Bodhinatha in Atlanta… giving a talk in the temple…Jutikadevi sends us photos and captions. For this one she writes:

On the first day of ceremonies in the evening after arriving and being introduced, Bodhinatha then gave us a beautiful talk on the importance of temple worship in Hinduism and how we use the Murthis to communicate to the devas. How real the inner beings are, as Gurudeva would see many of them, too many to tell us all about. Just we use the telephone to communicate. We aren’t really talking to the phone just as we are not praying to the stone murthi, but how we use the murthis to communicate to the devas. In addition he also talked about finding inner happiness, and that it is a false concept to look for happiness from others, that the truest happiness comes from within. That Gurudeva always said the best form of happiness is always to make others happy. He also shared with us how a devotee had challenges of taking care of their elder parent who was always very depressed. Bodhinatha said that the best way to care for an elderly parent like this is to our best in caring for them and to never expect anything in return. Gurudeva was always so happy, although he interacted with thousands of devotees from round the work, he found his inner happiness from within and never expected anything from anyone else, thus he could be happy all the time.

Jutika says:

Just wanted to write into TAKA and share the wonderful spiritual experiences we have had here with Satguru Bodhinatha at the Siva and Vishnu temple here in Atlanta Georgia.

As you all know the two temples are situated on top of a hill, they are two separate temples that each house Lord Vishnu and Lord Siva as the main murthis. They are both built in a traditional South Indian style temple.

Satguru Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami were here last year for the Kumbha Abhisekam and they were both back again from May 26- May 29 as the honorary guest for the one year temple celebrations.

Bodhinatha spent Friday morning giving individual darshan blessings to us, after that we took of in a Pathfinder SUV to the tallest Restaurant in the Western Hemisphere at the Westin in Atlanta for lunch. Here we took up the glass elevator, and went up to the 72nd floor for lunch.

Shanmuganathaswami, looking out into the Atlanta Skyline from the Westin Glass Elevators.

Present during lunch: Satguru Bodhinatha, sitting next to him, was Shankar Mallampali and hiw wife Lakshmi from Jacksonville Florida, Ravi Poonangi from the India Tribune magazine, Jutikadevi Sivaraja and Shanmuganathaswami who is managing the Hinduism Today subscriptions and the Hindu Heritage Endowment. The restaurant was special in the sense that it was revolving and you would end up an hour later at the same spot.

We could see the capital of the city where the dome was covered with gold, just like Iraivan.

Here is the CNN headquarters building.

Atlanta Skyline by 1-85 expressway.

We got to tour the whole city with a mountain top consciousness in the presence of an enlightened guru and finished the lunch with a delicious vegan raspberry chocolate mousse cake.

After getting our chocolate high we descended to the bottom floor again in the beautiful glass elevators. We saw Georgia Tech from here. Then we forgot to press the button, so we went up again before going down, but that was okay because I got to put my camera to good use!! The camera always likes to take Bodhinatha’s pictures.

We welcomed Bodhinatha at the temple in the evening where Satguru was honored at the inner sanctum sanctorum of both the Siva and Vishnu temples, by the temple’s Saiva and Vishnu priests. After the honorary ceremonies for the guru, the current temple president gave a very beautiful thoughtful introduction of Bodhinatha. He asked us to visualize as if we were there on the 10th day of Gurudeva’s pravopavesha fast when “�Gurudeva removed one of his rings and placed it on his successor’s finger stating that his name would be Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, ” Gurudeva placed the bracelet on Bodhinatha’s wrist and declared you are the Guru now!” This beautiful introduction by the temple president, gave a meaningful introduction that helped the devotees at the temple, who had very little exposure about Bodhinatha, as to his background and his lineage.

Bodhinatha on the podium…

Temple devotees listening to the talk by Bodhinatha

We then went outside for a series of homas that continued on with temple activities at the Vishnu and Siva temple till late night.

Poornahuti the finale of the ceremonies for Day 1- May 27…

more to come…

We received these pictures earlier but they were hiding on our hard drive until today. It is the always happy and joyful story of Mother’s Day celebrations in Malaysia… held on May 8th, last month…

This year the celebration to honor our mothers was held at the home of Kulapati Dhasan in a fabulously decorated hall.

The colorful poster by the children

Custom-made card for all ammas

“I’m all set to party!” – Little Shivani all geared for for the event

Event kicking off with the pooja.

The MC for the day (Kulapati Dhasan) launching the event

We had all 3 generations of families joining the celebrations

The queens excited waiting to be honored

Voila! The first “queen” to strut down the runway.

The eldest amma, Kulamata Rajaletchumi, being honored by her children.

The next amma, Kulamata Roobavathy Sivalingam with her 4 children.

Kulamata Lalitha Sivananda goes next.

Kulamata Amutha’s face speaks with emotions as the receives a peck from her daughter

Kulamata Shanthi is all smiles as she is garlanded by her angels….

more to come tomorrow…

Long time student of Gurudeva’s teachings, Sarasvati Kumara (Cristina Berisso) came on a pilgrimage with her elder daughter Pamela.

They pose at Iraivan as they both investigate the carved ball inside the lion pillars

Mother and daughter carving stone…

with Dakshinamoorthy

A visit with the publications team. Sarasvati is originally from Argentina, and she pledged to Gurudeva to translate the entire trilogy into Spanish. So far she has done Merging with Siva and is almost finished with Dancing with Siva. See the Spanish version of Merging with Siva here.

Our camera goes for walk out to the temple site… catching some nature shots on the way…

Amazing half white, half green philodendron (we think…)

Today’s photo vignettes of Iraivan… we will let the photos speak for themselves.

The monastery’s aviary in the back outside our kitchen…some of these birds are very tame and will come and sit on your shoulder.