Here Bodhinatha meets with Sri Balagangadharanathaswami of Adi Chunchanagiri Mutt. The swami was recently featured on the cover of Hinduism Today for his outstanding religious and social work in Kerala. More picture of the Bangalore portion of Bodhinatha’s trip at the end of today’s TAKA.

END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming two-day retreat,
until Dvitya Tithi, Sun One, Friday, December 2nd.

We had quite a huge number of guests to join us on a very sunny, spectacular Kauai day, the tour day and end of our phase…

Here are John and Sally Renn who visit our monastery every year and love Gurudeva’s teaching about raising children with love and positive discipline. They are here for a little over a week and enjoy coming up to the temple in the mornings.

Guests try their hand at carving granite.

A demonstration of polishing stone, where the chisel actually has a flat end with hatch marks that pulverize the surface of the stone to a smooth finish.

A few photos from the stone hoist the other day… Our team on topside, with safety hard hats on to make sure no one gets knocked on the head by the corner of a stone in the air or the ball on the end of the crane cable.

Larry Conklin is really an expert now at handling these pieces.

Rigging a roof beam ground side…

Now we are in South India. This is a shrine to Gurudeva set up at the Bangalore carving site.

Bodhinatha stands in front of one of the newly completed jalakam “windows” which grace Iraivan Temple’s front entrance. The second one of these broke when it was turned over and has to be redone–a lot of work!

We inspect the broken stone.

This is the yalli entrance pillar of the rajagopuram.

This is the plaster full-scale model of the yalli pillar which is made prior to starting to carve the granite.

Another journalist meeting, this time with Choodie Shivaram, at right, accompanied by her husband (to Arumugaswami’s left) and her mother and father. Choodie has many great ideas for stories. In just two weeks, she is going to Tiruvanammalai to cover the great Sivalaya Deepam festival there.

Choodie’s a popular journalist in Bangalore. Her children are studying at the university.

Bodhinatha and Yoginathaswami discuss temple building issues with Jiva.

Choodie and her family with Bodhinatha.

We pay a visit to Sri Jayendra Puri, successor to Sri Tiruchiswami at Kailash Ashram. The ashram is going along very strongly. We had an excellent breakfast here!

This is the silver throne made to hold the sandals of Sri Tiruchiswami in the great hall at the ashram.

Our group leaves the great hall. We also visited the Rajarajeshwari temple here, both for worship and to inspect the stone carving. The Sri Chakra temple here, where Sri Tiruchiswami’s samadhi is, is made of polished black granite, very impressive.

Now in Chennai, we meet with artist Manivel (far right), his wife, his son Arumugam and daughter Vimala. Manivel works nearly full time producing art for our publications.

We didn’t bring our Kauai weather to Chennai, it was already there. Torrential rains had caused havoc across Tamil Nadu. The airport was closed to take offs when we landed, and our plane took a scary swerve partway down the landing strip, which was very wet. The front door of our hotel, the Hilton Trident, was sandbagged to prevent the foot-deep water in the entryway from entering the lobby. Out the back, one could not see the swimming pool as the entire area was under a foot of water.

This is a hand-paint
ed murthi of Gurudeva produced in Chennai. We saw it while visiting Nellaiappan’s new home. He is our liaison officer in Chennai.

Here Nellaiappan and his daughter, son-in-law and 6-month old baby visit with Bodhinatha.

S. Rajam, the famed artist and singer of Chennai, presents Bodhinatha with a book on astrology which he illustrated. Many of his paintings grace Gurudeva’s books.

Sheela Venkatakrishnan with Bodhinatha in Chennai.

Here we meet with Dr. Abirama Sundara Sivacharyar (talking to Arumugaswami), a professor at Vivekananda College in Chennai. He is helping us with the translation of the Agamas. At the right, next to S. Rajam, is Shanmugam Sivachariyar, Sambhamurthi Sivachariyar’s son. He is just completing his PhD in Sanskrit and will also help with the Agama project.

Here we visit an orphanage attached to the Mylapore Siva Temple. Is is partly supported by Hindu Heritage Endowment.

Here with Bodhinatha, is the Gunalan, his wife Lalitha and daughter Premila, sishya from Malaysia who are now living in India.

This is Anantha Krishnan of Chennai, one of our Hinduism Today correspondents. He lived in New York for 18 years, but has returned to Chennai to take care of his aging parents.

On our way out of India, we had a few hours in Delhi and stopped at the Swaminathan temple. This stone temple was built by the South Indian community and designed by Sri Ganapathi Sthapati, architect for Iraivan Temple. This is the highly ornate gomukai stone, which is the drain for water from the abhishekam inside. The entire temple was a marvelous demonstration of the builder’s skills.

We close this phase with some visions of what we see here every day… the gifts of Lord Siva in nature.

Oh! almost forgot.. one last piece of news:

The sayings of the Saiva Saint Tayumanavar are finally up on the web. These powerful devotional hymns, composed 300 years ago, are still alive in the hearts of millions. It is hard to find a clearer vision of Lord Siva, at once devotional and nondual. The entire 1,447 verses are here! Siva Yogaswami himself memorized many of Tayumanavar’s verses.