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Gurudeva’s Statement — Attack on America
Dressed in his coral pink robes, Gurudeva looked like he was from another world and this poem sent by one devotee seems so appropriate:
GENTLE SWAN—A POEM DEDICATED TO GURUDEVA
This poem is dedicated to Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927 -2001), a
reflection of peace, grace, infinite love and tranquility.
Gentle Swan
In elegance he subtly shimmered his frame,
With humility he bowed his head.
By the mere flutter of his wings,
He answered to the yearning of our souls.
Gentle Swan, sitting upon the pond of serenity.
In reply to the song of life
He danced a graceful waltz.
He touched our hearts and
Made us proud to believe.
He brought our hands together
To stretch across the many ponds of existence.
By his grace we saw the beauty of life.
He taught us many miracles through his actions.
Leaving his prints to remind us of the lessons we need to remember,
To stand proud and unify our voices
In answer to the beckoning of our souls.
Gentle Swan, so divine and free.
Now he has taken flight into the golden gleam of awareness.
He flaps his wings with much vigour.
But as distant as he flies,
The wind of his lustre gives us shade from the heat
And warmth from the frigid.
Gentle Swan in all his might.
Through the echo of his calls,
He watches us from above,
Trailing through the steps of the winding staircase of life;
Eager to see us follow
His dance of elegance at the beauty of our being,
His grace and humility for the gift of our souls.
Gentle Swan, so powerful and silent,
Your sacrifices will never be forgotten.
Geeta Maraj
At the Aadheenam, after Sadhu Paksha, the monks are back on a strict schedule, getting up early at 4:30 am. puja at 5:30 followed by meditation, exercise, staff meetings and then the karma yoga of the day. We feel a lot of power behind us and things are moving forward very dynamically. Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami sits with Sannyasin Shanmuganathaswami and together they handle all the emails from the members of Saiva Siddhanta Church.
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picked at random from Gurudeva’s vast audio archives
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The Mahender & Jayalakshmi Pampati family, originally from Hyderabad, India, are on vacation from Kentucky where they are helping to start a new Hindu temple in Lexington. The community there has acquired land and is now drawing up plans for the temple design. They are facing the familiar challenges of working harmoniously together among themselves and with the community around them. They discussed their new temple project with Bodhinatha, who explained how we have interacted with the local community as our Iraivan Temple comes up.
Mahender and his wife, both doctors, had a copy of Dancing with Siva before coming to Kauai and were sorry to learn that they would not have an opportunity to meet the author in person, but were happy to meet Gurudeva’s successor, Bodhinatha. They also acquired Merging with Siva while here. December is a busy pilgrim season as children are on break from school and entire families come to the Aadheenam.
Arvind Ramakrishnan, originally from Chennai, is on vacation from his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. An engineer, he only recently discovered our existence and was especially enthralled by the Iraivan Temple project. He feels that very few Hindus in California know of Iraivan Temple and that everyone should know. He is eager to spread the word about Iraivan Temple.
The 407 acres of monastery land on the other side the river is actively being worked in preparation for future planting. Here is our Case tractor with a huge harrow on the back, that chops up the old abandoned cane, which you see is very high… well over the top of the tractor! The 145 horsepower tractor, with its 6-foot high dual wheels is dwarfed by the overgrown sugar cane.
Kulapati Durvasa Alahan, one of our Church members, is doing the work. We are glad to have him as he has decades of experience handling large, heavy machinery… our tractor is in good hands. 400 acres is a big area! And it will take 100 hours to harrow down all the old cane.
Durvasa up in the cab of this giant tractor…
Here is one field next to the river. Sannyasin Yoginathaswami surveys the work of the harrow which has chopped down and sliced through the old cane. This is a wonderful flat area, rare on Kauai.
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The silpis are working on course number six of the temple. In cases where the joint between two stone is in the middle of a pattern, the stones are left uncarved in India. After the two are joined, then the pattern will be completed. Here Shanmuga Sthapati draws the pattern across two adjacent stones.
Years of training and a skilled hand define the area to be carved by the silpis…
Please, help us build this temple, we need your support. Yesterday someone was inspired to go to the donation page for Iraivan, print it out and mailed it with a $2,000.00 donation. That’s a great spirit. Keep it up! We have 12 million more to go!
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Study Gurudeva’s teachings.
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transcription begins
Date: December_27_1998
Title: Reincarnation, the Sum Total of Past Lives
Category:
Duration: 5 min., 49 seconds
Date Given: December 27, 1998
Today at Kauai Aadheenam. December 27th. It is Sunday here on the beautiful Garden Island of Kauai. I am so glad you have visited my Cyberspace Ashram.
What are we doing today? A beautiful fire ceremony to invoke Lord Hanuman, Lord Ganesha, Lord Murugan, and Lord Siva to help with the foundation and bringing container-loads of beautifully carved stone that are finished, from Bangalore, India, to the beautiful Garden Island of Kauai.
Well, today is the 80th Birthday of ‘Tutu’. In Hawaiian, ‘tutu’ means grandmother. This is Grandma Sendan. The whole Sendan clan has come to the Island of Kauai to celebrate her 80th birthday. Happy birthday to you, Grandma.
Dennis Wong, our neighbor is working to finish the ‘Aloha Guha’, which is sixty feet long and forty feet wide. It is going to contain and shelter all the carved stones that come from Bangalore to Kauai. The silpi carvers will come with them to finish them here on the Garden Island. When you come to visit, you will also be able to help chip the stones. Won’t that be wonderfull! To create a Temple, as we are creating here on the Garden Island of Kauai, is a wonderful thing. Participation in the creation is a one-time opportunity. Once a temple is built, that opportunity goes away. So, let’s make the most of it. Dennis Wong has a big tractor. He is leveling all the ground and preparing for the foundation of this ‘Aloha Guha’ that will be going up, probably next month.
It is what we call ‘Zip day’ for ‘Hinduism Today’. We start reading next month’s magazine and then it goes to the printer.
We have a question here, about reincarnation. “If we know something about our past lives, should we try to know more about a certain past life? Should we meditate on it?”
Well, if you know something about your past life and it’s come from a reliable source, that is very nice. But, you are the sum total of all of your past lives right now. Before you hear of the divine Self within, before you have the desire to realize the divine Self within, you are quote, “You have been a rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Hindu chief”, unquote. You have been everything. You have gone through all the instinctive experiences. You have gone through all the intellectual experiences. You have gone through all the psychic experiences. You have worn out experience.
So then, what is the final experience? Superconscious experiences, the core of which is the Self, is Siva. Siva is ever-radiating out energy which flows through your body, ever-radiating out light which lights up your thoughts, the creator of the universe, the preserver of the universe, the one who absorbs the universe, the one who gives the big bang to recreate the universe. That is Supreme God Siva to us Saivites. To science, it is not Siva, it is just the way things are. We can agree with that – it is just the way things are.
So, in answer to your question, if you know something about your past life, that is nice. But, you are all of your past lives, sum total, right this very moment. Be happy that your direction is inwardly pointed and not outwardly pointed. You have had the outer, and now you are wanting the inner. That is why you visited our cyberspace Ashram, because you are an inner person.
All inner people are surfing the internet. Some get thrown off their surfboard by a big wave and others manage to stay afloat and enjoy the surfing. Many, many, many wind up on the beach. I am looking at the ocean right now and I am seeing a beach and big waves. They wind up on the beach of the cyberspace ashram. After that, there is nothing more to do but to go in and in and in, and then in and in and in some more, until you have realized God within, the highest realization on this planet. That is why we came to this planet. That is what they said in ‘Lemurian Scrolls’, many, many years ago. Let us make it a reality now.
Aum Namah Sivaya! We will see you again tomorrow at darshan time, while we look through cyberspace and enjoy each other.
transcription ends
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From Our Gurus' Teachings
Archives are now available through 2001. Light colored days have no posts. 1998-2001 coming later.
