At home the good news is the sound of chisels tapping again at Iraivan, with the faster enthusiastic pace of young men inspired to be on a new mission far away in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, more pictures are pouring in from Bodhinatha’s mission. Here he is after completing his first full day in Edmonton.

Silpi Chellaiya is 30 years old… he has been with the Iraivan Temple carving site since he was a young man.

Manikandan, Pandi and Rajendran working at the patrai, sharpening chisels

Silpi Karupaiah

We start Bodhinatha’s Canada yatra report today with a flashback to August 7th. The following are photos sent to us by Sadhu Nityavivekdas of the Swaminarayan Mandir in Toronto.

A sacred thread is tied around Bodhinatha’s wrist by Sadhu Gnanpriya

Bodhinatha and Sadhu Gnanpriya perform abhishegam to Swaminarayan

Sadhu Nityavivekdas shows the visiting monks the mandir.

Posing for a photo in the beautifully carved wooden courtyard.

Bodhinatha addressing the youth

Then addressing the adults

Final arathi to end the evening.

August 8th: Bodhinatha arrived safely in Edmonton and was met by devotees at the airport.

It’s a little nippy here in Edmonton.

Later that evening he met with Geritt and Kamala Garneau

He then had an hour and a half question and answer session with the younger members of the community.

These bright young children are students of Aran Veylan and study weekly in his Saiva Dharma classes.

These young students know their religion very well and asked Bodhinatha some very practical questions about Hinduism and how it relates to everyday life.

Congratulations Aran for doing a wonderful job in teaching these children over the last few years.

The group of students and teacher pose with Bodhinatha for a class photo.

August 9th: This morning Bodhinatha was at the Maha Ganapati Temple to conduct a seminar on How to Raise Children as Good Hindus.

One of the slides from his presentation this morning.

Lord Nataraja presided over the morning class.

August 10th: Mr. Selvarajah and wife, long time devotees of Gurudeva and part of the founding members of the Edmonton Maha Ganapati temple met with Bodhinatha this evening. Their son, Mayooran and his wife, Shankeetha were also present.

After the meeting Bodhinatha went to the Shakti Shiv Sanatan Society which is mainly compromised of Hindus from Fiji. He is welcomed with a small pada puja.

Bodhinatha gives a talk on Lord Siva.

More questions …… followed by some amazing answers by Bodhinatha.

The talk is followed by a question and answer session. Many took the opportunity to ask some insightful questions especially young children.

Rajesh Bali thanks Bodhinatha for coming tonight.

There were about 150 people or so in attendance.

Rajesh Bali who is a long time reader of Hinduism Today and a devotee of Gurudeva organized this event.

Saravan Veylan takes the opportunity to talk to Bodhinatha.

Many young children came up on their own after the talk to ask more questions and to get Bodhinatha’s blessings.

Our new group of silpis came to Kadavul Temple for the first time this morning and then went out for an orientation by Shanmugam Sthapati on the Iraivan Temple Project. Tomorrow, on Chitra nakshatra they will formally begin their carving work.

Meanwhile Rajamohan has sent more pictures from Toronto… Here is Bodhinatha making his presentation at the Vishnu Mandir….

Stepping back to day one and two in Toronto… more pictures from pictures of temple visits…Rajamohan writes:

“We enclose pictures from Satguru’s visit to Sri Iyappan Temple, Nagapooshani Amman Temple and Varasithy Vinayagar Temple in this mail.”

Bodhinatha’s visit to Varasithy Vinayagar Temple was a very memorable event, with a grand greeting and full ceremony….

There was “Chapparam Festival” taking place at Sri Thurka Temple at the same time. Despite that fact many devotees made their way to Varasithy Vinayagar Temple to listen to Satguru’s discourse on Vinayagar and seek blessing from him.

At the Vishnu Mandir Bodhinatha has a rapt audience

Rajamohan says: “Many youths and parents present really appreciated the presentation and participated well.”

Stepping back in time to India: Dr. N. Rao sent this from Bangalore on his wife’s 69th birthday. It is the silpis gathered with Jiva and Kannmani and son Senthil, getting ready to leave for Kauai….

At home today the big news is the arrival of the new silpi team of six men. Meanwhile, Bodhinatha has left for Edmonton.

Thiru Satkunendran writes from Toronto:

“Vanakkam… Bodhinatha’s visit was a success in every way. I just saw them-off at Toronto Airport, leaving to Edmonton.”

Photos are flowing in… Sadhaka Dandapani was able to send off an update from August 6th and 7th activities… on the seventh he writes, for this picture:

“Bodhinatha’s day was filled with lectures and question and answer sessions.”

[back on Kauai] At the Lihue airport, Kulapati Deva Seyon behind the camera to greet the new team of silpis…

They were delighted with a quick passage through immigration in Honolulu. Boxes and boxes of supplies for homa offerings came along with them.

August 6th: Narayandas and Sangeetha Kamath who visited us this past Maha Sivaratri met with Bodhinatha this evening. They expressed how much they love Kauai Aadheenam and the experience they had during Sivaratri. Narayandas also is a great Ganesha devotee and has about 80 Ganesha’s in his home.

Wigneswaran who met Gurudeva many years ago when he lived in Jaffna came to meet with Bodhinatha. A wonderfully devoted man to our parampara, he now lives in Toronto with his wife and child. On the floor you will note a brand new towel which he bought so that Bodhinatha could place his feet on and Wigneswaran would be able to forever cherish that blessed piece of cloth which Bodhinatha’s feet touched.

Dharmalingam Siddhan and his wife, Courtney, and children Dhara and Nira drove up from Pittsburg just to meet with Bodhinatha.

Maiga Rungapen, a master course student, and her parents, Sadaseeven and Soopamah, migrated to Canada from Mauritius about 3 weeks ago. She felt sad that she would not get to see Bodhinatha in Mauritius this September but when she heard he was going to be in Toronto she was overjoyed.

August 7th: This 96 year old Amma is the sister of Ma Navaratnam, a devout disciple of Satguru Yogaswami.

Here is Amma’s family who she visited with. Her 3 daughters, Jayanthi, Sri Devi and Bhawani, and their husbands and sons. They had a wonderful meeting with Bodhinatha sharing stories of Yogaswami and Ma Navaratnam.

Bodhinatha arrives this morning at the Lakshmi Narayanan Mandir.

He is welcomed by the very learned pundit who even has a Phd in his priestly teachings.

Bodhinatha performs an abhishekam to a beautiful Siva Lingam.

The statue of Goddess Durga is elaborately decorated.

Bodhinatha with some guests at the Mandir.

Ashok Kaushal garlands Bodhinatha.

In this North Indian temple devotees are allowed to go up to the Siva Lingam and perform their own abhishekam.

Bodhinatha addressed a crowd of over 300 people today. They also had the opportunity to ask him some questions.

The large crowd attentively listening to Bodhinatha’s talk on Lord Siva.

This morning’s ceremony ended with all present devotionally singing the arati song while taking turns to wave the arati. It created a very high vibration.

Punditji does an arati to Lord Siva.

All the deities are made out of marble and beautifully decorated.

Devotees come up to Bodhinatha to receive his blessings. The photos taken at the Laksmi Narayanan Mandir were taken by Sri Sivayogapathy and yesterday’s photos at the Varasithi Vinayagar temple were taken by his son, Thillaichelvan. Thank you to you both for helping with our Canadian TAKA report.

After the Lakshmi Narayanan Mandir we headed straight for the Swami Narayanan center. The entrance to the building is spectacular looking with intricately carved wood motifs.

TAKA photographer experimenting with black and white photos.

Sadhu Gnanpriya Swami (seen in photo) and Sadhu Nityavivek Swami lovingly welcomed Bodhinatha.

The abhishekam in color.

Sadhu Gnanpriya Swami.

Bodhinatha spent the period of his visit answering questions by the youth only. No adults were present and the youth asked excellent questions for a full hour. Bodhinatha was equal to the task and responded with very insightful answers.

A few questions were about Bodhinatha’s life so we got the rare opportunity to hear unheard things about Bodhinatha.

A very bright looking group of young adults with well thought out questions.

After the session with the youth Bodhinatha addressed the adults. Seven to eight hundred people were present.

Among the things that Bodhinatha talked about was stories of interactions of himself and Gurudeva with Sri Pramukh Swami Maharaj.

Sadhu Gnanpriya Swami expressed his great joy in having Bodhinatha visit.

The temple complex from the outside.

Besides Sadhaka Dandapani’s photos, devotees in Toronto also took photos and are sending them. These are from the 5th… Bodhinatha at the Sri Nagapooshani Amman temple…

Greeted in the traditional manner…

2004 Innersearcher Tyler Andrew Pearson who lives in St. George, Ontario, came and brought flowers for Bodhinatha.

Many more photos coming in the days ahead…

Sadhu Paksha Day 4

Another quiet Sadhu Paksha day… The Pillaiyar Kulam shared news today. More and more people in Malaysia are buying books from our web site, so plans are in the works to set up a distribution center there. Since many of the books are printed there… this makes perfect sense. Muruganathaswami is active in the travel arena, as we have silpis arriving, monks traveling… lots of activity in the months ahead.

Sadhaka Jothinatha described the various efforts underway to set up booths and distribute literature at the venues where Bodhinatha is traveling. We have to thank our dear Thiru Satkunendran in Canada for all his hard work and service in this area.

We have no pictures from the mission in Canada today but Bodhinatha wrote a quick note from the events of today, saying they had a wonderful day at the BAPS temple where an enthusiastic youth group asked questions for a hour and later 600 people attentively listened to his talk at the temple which was translated into Hindi…

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To give you some idea of the excitement in the air that is being generated in advance of Bodhinatha’s trip… here is a poster that is up in a temple in Montreal, where Bodhinatha will be going later in August.

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Among our visitors to the monastery today was the son of oceanographer Jacque Cousteau, Jean-Michel and his wife, Nancy. Palaniswami met with them and suggested that their Ocean Futures Society group explore the Indian civilizations off the Western shores of India. They want more information on the sites. They also want some Rudraksha trees for their California home! Nancy surprised us when she shed soft tears when talking of Gurudeva. She never met him, but something about his departure from the earth�saddened her. It may be she intuited his deep and loving spirit through his sacred place here. It turns out Nancy went to high school with Almitra Zion, the lady who brought the giant crystal from Arkansas in 1987, and Almitra introduced her to Gurudeva’s teachings.

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They are deeply involved in saving the oceans and its creatures, and water. So some water imagery from our sacred lands is offered in acknowledgement of this visit. We wish Jean-Michel well in his efforts to get the northern Hawaiian Islands and the oceans surrounding them into a protective sanctuary, like a national park, something that is dear to his heart and that he and his team have been working on for years.

Sadhu Paksha Day Three

All is quiet at the monastery… we have great news from Canada…

Bodhinatha keeps fit by talking early morning walks while he travels… here he is in Toronto…

August 5th: 5:45pm, Bodhinatha arrives at hall where the Sivathondan Nilayam branch in Toronto has gathered to celebrate Siva Yogaswami’s monthly guru puja day. A small pada puja is performed to Bodhinatha to welcome him.

On stage are photos of Ganesha, Chellapaswami, Yogaswami and Gurudeva. Bodhinatha is welcomed and invited to give a talk, which he does, a talk titled “God Siva is All Pervasive Love.”

This gentleman translated Bodhinatha’s talk into Tamil perfectly, word for word, from memory.

After Bodhinatha’s talk, this Amma – a most wonderful and talented singer, led a group in singing Yogaswami’s Natchintanai songs while devotees came up to Bodhinatha for vibuthi blessings.

This group of devoted Yogaswami devotees gather each month to celebrate his guru puja day. Many of them knew Yogaswami personally.

Sri Sivayogapathy shares a paragraph from Gurudeva’s Living with Siva.

Mr. Sritharan, president of Sivathondan Nilayam in Toronto, thanks Bodhinatha for being here and shares how each of Bodhinatha’s visits makes a difference in their lives.

After the wonderful and spiritually uplifting event with the Sivathondan Nilayam group we left for the Sri Varasithi Vinayagar Temple. Bodhinatha is welcomed with a small pada puja by Siva Markandu.

Two ladies perform the traditional arathi to welcome Bodhinatha.

We are led first to the utsava murthi of Lord Ganesha.

Ganesha is beautifully decorated and an excellently performed puja is conducted Him. There are many talented priests in this temple and the main Ganesha deity, we do not have a photo of Him, was elaborately dressed and decorated with sandal paste.

This young boy is the youngest priest in the temple and chanted many of the mantras during the puja.

A shrine to Yogaswami and Gurudeva has been set up for the day.

Ganesha is taken out from the shrine and placed on His Mushika vahana (palanquin) to be paraded around the inner shrines of the temple.

Strong young men are called forward to have the rare privilege to carry Ganesha. The palanquin is heavy and requires a few men to carry it.

Ganesha ready to begin the parade.

Led by Tavil and Nadaswaram musicians, Ganesha and His over 300 devotees present that evening make their way around the inner shrine.

The top of Ganesha’s umbrella barely makes in below the temple ceiling.

Sivasri Panchadchara Vijayakumara Kurukkal, founder and chief priest of Sri Varasiththi Vinayagar Temple (www.vinaayagar.com), officially welcomes Bodhinatha.

Bodhinatha is presented with a shawl…

then paraded around the temple.

Sri Vijayakumara Kurukkal shared with us that on July 23rd the temple celebrated its chariot festival day and about 35,000 people were present on that day itself. Toronto has a large population of Sri Lankan Tamils and there are many temples coming up in the area.

Bodhinatha performs an arathi to Yogaswami and Gurudeva before beginning his talk.

Sri Somaskanda Kurukkal, who is the uncle Sri Vijayakumara Kurukkal, shares a few words on the importance of a guru. Sri Somaskanda Kurukkal was the priest of the West Australian Siva temple for a few years. Bodhinatha will be attending the kumbhabhishegam of this temple next month.

Bodhinatha give
s a talk titled “How to develop a close relationship with Lord Ganesha”.

Devotees come up for vibuthi blessing.

The temple recently purchased land across the road and they will be constructing a brand new temple there in the upcoming months and they have invited Bodhinatha to preside over the ground breaking ceremony.

Bodhinatha poses with Sri Vijayakumara Kurukkal and the other priests of the temple. They are all related and the temple is run by this family of priests.

August 6th: We woke up in time to see the sunrise today and a flock of birds making their way across the sky. The sun sets late and rises early as Toronto is experiencing some very nice warm summer weather…..at least for us Kauaiians anyway.

Later that morning we headed to the Vishnu Mandir where Bodhinatha conducted a seminar on How to Raise Children as Good Hindus. It is the first time he is publicly conducting a seminar using “Keynote”, a power point type software, to have notes and graphics projected on a screen. It was a great success and it will be the first of many more to come.

Vishnu Mandir has a high end Hindu museum in the building which tells about the basics of Hinduism. Also, present are lots of art work including this spectacular 4-foot tall monolithic, intricately carved, soap stone Nataraja.

A beautiful Sivalingam made out of copper.

Kulapati Easan Katir on mission, reporting in on his teaching work…

Classes each morning at the SV Temple Youth Camp…

…using all the hi-tech resources a University campus offers.

Subjects this year: Four Ways to See God; Raising Children; all based on Satguru Bodhinatha’s current teaching and writing.

Sadhu Paksha, Day 2

All is quiet at home at the Aadheenam. Though there are no official tours…lots of Hindus are coming to the temple in the morning. Being school holidays, families are traveling…

We have these photos just in from Toronto… here is Bodhinatha arriving at the Nagapooshani Amman temple.

August 3rd: stepping back in time, Bodhinatha departing Kauai Aadheenam…

Traveling with Sadhaka Dandapani

A polaroid filter creates a rainbow of colors 36,000 feet above sea level as the plane heads towards San Francisco over an ocean of clouds.

August 4th:Bodhinatha responds to e-mails as he waits for his United Airlines flight to Chicago. After a half hour transit time, he boards a connecting flight to his final destination, Toronto.

August 5th: Our first day of events began with a visit to the Sri Ayyappan Temple at 8:30am. Bodhinatha was welcomed with a pada puja and arathi by the priest and devotees.

Temple president, Mr. Balendran, shows Bodhinatha a painting of the new temple and explains the plans.

The construction of the temple is well on the way with the ground floor completed structurally. What you see here is the frame work for the 1st floor which will be where the shrine is and the mandapam where devotees can worship.

The temple faces directly east. It also already owns a 15 to 20 feet tall chariot.

After the Ayyappan Temple, Bodhinatha headed to the Sri Nagapooshani Amman temple. Kandasami Kurukkal (far right), who was recently on Kauai for Iraivan’s Garbhanyasa ceremony, welcomes Bodhinatha. To his immediate left is Surainder Kurukal from Kopay, Sri Lanka.

Bharani Sivacharya garlands Bodhinatha. He was trained by Sri Pitchai Kurukkal in Pillaiyarpatti and is now one of the priests here at the Nagapooshani Amman temple. He also conducts classes in Sanskrit chanting (which this morning Bodhinatha said was some of the best he heard) and puja training.

Bodhinatha poses with Bharani Sivacharya in his Sanskrit chanting classroom.

Upon conclusion of the morning puja at the Nagapooshani Amman temple, Bodhinatha was taken to the site where the temple will be relocated to. They have purchased a 5-acre parcel which includes an existing building which will be renovated to be the new Nagapooshani Amman temple. At this venue classes are currently being conducted in hatha yoga and meditation, computer training, thevaram and bhajan, Sanskrit chanting and puja training.

Kulapati Easan Katir at the summer camp in Pennsylvania…. He’s in the back, top row, to the right in front of the temple door. He writes:

“Campers enjoy puja and dinner at the Sri Venkateshwara Temple.”

Sadhu Paksha Day 1

Bodhinatha is prepared for departure tomorrow and today he and the editing team put on the final touches of his Keynote Presentation, (an Apple MacIntosh presentation program that shows slides on screen), which he will be taking with him as he travels.

Meanwhile the Aadheenam has a new addition under development.. a visitor info center out front where we will have literature and a small library for pilgrims. We decided to simply purchase an existing small building on the north side of the island, cut it in half, bring it up on a flatbed truck and put it back together again! Yes, its true… of course major renovations will be done…

Here is Sadhaka Dandapani who will be traveling with Bodhinatha to Toronto, New Jersey and Edmonton. He also did all the advance coordination. Here is his very cool itinerary, done in Excel with similar events in color. Green time slots are for travel-transit times. Purple time slots are temple visits. Orange time slots are teaching sessions. Light Blue time slots are for darshan sessions and meeting people.

But, where are the yellow time slots for rest and breaks! Oops. there are none… a busy 13 days!

See the Guru Travels Page for details and events that you might attend if you live in the areas Bodhinatha will be visiting. And the page has been updated to include all Bodhinatha’s missions through October, 2005

Sannyasin Arumugaswami stands with “THE BOOK” which is our term for the galleys of the latest edition of the magazine, all finished and assembled in one binder.

All the composition, color correction and editing was completed today, for the October, 2005 issue, which is printed in August, and shipped in the first week of September and on the shelves in newsstands by September 15th. We work very far in advance.

One more issue of Hinduism Today ready to go to the press!

Lord Ganesha is the star for this issue. Here He is on the cover… and the educational Insight Section is a special 16-page piece on our beloved Ganapati.

Iraivan, quiet in the distance… resting. But not for long… six new silpis are on their way…

Another quiet day… Bodhinatha is editing in the afternoons. Today he is working on Book 4 of the children’s course.

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Oh! We have linked to a new talk on the side bar to the right… scroll down and check out Bodhinatha’s July 2004 report on his trip to Cincinnati and his insights on the Satguru… and remember, we have a new index page for his recent talks and we have added more since our last talk… Go Here

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Lots of work going on to prepare for Bodhinatha’s missions in the coming months. It takes a lot of ground work to set everything up to make sure his stay at various places is productive. He is placing more emphasis now on educational activities as he travels.

The Hinduism Today team is deep into a new color management initiative to get all our pages to look better in the future.

Tomorrow we begin our summer Sadhu Paksha. TAKA will “slow down” and there will be no tours. We will start today and pull from some interesting photo archives for you…

In the ongoing quest to collect images of the Gods, we took pictures of cards that have been sent to the Aadheenam with Lord Ganesha on them.

Well this photo is *not* what is happening today… but we could not resist sharing this precious photo of Bodhinatha at Chidambaram…

“Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami is with Amma Sivayogam Vinayagamurthy trustee of Sri Subramuniya Ashram Alaveddy, Sri Lanka and Rishipathi Mylvaganam Kanagaratnam and Sivalosani Kanagaratnam trustees of Sri Subramuniya Kottam Kopay, Sri Lanka. This photo was taken at Chidambaram Temple in 1997.”

On the home front, with one team of silpis gone, all our pilgrims returned home, things are quiet. It’s the still moment between transitions. We are happy to announce that the next team of silpies finally got their Visas, and will be here next week or so. Meanwhile Bodhinatha leaves for Toronto on Star two. But all is quiet at home.

Kulapati Easan Katir writes:

105 hatha yogis and yoginis practice Gurudeva’s preparation for meditation at the Sri Venkateshwara Temple Youth Camp in Pennsylvania.

Evening bhajans in a field at the the SR University of Pennsylvania

Bodhinatha is preparing for a very busy travel season. He leaves for Toronto on August 3rd, then flies across to Edmonton, Alberta on August 8th, then August 11 flies back across to New Jersey for the Dharma Conference and a meeting convened by the Hindu Encyclopedia team. Then later this year, trips to San Diego, New Delhi, Malaysia, Singapore and Mauritius…

Kulapati Jiva Rajasankara, our Iraivan carving site manager, has been with us now for nearly two weeks, having come over for Guru Purnima. After the festival he had a number of meetings pertaining to the carving of Iraivan Temple and tomorrow returns to India.

We really have to thank him, his wife Kanmani and their two sons Senthilathiban and Thuraisingam for all the hard work and dedication to keeping the temple carving moving along so well all these years.

Meanwhile another Kulapati, Easan Katir is off on a mission to Eastern USA… He sent this today:

“Ganesh puja inaugurating the 2005 Sri Venkateshwara Youth Camp at SR University in Pennsylvania. Kulapati Easan Katir will teach hatha yoga and Hindu Dharma to 105 campers this week.”

Jiva goes out to the temple this morning to take measurements to verify the future hand railing height…

Capstone of the next Chinna Gopuram awaiting it’s turn to go aloft

Jiva has himself probably handled every single stone of Iraivan at one time or another.

A look at the inner chamber of Iraivan…