Sadhu Paksha Day Six

Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami flew to Arizona yesterday. They visited the temple there, will be going to Sedona to see another Hindu temple and then off to Washington D. C. for the main purpose of the trip, which is to join in the August Murugan Temple festival.

Shama Kumaran hosted some visitors from Japan today. She writes:

Yumi Teraguchi who lives on Kauai brought her family and friends who are visiting from Kamakura, Japan. Kamakura is a pilgrimage site and is famous for its very sacred Shinto Temple, the giant Kamakura Buddha and numerous shrines.

Yumi (center back); her mother, sister, niece, nephew and little friends, Yurie, Yuki and Yuka Chida.

They paid respects to the Shingon Deity, Nada Budake, a healing Deity in Kadavul Temple. Nada Buddhake is being kept here in sanctuary while the Lawai Shingon temple where he came from is undergoing renovations.

Shingon is a major Japanese school of esoteric Buddhism, and the most important esoteric school outside India and Tibet. Shingon arose in Japan’s Heian period (794-1185) when the great monk Kukai went to China in 804 to study esoteric Buddhism. He developed his own synthesis of esoteric practice and doctrine, centred on the cosmic Buddha Vairocana. Many of the Shingon traditions and deities that been have passed down from ancient times are even today very close to the original Indian Hindu culture of its birth. Shingon Buddhists perform fire worship, use sanskrit mantras and mudras, send prayers to the devas through the fire and honor the dancing Siva and Ganesha among their pantheon of celestial beings.

After offering flowers and incense to Nada Budake, they met with Paramacharya Ceyonswami who answered their questions about Lord Ganesha.

Upon leaving they were fascinated by the Andara stone in front of the Kadavul Temple and posed for a final photo.

(Small world) Yumi and her family had just departed, when two of her Japanese friends arrived. They did not know that Yumi had been here. Mayuko Nakayashiki (right) from a neighboring town in Japan, and Ei Aoyama from Tokyo who had met her in Canada.