It’s Sun 2 and we are posting Bodhinatha’s great upadesha the day after it was given. This is a “first” since Gurudeva’s Maha Samadhi. (Keeping current with our Satguru’s upadesha’s) Thanks to Hitesvara for his prompt transcription of the audio.

You will enjoy Bodhinatha’s insight and important insights on the prapatti, devotion vs emotion and importance of bhakti.

Tour day today… brings many bright souls

Our silpis arrived home on the retreat.. .It is great to have them back.

The Hawaiian Menehune holding up the water spout.

The newly renovated bridge to the shrine at the lotus pond which now holds a lovely statue of Lord Nataraja, signifying the form of God that inspired the saints at the beginning of the Path of the Saiva Saints.

“Umbrella Ganesha” on the way to Iraivan

Sadhaka Adinatha carefully watering more trees that will be planted on Himalayan Acres. His vision for 10,000 precious hard woods to be an endowment for the future is slowly but surely manifesting.

Silpi helper Kumar with Sadhaka Tejadevanathan

Acharya Kumarswami continues in the pursuit of fine woodworking on the retreats. Here is a small write table he made for one of the other monks.

Meanwhile Sivakatirswami is building custom bookshelves out of 100% Rudraksha wood. The wood comes Ffrom rough milled lumber harvested from our own property. The monastery plants thousands of trees each year and has the great privilege to take trees from our own land when needed. These have been joined and glued together into boards which are here being sanded.

Rudraksha wood has some remarkable properties for woodworking. It is light weight, but has a very tight grain and molecular integrity and strength. After you
work with it for a while you see why it was once used
for airplane propellers in days of yore.

Sannyasins Yoginathaswami and Senthilnathaswami have returned home also, but we have some retrospective stories from their last days in India

A visit to Bengaluru is not complete without going to Kailash Ashram. We had a wonderful darshan with Sri Jayendrapuriswami, the ashram head, who is the successor to Trichyswami. Having heard that Yoginathaswami was interested in learning how to make the big, fancy garlands offered by the millions in South Indian temples every day, Jayendrapuriswami arranged a lesson for us.

We also have another video from Swamimalai of the casting of the Avudiyar for Iraivan’s Maha Spatika Lingam below

It was Thursday night, so the highly skilled professional garland makers were set up to work through the night to make enough garlands for Friday worship at the ashram’s powerful and popular Rajarajeshwari Temple.

Garlands and flowers that would soon be garlands were piled everywhere.

This is a particularly beautiful style.

Our garland making teacher holds up a giant rose garland weighing about 15 kg.

The lesson begins. Wow, he’s fast! One half of a garland is completed in about a minute.

Next, it’s Yoginathaswami’s turn to try. The experts look on and give guidance.

When we returned to Chennai, we made a trip to nearby Mahabalipuram. This seaside town is a major source of black granite and is famous for carving. The six silpis who have been working on the temple on Kauai the past two years have been on vacation in India for a month. They have joined us for this visit and will return with us to Kauai. On the right in the red kurta is Gunalan Ponniah, a staunch devotee of Gurudeva and Bodhinatha originally from Malaysia and now living in Chennai.

Yoginathaswami stands with an almost-finished elephant who will stand on the steps approaching Iraivan Temple. He is holding a small globe up with his trunk.

This carving site has a giant stone cutting saw. It’s really, really big.

While walking around the facility, we noticed this collection of 54 Sivalingams.

Yoginathaswami and Jiva Rajasankara examine the cement model for the cow and calf elephants that will also be made three times this size, also for Iraivan Temple’s steps.

The design and execution on this model is exquisite.

Finally, the main reason we came to Mahabalipuram: Here is the Hanuman statue, almost finished and over nine feet tall, to be placed at Hanuman Landing, near Iraivan Temple. They were working on it when we arrived, but quickly engaged the crane so we could have a good look at it.

Hanuman will hold a small marble model of Iraivan Temple that is being carved up north in Rajasthan.