Bodhinatha holds a Hindu Renaissance Award plaque that will leave for Sri Lanka next week. It says:

“Presented by Hinduism Today to Dr. Thangamma Appakutti for her five decades of religious leadership of Sri Lankan Saivites. A brilliant speaker, her spiritual talks at the home and abroad have been instrumental in inspiring the community to maintain their Hindu heritage and identity. A visionary who trained many to follow in her footsteps, she has founded enduring institutions to help sustain Saiva dharma for generations to come.”

It was tour day today. Many Hindus came today.

Twenty Hindus gather together for a book signing with Bodhinatha.

Some came originally from Sri Lanka, others from India.

They are all now living in the US and Canada.

Sannyasins Arumugaswami and Sivakatirswami went on a whirlwind, jam-packed mission to Washington D.C. with events covering four days, from the 15th to 18th of June, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The travel and hotels were generously sponsored by the Swadhyay Pariwar. The journey had four components: 1) visits to congressmen and senators, 2) visiting local temples 3) attending the grand events of the Swadhyay Pariwar and a little site seeing before flying home at 3:30 am on Monday morning. will will bring you the story in four segments on TAKA. And later, some video of events along the way.

They left on Wednesday, took the “red-eye” to Los Angeles. Arrived in Washington DC on Thursday morning and after a brief nap at the hotel they were off to start a round of visits to the congressional offices of our four Hawaii representatives. Here we are waiting in the office of Congresswoman Hirano.

Accompanying us for a number of visits was Dr. Siva Subramanian, former president of the Hindu Council of Temples in North America. He is a top pediatrician and teacher at Georgetown University hospital.

Arumugaswami makes his presentation to Congresswoman Hirano, whose constituency includes Kauai.

A group photo with the Congresswoman.

Later that afternoon we also visited the office of our other Congressman for the state of Hawaii, Congressman Abercrombie.

Late on Thursday afternoon. We took a side trip to the offices of Religion News Service. The young editor was very attentive to Arumugaswami’s points about including more positive news about Hinduism.

He was very open to the idea, saying that he needed help to get Hindu reporters to make submissions as his team was frankly not familiar enough with the Hindu community affairs. Hinduism Today offered to collaborate with putting him in touch with a Hindu new sources.

Some humor from a Religion New Service the bulletin board

Thursday evening Nigel Siva Subramaniam and his wife Inpah were kind enough to bring dinner to our hotel. String hopper, sodi and curries! The meal helped to ease the culture shock of leaving Kauai Aadheenam and being dropped in a East coast city.

Friday morning we are up and on our way back to “the hill.” It’s a reasonable walk from our Washington Court Hotel which was located just blocks away. In fact, walking seems to be a main mode of transportation as getting around with a car can be really difficult when it comes to parking and everyone in Congress is very punctual. So, you can’t be stuck in traffic looking for a parking place if you want to make your meetings on time… Better to plan ahead and just walk there.

We swing by the House of Representatives on the way to the Congressional and Senators’ offices, where we met with the assistants of our
two Hawaii Senators, Inouye and Akaka.

Washington D.C. has many beautiful old trees.

Sugar maples have been transplanted from their nursery to the streets.

The trees are pruned up as they grow. Limbs are set to only start at about 12-20 feet above ground, to make a marvelous open environment under canopy of shade.

A belated posting from the Wailua Mission gathering last week. Kulapati Deva Seyon writes:

“Iraivan Morning with lots of Shakti Power! The Rudraksha project continues . . . the Alahan family and Brahmachari Rajadeva do a lot of preparation to keep us all busy stringing and creating these beautiful gifts for the Mini Mela. We invited our resident Task Forcers as well as visiting family members. Everyone shares this beautiful flow of working for Iraivan. Visiting families love to see the energy and harmony and even the very young children love to help.

Brahmachari Thondunathan has been conducting a few summer camps each year. Here he is with some children in California.

With all the teaching materials now available from Himalayan Academy, hatha yoga brochures, What is Hinduism and the latest Saivite Hindu Religion course books 3 and 4, we now have rich set of teaching tools.

Thondunathan says that young people are more interested in meditation than you might think. It just takes some guidance.

In the hot tub and swimming pool, the kids relax and talk about issues they might be afraid to discuss in a formal classroom.