kauai members the details of his weekend in California.

This fantastic array of tropical flowers, all from the monastery gardens, was prepared for Bodhinatha’s birthday. What a gorgeous design…

Speaking of designs… For the web-code-savvy among you, check out the site links to Home, Temples, Publications, Hindu Basics and About Us. These along with TAKA are completely based on CSS and use no tables for page layout.

Eventually we hope to have all pages be completely CSS coded to stay on the cutting edge of web information delivery. For the web nerds among us, a DOM without any presentational markup is almost as beautiful as this arrangement. 😉

Stepping back to our retreat… Chitra pada puja, the monthly observance of worship of Gurudeva’s sandals on the occasion of the nakshatra of his mahasamadhi, was held in the evening of the first day. The large photo of Gurudeva was changed for the month.

Our photographer takes a closer look at the inside of Kadavul Temple. Here we are at the feet of Lord Nataraja who is not to be photographed. This is the inner sanctum of the temple with the small crystal Sivalingam that is worshiped daily at 9 am.

Saravananathaswami worshiping at Siva’s feet.

Someone has offered a beautiful garland for the crystal.

Inside the Muruga sanctum a smaller statue of Lord Dandapani is being blessed and will eventually be installed in the east side niche shrine on the outside of Kadavul Temple to replace the one that is there now.

We went to Iraivan early yesterday to catch the newly installed bhadra pillars in the morning sun…

The third, top portion of the east bhadra pillar was installed last phase. Yoginathaswami and Shanmugam Sthapati have found a way to use our fork lift to raise these up, and Swami now has greater precision over the placement than with the crane. We save a lot of expense also!

The temple now carries a very strong force, much like you feel when you go to India, as more and more pieces take their place.

Jai Iraivan!

Kulapati Janaka Param and Kulamata Bhavani live “out of town” up in the beautiful area of Mendocino, on the beautiful Northern California coast. Hindus are few and far between in the area, but Lord Ganesha’s Visarjana is sure to bring them tog
ether. Janaka writes:

Here are the happy children after making their clay Ganeshas for the Big River, Mendocino, Ganesha Visarjana.

From left to right: Sarina, age 6; Meghana, age 7; Shivani, age 12; Annika, age 4; Dilan, age 7

Here they are shown clearly with some of the model murthis. Very well made, nice looking Ganeshas.

Janaka Param performing the pre immersion puja at Big River beach, Mendocino, California, September 12, 2004.

The parade begins! On the right is Kavita Kao, mother of Anikka and Meghana.

Kavita, Victoria, Meghana, Annika, Ranjan Patel, Bhavani and I in the background.

Now you can see Sarmista Patel.

Some photographer we never saw before is charmed by the festival. Now you can see Victoria (in purple).

Close to the water s edge. Taj and his friend in the background.

Ganapathy Bappa Moriya!

Entry into the ocean.

Janaka and unknown photographer. Just after this photo a large wave reclaimed Ganesha to merge with the ocean, symbolic of Ganesha s merger into the Ocean of Consciousness.

Resting after saying farewell to Ganesha.

Walking back from the immersion. This is such a beautiful location for the Visarjana.

By the puja site.