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Gurudeva: “So, you must purify yourself. You purify yourself by being kind to others, being generous until it hurts, being benevolent, being ready to serve at all times until you are strained in serving. Put a smile on the faces of other people. Gain your happiness and your positive states of mind by making other people happy. Negative people are always worried about themselves. Positive people are concerned with the happiness of others. Be strong enough to understand, and do not allow yourself to sleep at night until you have understood the problems of the day. If you go to sleep with problems on your mind, you will go into a confused state of mind, and you will toss around and later say, “That is just the dream world” or “I had a nightmare.” All you did was lose your consciousness in a troubled subconscious state. But if you practice yoga, and you sit and master each problem before falling asleep, even if it takes you several hours, you will gain enough rest for the next day, for you will have made this day a perfect day.
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Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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Bodhinatha has been preparing for his trip to Mauritius, working on his talks which will be translated into Creole.
Cybertalk: 2002 Kauai Innersearch Day 3, Part 3: Bodhinatha unveils the 5th principle of Karma Management, “create no new negative karmas.” This involves making a promise to ourselves, a vrata of a sort. To fulfill this vow we must carry our karma cheerfully and not add to it. The 6th principle is “divinely influence karma,” meaning that it’s okay to ask Lord Ganesha for help, so we must develop a personal relationship with Him, which leads to the clarification of our svadharma, our personal dharma, or that next natural step in our soul’s unfoldment.
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The Krishnamurthy family from New York, Rajan, Usha, Anandh and Aravind. They are originally from Kerala. Years ago Rajan’s friend gifted him a copy of Dancing with Siva. Since then he had wanted to come to visit our monastery. The family sang bhajans together in the temple.
Left to Right:
Yukiko Nara, Toshihiko Henmi and Hiro Otsuka
They’ve come from Tokyo to take some video footage for a DVD of holy spots in Hawaii to be released soon in Japan. They really enjoyed seeing the “Old World” craftsmanship of the stone carvers at the Iraivan Temple site.
Acharya Kumarswami has been working steadily on retreats on Gurudeva’s shrine. Here he is laying out the beautiful tile that will be on the platform that will have Gurudeva’s statue.
This is an exquisite collection of tiles from Italy.
Here is the location of the shrine in Kadavul temple. It is located in the east corner. Kanda Alahan will be making two specially carved wooden pillars that will go up to the ceiling. Above will hang a transparency of Gurudeva which we will change 12 times a year… a different darshan of our beloved Satguru every moon.
The inside of the shrine platform has been filled with granite chips from the Iraivan work site, which will lend their crystalline power to the shrine. The red flower is on the top of a copper pipe that goes down to the ground level. Today a little vibhuthi was first put into the bottom, then a spoon of liquid Mercury and the rest filled with silver. Later a gold square and a silver panchakshara yantra will be fixed to the top of the copper pipe and on this will sit the bronze murthi of Gurudeva.
Kumarswami says: “Here you see the shrine to Gurudeva at its current stage. The major recent progress is in adding mass and density to the base. Yesterday the monks filled the base with 10 bags of granite chips from the Bangalore worksite. These are chips created in the process of carving Iraivan Temple, so they have special significance. Also placed here are a few stones that formed part of the altar of our San Francisco Temple, which Gurudeva established in 1957. Devotees brought special rocks from all over the country as offerings. Soon other special, meaningful items will be added to help establish a high vibration, as was done when putting in the foundation of Iraivan. In the next few days the top will be permanently sealed, and in the coming weeks covered with the reddish brown marble from Spain.
Meanwhile, we just received the second set of photos from South India from the metal craftsmen who are casting a 2-foot tall statue of Gurudeva out of the traditional five metals which will be the central icon of the shrine. And we just ordered a lightbox that will be suspended above the statue displaying a backlit transparency of our beloved Gurudeva.”
Another fine piece by Kumarswami an outdoor sign explaining about the sacred Bo tree planted on San Marga.
The Bo tree is what Lord Buddha sat under wnen he attained enlightenment and is a living focal point for our very wonderful relationship with the Buddhist community here on Kauai. The planting ceremony was conducted by a Shingon Buddhist priest.
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The stones of the 12th course are all in place and the final work of filling in the space between the inner and outer wall is in progress. Stapathi carefully supervises the mortar mix.
Our power cement mixer is a great help for the team.
But still they have to bucket up the cement by hand.
This is always a satisfying time, when the silpis step back a bit from the stone carving as they set another course to rest.
They will place the mortar and stones in the space by hand and work over every square inch to make sure there are no open spaces.
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Date: June_20_2002
Title: Controlling Anger Part 1
Category: Good Conduct
Duration: 10 min., 4 seconds
Date Given: May 28, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
This morning the talk is on anger, present company excluded. We are all perfect in this regard. But there are a few who are not and they exist in cyberspace and they write in and tell me about their difficulties in controlling anger. From small difficulties, from an occasional sharp word to the mother, to major difficulties where you actually end up hitting your spouse, the whole gamut out there in cyberspace.
I thought we could look this morning at anger and study it out for a while and then look at some of the very useful remedies that Gurudeva has given to help control anger before it gets expressed as well to compensate for it, if it does get expressed.
Our monastery is a very controlled environment, very religious environment. It is hard to experience anger, first hand. It just does not happen, even our neighbors are nice to us. This is Hawaii, Aloha spirit abounds! But, there was an opportunity a number of years ago. It was a very interesting opportunity to observe anger from the grounds of the monastery. This was when a house was being built next door to the monastery. So there was a team of two carpenters working on this house, I don’t know if any of the other monks had a chance to observe this very interesting drama going on over there. You could tell the two carpenters by their voices, very loud voices. You got to recognize them working over there. One of them was much more prone to anger than the other. He was so prone to anger that every few minutes he would end up swearing in a loud voice because the board didn’t fit or something didn’t go right or whatever. Out it would come, this loud swearing. I would say, “Well, I guess something went wrong over there.” That was interesting but then even more so, about once a week he would just blow up. His anger would get louder and louder. He would start yelling, screaming, disagreeing, end up banging something down, jumping in his car, slamming the door and driving off. This happened about once a week. Now it was a very, very interesting study in human nature and anger that you usually don’t get to experience. I thought about that for many years and tucked that away in my memory of anger experiences, in case I needed it in the future.
Anger expresses itself in different natures in different ways. Some people are usually calm. Occasionally, they lose their calmness and they become angry. This is the idea of losing one’s temper, where temper refers to composure, calmness of mind. Usually we are calm, we are composed. But something happens either inside, outside. Somebody doesn’t do something we want them to do. We have hit too many obstacles one day. Whatever it is, it puts us over the edge and the usually calm person becomes angry, loses one’s temper.
Others experience anger more often, seems like they are always angry. Going around complaining about this and that, always upset, bursting out and they obviously have a temper, where temper means they anger easily.
Then there are other people who are selective in their anger. They are very nice to everybody except a few people. Maybe they are angry with their spouse. They are going along just fine until they encounter their spouse for the day and then they have to let the spouse know they are angry at the spouse. So anger goes on until the spouse leaves and then everything is fine again. They have chosen one or more people, just a few to be angry at.
It is interesting in English, you look at the terminology. If you have a temper, you are in trouble. But if you lose your temper, you are also in trouble. Why is that? Such is the English language. So you have to keep your temper. You can’t have a temper but if you keep your temper, you are okay. How does anyone learn the English language, I don’t know!
Gurudeva has lots to say about anger in the Trilogy. There is so much in there, it just took me hours to go through it all. Fills up a lot of the index, which fortunately we have, a wonderful index. Kumarswami, thanks to you for your overall guidance. It is so easy to look up these different topics and find the relevant points from Gurudeva.
Gurudeva’s core point on anger is this. To quote, “Anger, I have observed, is the most difficult fault for people to overcome.” That is an interesting statement – the most difficult fault. Why is that? “Because it comes in so many different forms – pouting, long silences, shouting, yelling, swearing and more.”
Gurudeva continues by listing the eight forms of anger from the book ‘Angry All The Time’, which are described as eight rungs on the violence ladder. I will read those. Sneaky anger, the cold shoulder, blaming and shaming, swearing, screaming and yelling, demands and threats, chasing and holding, partly controlled violence, and the last one number eight is blind rage.
What does this show us? Well it shows us, that there is aggression here of anger and we need to be careful because if we are on this ladder at all, we might move up in the degree of anger we express quite easily.
You know, most ladders we think of as going up, climbing the ladder. In this ladder, it is useful if we think of it as going down, because that is what is actually happening. These eight rungs are taking us down in consciousness. We have to imagine the ladder is in a hole. We have dug a hole in the ground which represents going down in consciousness, the ladder comes up to the surface. Each time we step on a rung we are going down in consciousness, the lowest one being blind rage and the first one sneaky anger. Down we go from sneaky anger all the way down to blind rage.
In looking through the writings on anger, I was surprised that Gurudeva spent so much time on the fourth rung of the ladder, describing the fourth rung which is swearing. There is a whole chapter on swearing in ‘Living with Siva’, Gurudeva took it so seriously. It is right in the middle, it is number four there, you realize it is a ways along. Actually it is not just the beginning, it is the fourth step down this ladder of violence.
Gurudeva says it so forcefully I have to quote him. He states that, “Habitual swearing unleashes a negative force that will ruin ones life.” That is pretty strong! Not ‘may’ ruin one’s life or ’cause little damage’. No, it is going to ruin ones life here. This is a pretty serious statement and we are only on number four.
“Swearing is a good way to curse ones self to build up a big balloon of negative energy. Swearing stimulates the lower chakras until one day swearing will turn into screaming and yelling, demands and threats and so on.” Sounds like the carpenter, right? So, we can see that even swearing is a problem. Why? Because it stimulates the lower chakras, we don’t think of it as that. So many people swear, it can’t be that bad. But, it is. It is stimulating the lower chakras which easily lead down from the fourth step of the ladder to the fifth and to the sixth and even the seventh and eighth.
transcription ends
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Innersearch 2003-4 in India!
We just completed the July 17-23 Kauai Innersearch, 2002. Bodhinatha will lead the next Innersearch to India, between Dec 2003 and Jan 2004. We will visit Bangalore and the Iraivan Carving Village, and settle in the South in Tamil Nadu, Click on the above for details on what will be an inspiring journey to our holy land of Bharat! |
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From Our Gurus' Teachings
Archives are now available through 2001. Light colored days have no posts. 1998-2001 coming later.
