Bodhinatha sent a short report of events in Michigan:

Saturday
“The Hindu Council meeting ran all day on Saturday. The main topic of the morning was the R1 (“Religious Workers”) visa changes. The Council’s strategy is to work with their existing contacts with congressmen and senators to give an in-person presentation at the State Department of the Hindu needs. Some of the temple leaders here have a history of working with the State Department previously. Now, as the new rules are being formulated and open for input, is a window of opportunity to get Hindu priests, artisans, temple staff, singers etc. explicitly included in the wording.

“During the afternoon session one presentation included a projection of the number of Hindus in the USA and mentioned that one-half of all Hindu marriages in the USA are with non-Hindus. This is a subject I have written about in Hinduism Today. We were invited to come to another meeting of Hindu leaders in August to speak on this or anything else we chose. A second afternoon presentation was on the takeover of temples in India by State governments, a growing problem.

“Then we went to the Flint Siva temple for the evening cultural program celebrating the 25th anniversary of the temple. Included was the honoring of Balagangadharanathaswami, Swami Dayananda Saraswati and myself. The representative for Dayanandaji is Swami Pratyagbodhananda who resides in Surat Gujarat and is spending four months at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam. We had a good meeting of minds with him and some friendly discussions. He does daily puja to Siva lingam. He gave an excellent talk and an interesting explanation of Om Namasivaya which he encouraged everyone to repeat daily for one minute silently or verbally at 8 Am 12 noon 4 Pm and 8 AM.

Om — invokes God
Sivaya — to Lord Siva
Namah — I surrender

He explained that not surrendering or not accepting what is happening causes us stress and grief. Simply accept and surrender!

It is the same idea as Gurudeva’s in Dancing with Siva of dancing with or resisting.

The Council members said that having two swamis attend the meetings brought a stabilizing presence.
We gave out our literature at the event–free copies of What is Hinduism and the history lesson. A number of temples indicated they would be ordering copies of WIH.

We also met with several devotees.

Sunday

We had two events today. The first was to attend the Sunday worship services at the Flint temple. It was rudra homa with three priests chanting Sri Rudram followed by arati and extensive group singing at each of the temple’s shrines–Ganesha, Devi, Siva, Navagraha and Anjaneya. Small group of core devotees of the temple attended. Lasted from 8-10:30 followed by light lunch at temple.

Then at 2:30 we left the hotel for Ann Arbor, an hour’s drive for a talk and question and answer session at the Chinmaya Mission center. About one hundred people came, and asked lots of good questions, very responsive. Many had come to Kauai Aadheenam, others longtime readers of Hinduism Today. It was a very inspiring event.

To bed early, leave hotel at 5 AM be back tomorrow. We will be traveling all day and be home in the afternoon Kauai time. See you soon!

— Bodhinatha

With Sadhaka Dandapani back home again, he is doing his photo magic and took a little tour to Iraivan with our new camera and took some really great shots.

We also have two slide shows today from Paramacharya Palaniswami who is in Chennai right now.