Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami have finished the program in Atlanta and are on their way to Chicago. Meanwhile we have pictures coming in from their meetings in Maryland.

Shanmuganathaswami shares a bit about those who came to see Bodhinatha:

This is Dr. Gurusamy, the chairman of the Murugan Temple of North America in Lanham, Maryland. He arranged our visit to the temple the next day for the darshan of Lord Muruga.

Padmini Saravanapavan (lower right) and her husband Arumugam were instrumental in the building of the Murugan Temple of North America. Gurudeva had given them a Ganesha murthi (statue) in the early 1980’s to start the temple. Behind Padmini is Kalyani, Padmini’s daughter and to the left is Valli, Kalyani’s daughter. Three generations visiting Bodhinatha. Padmini created two endowments for the Murugan Temple with Hindu Heritage Endowment. Bodhinatha presented Padmini with checks for the two endowment grants for 2004.

Nigel Siva, his wife Inpah and Inpah’s mother were on call throughout Bodhinatha’s visit to the Washington DC area. They are staunch devotees of Lord Muruga. Nigel teaches Saivism to the children at the Murugan Temple. He is a “karma yogi” and worked every day for four months to build a new stage for the temple cultural hall. Inpah cooked all the delicious meals for Bodhinatha during his visit, including murungai she had recently brought back from the UK.

Dharmalingam Siddhan, a second year Master Course student, drove all the way from Pittsburg to visit Bodhinatha. He has a new daughter, Neera, as a sister to his four year old daughter Dhara. Dharmalingam came last year to Maryland with his mother, Len, and his wife, Courtney.

Vayudeva Varadan writes the newsletter for the Murugan Temple. He is also on the executive committee and sets a fine example of volunteering his spare time and serving the local temple community.

Venkatt Guhesan came with his wife, Vinodhini. Venkatt is a computer programmer and is interested in helping with the TAKA website. He suggested we include some Tamil on our website to help serve a larger group of Tamil reading devotees worldwide.

Kalainesan, Ahila and son Yashwan came to see Bodhinatha.

Kulathungam visited us in 2004 at the monastery. He is a wonderful singer and sang some beautiful songs to Lord Muruga when he was at Kadavul Temple.

This is Anshul Mohaan who came to visit the monks several years ago when he was finishing school.

Here we are with a group photo of Murugan Temple devotees with Bodhinatha.

David Gorbani has been affiliated with the Murugan temple for about eight years. He is a very devout Western Saivite.

This is Ragavan, on the right, a devotee of Iraivan Temple. He came with his parents who traveled from Sri Lanka, Vinasithamby and Saravanandadvi.

Roman Hunt has been reading Gurudeva’s books for several years. He feels he is a true Saivite Hindu through and through. Bodhinatha presented him with the first year of study materials for The Master Course, a three year study of Gurudeva’s trilogy, Dancing, Living and Merging with Siva. Roman is a classic example of a Hindu being re-born in the West. He is anxious to adopt a Hindu name and raise his daughter as a Hindu.

It was tour day today at the Aadheenam. About 50 visitors were here.

Stone carving is a rare sight…

“This is incredible… who would have imagined something like this existed in Hawaii?”

Dr. Sunder and Thilaka spent their morning with us again…before returning to California.

Where is Siva?

Sometimes the swamis will use the following salutation to notes and letters:

Siva above us
Siva below us
Siva to the left of us
Siva to the right of us
Siva in front of us
Siva behind us
Siva outside us
Siva within us

Today we received a thoughtful assessment we thought you might enjoy, from a Gurudeva devotee and pilgrim to Iraivan.

“I was reading the eight lines above on Siva written by you. Being a scientific person, I wanted to include all possible directions (continuous and not discrete) and hence I wanted to come up with terms to do that. First, I said to myself:

Siva circumscribing us
Siva inscribing us

But I was not satisfied and wanted to come up with one ultimate word. It didn’t take me long to come up with the word:

Siva omniscribing us

I looked up the dictionary and did not find the word. If so, it appears that by Lord Siva’s grace, I have just coined a new word, “omniscribing,” meaning in all possible directions, not only outward but also inward. If the word already exists, please forgive me. If the word is indeed new and if it appears to mean what I intended it to mean, the credit does still not belong to me, because it is all owing to Lord Siva’s grace!”

Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami are in the middle of major ceremonies at the Atlanta temple. Shanmuganathaswami pens a quick note in-between events:

This morning was the Utsava Murthy Prana Prathishta ceremony where the utsava murthis of the temple took their first “look” at the bhuloka inside the Atlanta temple. Of course, they are supposed to see auspicious things first: first things they saw were two little girls, an elderly couple, two sannyasins (us) and a young heifer holstein named Daisy (rescued from the slaughter house, we were told.)

Bodhinatha gave his talk on karma yoga.

Like last year, we are going back and forth between the Vishnu and Siva temples, depending on what is happening at the time. As a result we are always there for the most important “final arati” or “end of homa” ceremony.

This morning ended with their new homemade chariot going around the temple on the black pavement. Everyone was dancing because the pavement was so hot! They sprayed it down with a hose and the water steamed off.

The priests have a lot of fun in the Balaji temple, throwing garlands from one murthi to another, rolling coconuts on the floor, and outside joyously tossing fruits in the air during the parade.

Mr. Padmanaban and his wife, Nirmala, and son Prasanth are visiting from San Jose, California. They have been here a few times before and really enjoy being at the aadheenam.

Mr. Padmanaban hugs a rudraksha tree

And Prashant.. poses for our TAKA camera man

He was amazed how hard a granite rock actually is when he attempted to carve his initials in this stone.

This family is from Vancouver and friends of Sadasiva Gurukal who visited here last week. It was their first visit and they were very much impressed with the beauty of Iraivan and the grounds.

We took the two families to the top of Muruga Hill.

The pillars of Iraivan… always marvelous to look at.

Yoginathaswami talks with some of our pilgrims.

Dr. Sunder and Thilaka are still with us today.

This morning Dr. Sunder gave the monks a 2-hour slide presentation on his recent trip to Sri Lanka.

He is a heart surgeon from Lancaster, California, and when he planned to retire, he asked Gurudeva what to do. Gurudeva told him to go serve in charitable medical institutions of Sri Lanka and India.

He is fulfilling that vision and is spearheading a major initiative to bring high-tech medical technology to the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka. One of his innovations is to bring state of the art non-invasive diagnostic tools to traveling and rural clinics. He was the first to bring a miniature portable, battery operated ultra-sound device to check peoples’ hearts, on the road. By uncovering heart problems that have arisen, even in very young children who were malnourished in the womb or as infants, he is able to set many of them on a course of treatment towards a better life of health and well-being.

Hinduism Today is planning to do an article on such Hindus who are “giving back” to their homelands…

Bodhinatha had a busy day yesterday in Maryland meeting devotees in the morning, visiting the Murugan temple and then off to Atlanta. They are on the move and no news has come through yet as they are very busy…

At home our Pillaiyar Kulam gave a report on various projects. Muruganathaswami is planning out a year’s worth of promotion for our books, Sadhaka Jothinatha has been coordinating a variety of promotions for Hinduism Today and Himalayan Academy Publications both in India and at events in the USA…

Dr. Shun K. Sunder and his wife Thilaka have come on a pilgrimage to Kauai and to help with an up-and-coming article on Sri Lanka where Dr. Sunder does a lot of relief work.

They enjoy a visit to the Iraivan Temple and talking with Sthapati.

A look at the North Gopuram from inside the temple…

A visit to the publications team… Acharya Kumarswami…. Years ago Dr. Sunder made some major contributions to our in-house technology to help us move forward into the digital era, and he has put Hinduism Today into his will to help ensure this work goes on into the future.

Photos from our lovely center in Mauritius, which is perched on the northern shore of that beautiful island, overlooking the mouth of the Riviere du Rempart, as it flows into the ocean….

“”Where the river meets the sea….where the individual soul merges into Supreme God Siva… the ultimate goal of all souls on this planet … as taught by Gurudeva.”

Lord Muruga Mandapam now has a beautiful railing that goes around the Pavilion. An ideal place to have a nice meditation and a beautiful soothing view of the turquoise waters of the ocean.

Back to the Ganesha Mandapam where Lord Pancha Mukha Ganapathi is decked with beautiful garlands lovingly woven by devotees attending the May Ganesha Homa.

Devotees coming early are able to find a seat close to the deity inside the Mandapam. They sing beautiful devotional songs…

Kulapati Siven Koothan has hundreds of prayers to send into the Homa fire. Later Kulapati Koothan read a very nice talk of Satguru Bodhinatha.

Tiru Parameshvaran Ramsamy from Henrietta leading the bhajans…

Many newcomers to the Homa on that Sunday…

This gentleman made a very nice testimony about how Lord Ganesha answered his prayers for one of his close relatives who was seriously ill.

They are attending Homa for the first time… Looking happy!

Tirumati Indranee Ramsamy with her daughters Padmasri and Arulmani…

Food being served by volunteers at one of the serving stations…

Tiru Siva Mahadevan Thungavelu with his family from Beau Bassin.

Veeren Canagasaby (left), with his mother and wife from Riviere du Rempart. Veeren lovingly sponsors tents and chairs to the Park on special occasions.

Malaysian Youths Raise Funds for Iraivan

Youths of Saiva Siddhanta Church teamed up during Wesak Day celebration to raise funds for Iraivan Temple. They set up a food stand and for 2 days sold meals to the crowds, vegetarian burgers, vegetarian chicken rice and Indian delicacies.

Amidst them was long time devotees of Gurudeva, Sishya Adi Seyon, who sponsored the delicious home made chocolate and Magdeline cakes ( as shown ) and Sishya Shanmuganathan who sponsored the burger bun for the sales team..

Taking a break off sales to watch the exquisitely decorated chariot procession..

Most of the items were sold out at the end of the second day.Every effort made is getting us closer to making Gurudeva’s vision come true.. Once a vision, Soon a reality!!!

Back at the Aadheenam, the next edition of Hinduism Today is being prepared and will feature a center section on Lord Ganesha and home puja. We took pictures of some of our Ganesha posters today… and thought we would share these with you….

Bodhinatha writes from Maryland:

We had a busy Wednesday here in Greenbelt MD near the Murugan Temple. We had small satsangs with many devotees and covered the whole gamut of issues on all areas of life from personal karmas to website development, teaching Saivite philosophy etc.

There is a strong interest here to help put more Tamil on the web and to keep the Murugan Temple a pure Saiva temple.

Today we are seeing a few more devotees, visiting the Murugan temple on the way to the airport and then flying to Atlanta.

A brilliant day at Iraivan as the silpis continue work on the North Gopuram

We got an inspiring letter from a devotee who had some profound experiences while attending puja here last week. He gave permission to share it on TAKA:

“During my recent visit to the temple, I had a series of extraordinary experiences. I felt Gurudeva’s presence and guidance very strongly and this was quite unexpected. I came as a casual observer, but I can tell you that I left as a fire brand, lit with the light of Shiva from within. I have been meditating and chanting for many years, but I seldom have had flashy experiences. My experiences have always been subtle…a gently knowing that guided me quietly from within. Suddenly, while at the morning puja, something opened up inside of me and all the glory of heaven seems to have descended, enlightening my mind and filling me with happiness and profound love for God. Even the mention of one of His names is like a direct connection to the Divine Consciousness that is so alive in me at this time.

This unbounded consciousness of the Divine is with me now, even while I am also experiencing the boundaries of 3 dimensional life in the world. I don’t know how long this connection will continue, but even if it ends today, I will not complain. I feel that my life has been fulfilled completely. If nothing else ever happens, I could ask for nothing more. God has granted my every wish.

Please find enclosed a check to help with the temple project. ($5,040). This is the first of many checks, as I have made a pledge to myself to raise $108,000.

With gratitude…

Kambhampati Sastry and his wife are visiting us from Hyderabad, India. Though it is their visit to the Aadheenam, Mr. Sastry has read a lot about us on the web. His wife was most interested in all the unique plants that we have here and was able to identify some that she has seen in India.

Many stones awaiting their place in the sky…

Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami arrived safely in Bethesda, Maryland, last night and spent their first full day today on their mission. The purpose of this first stop over was to have personal meetings with devotees in the Bethesda, Washington D.C area.

The day was filled with darshan meetings with devotees and students.

We step back into the world of Lord Murugan… on the first day of our three-day retreat we celebrated Vaikasi Vishakam Muruga Abhishekam in Kadavul.

We share Gurudeva’s teachings on the the Great God of Light:

“Siva’s followers all believe in the Mahadeva Karttikeya, Son of Siva-Shakti, whose vel of grace dissolves the bondages of ignorance. The yogi, locked in lotus, venerates Murugan. Thus restrained, his mind becomes calm. Aum.”

“A great aid to the accomplishment of this is to invoke Lord Siva daily. Then the higher chakras open within your psychic body. Peace of mind comes unbidden, and bliss flows forth from your aura for all to feel. Regular puja invoking the assistance of Lord Murugan will also greatly aid in a premature banishing of connections with the external world and in severing the tubular connections with inhabitants in it. When Lord Murugan is reached through your puja, He will also give wisdom and the divine understanding of the transmutation process. ”

Lord Karttikeya, Murugan, first guru and Pleiadean master of kundalini yoga, was born of God Siva’s mind. His dynamic power awakens spiritual cognition to propel souls onward in their evolution to Siva’s feet. Aum.

Lord Karttikeya flies through the mind’s vast substance from planet to planet. He could well be called the Emancipator, ever available to the call of those in distress. Lord Karttikeya, God of will, direct cognition and the purest, child-like divine love, propels us onward on the righteous way through religion, His Father’s law. Majestically seated on the manipura chakra, this scarlet-hued God blesses mankind and strengthens our will when we lift to the inner sky through sadhana and yoga. The yoga pada begins with the worship of Him. The yogi, locked in meditation, venerates Karttikeya, Skanda, as his mind becomes as calm as Saravana, the lake of Divine Essence. The kundalini force within everyone is held and controlled by this powerful God, first among renunciates, dear to all sannyasins. Revered as Murugan in the South, He is commander in chief of the great devonic army, a fine, dynamic soldier of the within, a fearless defender of righteousness. He is Divinity emulated in form. The Vedas say, “To such a one who has his stains wiped away, the venerable Sanatkumara shows the further shore of darkness. Him they call Skanda.” Aum Namah Sivaya.

The gold leafing of the Tandava statues in Kadavul continues… Today we had 12 people working on this project!

Our Sun One homa today…

Paramacharya Palaniswami presides and burns the prayers.

Bhani and Rema Karthigesu took the vegetarian vrata today.

Aum Sivaya, Svaha!

Our pilgrim family comes to visit the team in publications.

Iraivan has been very active… the crane came early this morning for a lift of more small stones for the North Chinna Gopuram.

A classic Kauai day, 10 minute showers followed by bright sun…

A look up at the beams of the roof of the Gopuram.

The amazing scaffold built by our Siddhidata monks…

is strong enough to allow 8 men and work on stones together…

Small stones were brought up today.

On the right is Aresh from Iran who is here on pilgrimage with his friend. They have been studying Gurudeva’s teachings for many years and are “online” students of the Master Course… reading the daily lessons on the web and visiting these TAKA pages regularly.

It is the end of our five day phase and we are headed for a three-day Purnima retreat, with an early morning Vaikasi Visakham puja tomorrow invoking Lord Muruga. Today the Siddhidata Kulam shared news on their activities. Sannyasin Yoginathaswami tells us that four containers of stones have left Chennai and are on their way to Kauai. He has also been continuing to get bids from different contractors for the work to come on the Nandi Mandapam foundation for Iraivan Temple. The Siddhidata Kulam has a very well defined calendar which Gurudeva asked them to create years ago. All their tasks and routine maintenance programs are carefully scheduled. This phase they rust proofed most of our vehicles. And with the summer approaching and hot days already upon us, the garden is very productive and the team works there regularly providing the Aadheenam with a steady stream of fresh, organically grown vegetables.

Bodhinatha with Mel Drisko who is a formally enrolled Master Course correspondence student. He came prepared with a list of good questions. Gurudeva and Bodhinatha have always encouraged pilgrims to write down questions before they arrive as this makes good use of their time today.

Pilgrim Michael Duncan has been here for several days and is on his way home today. He knew Gurudeva decades ago and joined us on the last Innersearch to India with his son.

Pilgrim family from Singapore: Bhani Karthigesu, his wife Rema, their two daughters, Suhashini and Thrishna and son Vivek… worshipping at the Narmada Lingam on the path of the Saiva Saints.

Thrishna does her abhishekam

Mother Rema…

Here is the family yesterday afternoon going for a nature walk… first the Rudraksha forest…

Tree hugs for everyone…

Worship at the Swayambhu Lingam…

And then down to Bali Hai to sit by the river…

Vivek enjoys the stream. It’s quite a change from the urban world of Singapore!

Then a visit to the patrai (blacksmith forge)

Iraivan….

A look at the grove of trees below the temple toward the river…

Being the last day of the phase we had a tour group.

A small group.. only about 30 people today. Two years ago that would have been a big group for us.

Most of today’s guests found us in some guide book or other…

Where they came from, whatever they knew or did not know about Hinduism before they got here, the spiritual forces that permeates out from the inner worlds of Kauai Aadheenam, San Marga and Iraivan never fails to grant each one a bit of joy, peace and upliftment.

It is not unusual to hear years later that one brief visit changed their lives forever.

It is of course, all the magic of Gurudeva and the Kailasa Parampara, working down through the ages….touching the heart and soul of each one who comes near.

Singapore Himalayan Academy students Bhani and Rema Karthigesu are visiting with their three children for a week.

Bhani and Rema have been here before, but it’s the first time bringing their children.

The young people were excited to finally see the place that their parents have been attached to for quite a while now. Shanmugam Sthapati had a nice chat with them in Tamil, enthusiastically explaining the various parts of the Iraivan Temple building process.

Another Master Course student, Aresh… a young Iranian man on a tour of the temple.

Iraivan looks magnificent!
mmm…there is an interesting floating object in the sanctum above Gurudeva’s picture.

This young couple who came yesterday, returned today and had darshan with Bodhinatha.

Today was Sun Three of this phase and our Pillaiyar Kulam shared news on their Sivathondu. Shanmuganathaswami said that our web store now has virtually everything we have in inventory available on the web.

Sadhaka Jothinatha gave news of event promotions where sevaks in the field have booths at various fairs and melas. We now have a very broad range of literature and people passing through are very interested. We take their name and address and send a small packet of free literature later and also give the “Internet Flyer” which has the web addresses for our online resources.

It is also Ashram Sadhana day for this month… everyone is cleaning and repairing. In the afternoon we had two teams working on the temple and the kitchen. In the morning there was a special project in the Publications building…

We installed a “Wall of Covers” of Hinduism Today, stretching back in time to the first New Saivite World. Gurudeva founded it on January 5, 1979 and the first issue came off the press in February, printed by the monks on a small press in what is now our cafeteria! It was black and white, and the photos were so bad (really) that one could sometimes only tell what was in them by reading the captions! But it did make us good caption writers, so there is a blessing in everything.

Then in 1985 Gurudeva changed the name to Hinduism Today, and we began printing with a single color. It was a big moment, and in that same year we got our first Macs and began learning that you can do type and graphics without all the chemicals, light tables and darkrooms. That was a discovery.

We later went to full color, but in the large tabloid style of a newspaper still, and printed that style for another eleven years. By then the printing was not done on Kauai, but by a printer in America, sometimes called the Really Big Island.

And in December of 1996 Hinduism Today, which had by then become a major journalistic force within HInduism, transformed itself into a full color magazine.

The Wall of Covers has every magazine cover we have printed since then, 64 of them.

Twenty-six years of publication. And still going strong! Now every visitor will be able, at a glance, to see this history.

Jai to our founder, Gurudeva, for his vision, his encouragement, his practical wisdom and love in taking the team through all those years of growth and change into maturity.

We don’t have photos for you today…. but all is well and active at the Aadheenam. The Ekadanta Kulam gave their report today. Sannyasin Saravananathaswami told us about all the arrangements being made in advance for Bodhinatha’s missions to various temple in the months ahead. In Toronto for example, he will be holding a big educational Prasnottara Satsang and Swami sent 500 copies of “Raising Hindu Children” booklet in advance to the temple management there. Similar advance promotion is going done for various venus. See his travel page.

Sadhaka Dandapani is working hard to settle the program for the next Innersearch Travel/Study Program. Stay tuned for more information on that in the days ahead.

Another phase arrived with our morning homa conducted by Yogi Japendranatha.

Bodhinatha gave another talk in his series of summaries of the Tirukkural….

Our Siddhidata Kulam has been working on expanding their repertoire, which now includes a variety of gourds, cucumbers, long beans and some new kinds of squash and pumpkins.

The vine gourds are especially new: bitter gourd, ridge gourd and snake gourd are growing well.

These supplement our many varieties of greens and reduce the consumption of the brassica family of plants to a minimum

The gold leafing of the Tandava’s is proceeding well. Our Wailua Mission members did 12 more today.

Kulapati Deva Seyon relates the way this all came about with this little story:

Hail to our beloved Guru, and the Gods of Kadavul!

Aum Namasivaya & happy Mother’s Day to all our Mother’s.
“The hand that rocks the cradle . . . rules the world!”

As you all know well, every Satguru Purnima for the past 8 years or so we take all the Tandavas out of the temple and dip them in a tamarind mixture to make them appear bright and shinny for the few days of the event. This takes a good many of us as well as volunteers from the pilgrims that come for the event. A few weeks later they start their ever increasing descent into back into the dark and dusty.

When Tandu & Uma got inspired several months ago (after gold leafing Iraivan stones), to gold leaf each and every one of them and have a golden hall for Siva’s dance right here on Kauai, there was no budget, no funds for such an idea. Tandu & Uma started a fund themselves to complete the job and were content to do the work themselves at a pace they could afford and the time they had. It would probably have taken several years to complete.

One day several devotees were standing and talking with Palaniswami saying “wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could finish the Tandavas by this Satguru Purnima.” Palaniswami just smiled. The very next day Palaniswami reported that Bodhinatha asked Him – “How much money it would take to finish the Tandavas!”

Palaniswami hadn’t said a word to Bodhinathai! Palaniswami asked Bodhinatha smilingly, “Why are you asking me that question!” And the rest you might say is history.

Bodhinathaswami said that by doing some creative financing with their vehicles and postponing a trade in he thought he had found enough money to help finish the Tandavas! Now that’s magic!

A bird captured in flight shows the shutter speed of our new digital camera.