For the conference in Montreal recently, Bodhinatha presented a Keynote speech which was a highlight of the five-day event on World Religions After 9/11.

Meanwhile, for those Satguru Speaks – Inspired Talks fans… keep a close eye on the right side bar for new talks by Bodhinatha being posted to the audio library.

Today he gathered his team together to record the entire thing for making a 60-minute movie. He is shown here reading from the script as the movie records.

Yogi Japendranatha helped with the technical issues. It is our first such movie, and Bodhinatha envisions many more uses.

Arumugaswami brings us a few photos and captions from the trip to Montreal.

The World Religions After September 11 was held at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, an immense convention center in the center of town. We learned later that Montreal is on an island twice the size of Kauai.

Bodhinatha with Dr. Brindaban Bihari Das, known as Kathia Baba, of the Santadas Baba Ashram in Varanasi.

Bodhinatha gives the plenary session address on the afternoon of Friday, September 15. This address will shortly be available on DVD and on the Web. It dealt with how religions can learn to better work with the media to achieve more accurate portrayal of their beliefs and activities.

Following his address, Bodhinatha was interviewed by a Canada-based Muslim TV news report.

Arumugaswami, who accompanied Bodhinatha to Montreal, gave a short presentation as part of a panel of Proselytization and Religious Freedom chaired by Dr. Kusumita Pederson. The panel also included Dr. Sumner B. Twiss, an eminent Catholic scholar who was instrumental in the Vatican II conference in the 1960s.

Dr. Arvind Sharma is a long-time friend of Hinduism Today and the organizer of the conference. He is professor of religion at McGill University in Montreal.

Bodhinatha met with M. Govindan Satchidananda of the Kriya Yoga Sangam. Part of their discussion focused on the Sangam’s translation and printing of the Tirumantiram.

We’re almost home, as the red line on the airplane display shows….

Last month was our quarterly Hindu Heritage Endowments (HHE) meeting, held at a special resort about 30 miles from the monastery. Our special guest was Sivakumaran Mardeemootoo who was visiting Kauai from Mauritius.

The stewards of HHE meet quarterly to review the 65 different funds, discuss plans for the future and educate monks and members in the sometimes esoteric mechanisms of endowments.

HHE is dedicated to give financial stability to Hindu institutions around the world, and is unique in that it can receive cotributions in the US that are tax-decuctible and send those out of the country.

Sivakumaran’s law firm is the largest in the Indian Ocean, and he had some insights into the workings of HHE that were quite useful. He and his family are great supporters of Gurudeva’s mission and monastery.

Bodhinatha guides the meetings.

Much of the work in preparing reports is done under the supervision of Shanmuganathaswami, who is actively working to bring new funds into the endowment in the years ahead.

Quiet and thoughtful, Sivakumaran listens to the reports.

Later that day we found Sivakumaran’s entire family in the Banyan Mandapam, gold-leafing.

They were joined by Amala Seyon, whose grandaughter Basanti is there on the right.

Young Jeyendra oversees the work.

Family portrait.

We bring you now a mini-documentary on cement making, Indian style.

The silpis make mortar for the roofing stones now and then.

It’s all done by hand and is hard work. After it is made, it is lifted on pulleys to the rooftop.

We made a short movie to show you the process. It is yet another of the tasks that, one by one, add to the completion of Iraivan Temple.