Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami have finished the program in Atlanta and are on their way to Chicago. Meanwhile we have pictures coming in from their meetings in Maryland.

Shanmuganathaswami shares a bit about those who came to see Bodhinatha:

This is Dr. Gurusamy, the chairman of the Murugan Temple of North America in Lanham, Maryland. He arranged our visit to the temple the next day for the darshan of Lord Muruga.

Padmini Saravanapavan (lower right) and her husband Arumugam were instrumental in the building of the Murugan Temple of North America. Gurudeva had given them a Ganesha murthi (statue) in the early 1980’s to start the temple. Behind Padmini is Kalyani, Padmini’s daughter and to the left is Valli, Kalyani’s daughter. Three generations visiting Bodhinatha. Padmini created two endowments for the Murugan Temple with Hindu Heritage Endowment. Bodhinatha presented Padmini with checks for the two endowment grants for 2004.

Nigel Siva, his wife Inpah and Inpah’s mother were on call throughout Bodhinatha’s visit to the Washington DC area. They are staunch devotees of Lord Muruga. Nigel teaches Saivism to the children at the Murugan Temple. He is a “karma yogi” and worked every day for four months to build a new stage for the temple cultural hall. Inpah cooked all the delicious meals for Bodhinatha during his visit, including murungai she had recently brought back from the UK.

Dharmalingam Siddhan, a second year Master Course student, drove all the way from Pittsburg to visit Bodhinatha. He has a new daughter, Neera, as a sister to his four year old daughter Dhara. Dharmalingam came last year to Maryland with his mother, Len, and his wife, Courtney.

Vayudeva Varadan writes the newsletter for the Murugan Temple. He is also on the executive committee and sets a fine example of volunteering his spare time and serving the local temple community.

Venkatt Guhesan came with his wife, Vinodhini. Venkatt is a computer programmer and is interested in helping with the TAKA website. He suggested we include some Tamil on our website to help serve a larger group of Tamil reading devotees worldwide.

Kalainesan, Ahila and son Yashwan came to see Bodhinatha.

Kulathungam visited us in 2004 at the monastery. He is a wonderful singer and sang some beautiful songs to Lord Muruga when he was at Kadavul Temple.

This is Anshul Mohaan who came to visit the monks several years ago when he was finishing school.

Here we are with a group photo of Murugan Temple devotees with Bodhinatha.

David Gorbani has been affiliated with the Murugan temple for about eight years. He is a very devout Western Saivite.

This is Ragavan, on the right, a devotee of Iraivan Temple. He came with his parents who traveled from Sri Lanka, Vinasithamby and Saravanandadvi.

Roman Hunt has been reading Gurudeva’s books for several years. He feels he is a true Saivite Hindu through and through. Bodhinatha presented him with the first year of study materials for The Master Course, a three year study of Gurudeva’s trilogy, Dancing, Living and Merging with Siva. Roman is a classic example of a Hindu being re-born in the West. He is anxious to adopt a Hindu name and raise his daughter as a Hindu.

It was tour day today at the Aadheenam. About 50 visitors were here.

Stone carving is a rare sight…

“This is incredible… who would have imagined something like this existed in Hawaii?”

Dr. Sunder and Thilaka spent their morning with us again…before returning to California.

Where is Siva?

Sometimes the swamis will use the following salutation to notes and letters:

Siva above us
Siva below us
Siva to the left of us
Siva to the right of us
Siva in front of us
Siva behind us
Siva outside us
Siva within us

Today we received a thoughtful assessment we thought you might enjoy, from a Gurudeva devotee and pilgrim to Iraivan.

“I was reading the eight lines above on Siva written by you. Being a scientific person, I wanted to include all possible directions (continuous and not discrete) and hence I wanted to come up with terms to do that. First, I said to myself:

Siva circumscribing us
Siva inscribing us

But I was not satisfied and wanted to come up with one ultimate word. It didn’t take me long to come up with the word:

Siva omniscribing us

I looked up the dictionary and did not find the word. If so, it appears that by Lord Siva’s grace, I have just coined a new word, “omniscribing,” meaning in all possible directions, not only outward but also inward. If the word already exists, please forgive me. If the word is indeed new and if it appears to mean what I intended it to mean, the credit does still not belong to me, because it is all owing to Lord Siva’s grace!”