It’s Sun One of new phase and we are back on the job here at the Aadheenam. We had our usual homa the morning following by a morning with guests from Texas.

Dr. N.R. Pemmaraju from San Antonio is here from San Antonio, Texas with his wife Rani. Today they joined the morning homa, had darshan with Bodhinatha and visited the publications offices. Here they are with Arumugaswami.

The Pemmaraju family have a long association with the Aadheenam. He loves to say that “a piece of the Aadheenam exists in San Antonio,” where, decades ago, Gurudeva bequeathed a murthi of Ardhanarisvara to the Hindu temple there. That temple has grown to encompass today around 2,000 families and the Ardhanarisvara Deity continues to carry the message that God is neither male nor female, that Siva is All, inseparable from His energy, Shakti; and that in Siva the ida (feminine) and the pingala (masculine) nadis (psychic nerve currents) are balanced so that the sushumna (the central psychic current in the spine) is ever active. They were so happy to come back to the Aadheenam after so many years and hope to have Bodhinatha come visit San Antonio sometime soon in the future.

Here are some photos from recent GG mission satsang.

Absorbing the vibration created by the homa satsang.

Mira Sendan holding young Bodhi Sivam Param

Raja Sivamani played vina and explained the Tamil lyrics in English, a song about Siva-Shakti.

We celebrated Kulapati Vijay Shankara’s birthday.

Dr. Narayana Rao and his wife are regular pilgrims to Kauai Aadheenam and a planning an extended family pilgrimage in June this year. In his email informing the Aadheenam of his “sankalpa” (intentions) to come on pilgrimage he (an engineer-math-scientist-professor) makes the following esoteric offering:

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“Appreciation, admiration, and adoration, are the key words for this visit. When one is able to appreciate, admire, and adore, he/she gets inspired beyond imagination. With such inspiration, I have challenged myself to create a mnemonic (in this case, a string of words intended to aid in memorization) involving the Iraivan Temple. The mnemonic has to do with the transcendental number Pi, which consists of an endless string of numbers following the decimal point after 3. People have devised various means of memorizing the digits of Pi.

Here I have devised a mnemonic to aid in the memorization of the value of Pi to 31 digits following the decimal point. The 32nd digit is zero, and hence the string stops. The number of letters in a given word represents the digit in the value of Pi in that position. Thus, for example, the first word “How” represents 3, and the word “Aadheenam” represents 9, and so on. Punctuations are not counted but an apostrophe is counted as one letter because it is part of the word.

Thus, I am pleased to present to the Aadheenam the “Mnemonic for the Transcendental Number Pi, Involving the Transcendental Iraivan Devalayam,” created with the imagination driven by the appreciation, admiration, and adoration toward the Aadheenam. It is attached as a pdf file. Once again, please share it with Bodhinatha and all the monks.

Aum Namasivaya,
Narayana Rao

Today was a big tour day and many visitors… Bodhinatha had darshan and meetings with several people this morning…

END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming two-day retreat,
until Dasami, Sun One, Monday, May 2th.

Ben from a local contractor company has come to do an estimate on pouring the foundations for the Nandi Mandapam.

Several contractor’s bids are being sought. The job will also involve extensions out from the main foundation of Iraivan in front of each of the three Chinna Gopurams. Sannyasin Yoginathaswami guides him.

The top piece of the next gopuram to go up looks amazing.

Sadhaka Haranandinatha, acting as driver for some visitors today.

The outer stones of the roof of the next gopuram in progress.

From a few vantage points, you can take photos that would make anyone think the temple was finished!

Chidambaram of the West…

Our latest booklet “Raising Children as Good Hindus,” pictured here, is already in high demand. It is a treasure of good tips for the religious education of children: tips for cultivating spiritual qualities, developing character, a positive self-concept, etc. And it is available on the web as of today.

Every issue of Hinduism Today has an “Insight” section in its center 8 or 16 pages, each elucidating some key Hindu teaching or practice. Some six issues back we started publishing reprints of these articles…

Well: instant success! Have proved most helpful to parents, teachers, seekers and students of Hinduism, “This is just what we’ve been looking for!….” The Pillaiyar Kulam, one of our teams of monks who oversee the abundance and achieving-good-results aspect of our mission, work to let people know these booklets exist and make them available–in a variety of ways, over the internet among others. They can be seen at http://www.himalayanacademy.com/teachingtools/ or ordered at 800-890-1008.

About 50 visitors today…

Shanmuga Sthapati and one of the silpis demonstrate carving…

“Impressive indeed,” one guest takes pictures of the symbols on the pillars.

Our team, working on the base stones of the west Chinna Gopuram.

Meg and Ethan are here on their second visit to the monastery. They came last year after their wedding on the island and today returned with Meg’s parents Dale and Darryl. They enjoyed the morning tour and were very interested in Gurudeva’s teachings so the young couple bought Gurudeva’s trilogy of books to begin daily study of the Master Course.

Now we take you for a silent nature walk to the Path of the Saiva Saints, where, on the north end corner there is a orchid show in progress from orchids the monks have placed in various trees which are all blooming…

See you next phase…

Aum Namasivaya….

A very quiet Sun 3 today… and the inner is bright and magnetic… in our morning sadhana today as a group, Bodhinatha led us to nearly an 1 1/2 long deep meditation. It was sublime…

Thamby Kumaran is here from California. He’s a trained architect and is working with Bodhinatha on plans for future of developments of the Aadheenam property.

He’s parked in the Ganapati Kulam, drafting property lines and entering measurements of areas into Vector Works, which is the cad software he uses.

The Ganapati Kulam is in the final hours of production of Hinduism Today… this means everyone is doing lots and lots of reading, final editing and proofing reading. Bodhinatha and his editing team stayed home today as Bodhinatha himself is reading the entire edition before it goes to press, as he usually does.

Paramacharya Palaniswami gives Thamby a break, reading a choice passage from one of this issue’s pages.

The Ekadanta Kulam gave their Sun Two report today. Both Saravananathaswami and Sadhaka Dandapani have been working on advance coordination for Bodhinatha’s future travels to Orlando and Canada. The Toronto visit looks like it will be a new outreach kind of trip in the sense that Bodhinatha will be going to a number of temples we have never been in touch with before. He will also be conducting a 4 hour seminar in line with his new emphasis that some education programs should be part of all his journeys.

Hindu visitors today… they were here four years ago and have come back and are awestruck and all the new developments.

Kadavul Door Number Two… refurbishing in progress. Word has spread about this karma yoga and 16 people came through to help today.

Applying sealer over areas that have been finished.

This composite copper-zinc “gold” is much, much harder to work with than gold leaf itself, so the team tells us.

Vidya and Shankar Nathan from Koloa also spent some time helping out today. They have decided to move back to Chennai for sometime. They will be near their families and they want their children to grow up in a Indian cultural atmosphere. Of course they will miss the cool and peaceful atmosphere of Kauai, but Chennai and India are “exploding” these days with all kinds of exciting developments. And having an extended family in the area makes for a lot of support for the children especially, who, Vidya tells us, don’t seem to mind the heat at all.

Our Siddhidata Kulam.. on their “routines”… which takes them from one area of the Aadheenam to the next on a carefully planned schedule… Today they were working out in front of the temple. Sadhaka Nilakantha with perhaps one of the most used tools in the state of Hawaii: the trusty “rice cutter.”

It’s Sun One again. The beginning of a short 4-day phase after a dynamic 3-day retreat.

On the last day of the phase… evening Chitra puja

Sadhaka Dandapani and Sadhaka Nilakantha perform the ceremony

Chanting Gurudeva’s names.

“I will be with you on the inside, 24 hours each day.”

Coming up to today.. a Hindu couple joined us for the morning Sun One Homa…. writing prayers

Messages for the inner worlds from Bhuloka…

Agni the messenger, ready for transmission…

It was such a silent morning, the powerful inner presence of the Divine permeating every cell of your body…

Shaila Pushpa… really enjoys the temple.

Saravananathaswami performs the homa, Paramacharya Palaniswami makes the prayer offerings into the sacred homa, as Bodhinatha remained in seclusion this morning. Paramacharya gave a talk about Gurudeva’s spiritual toolbox, and the many problems life brings to us that can be solved with his magical, mystical and practical tools.

The marvelous wonder from China is continuing to grow at incredible rates… we will keep you posted with more info in the days ahead.

Another interesting project in progress: refurbishing the doors of Kadavul temple… Today the left door is being re-installed

About 15 of us gather to carry the door from the Banyan Mandapam work area back to the temple. Each door weighs about 1,000 pounds, so the 200-yard walk to the Banyan Mandapam was quite a trek this morning.

Ganesha is gold-leafed…

The inner panels use a “composite” that looks like gold.

Hinge bolts going back in… We had a visitor from Oregon three days bck who witnessed the team working on the doors, and volunteered to make new, stainless steel hinges, six of them, for the doors! So Deva Rajan is designing them to be crafted by this retired machinist and sent in the weeks ahead to Kauai.

Yoginathaswami on top of the ladder tightening down the hinges.

The door on the right, was then removed… Can you tell from this photo which door received 200 hours of refirbishing, cleaning, gold-leafing and sealing? Send your answer to…. just kidding!

Several Hindu families came today and enjoyed a spring day in Siva’s Garden. Here they are standing near the 12-foo Dakshinamurthi.

Meanwhile Kanda Alahan has returned home… and here is the result of his work on Task force… two beautiful new doors for the Ganapati Kulam publications building. Amazingly, Kanda made these from Norfork Pine that the monks had milled right at the monastery, and some redwood gifted a few years bck from Callifornia.

Kanda, thank you for the hard work and many hours of milling and sanding! Everytime we enter the publications building we will be thinking of you! We’re thinking to put small bells on the doors later, too. Indian style.

It is the last day of a dynamic phase… All areas of Gurudeva mission work are unfolding powerfully under Bodhinatha’s wise direction.

END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming three-day retreat,
until Tritya Tithi, Sun One, Tuesday, April 26th.

Kanda Alahan is staying on Kauai for a while and coming to the monastery every day to do karma yoga. He is a master carpenter and is building some new beautiful doors for our publications building.

Here he is with Acharya Kumarswami in our very well equipped carpentry shop.

Kanda is using natural woods that Kumarswami has worked hard to gather.

When local trees are felled we try to be there to get the logs which might otherwise be wasted.

These are panels that will be on the face of the doors

This is from an old pine log.

The log shows some beautiful “spalting” where water has gotten into the wood and the fungi started to work before it was dried out… leaving incredible natural patterns and colors.

Of course, Lord Siva really knows how to do color!

Paramacharya Palaniswami is documenting the temple progress from a very specific point on the northwest edge of the Iraivan compound area… which will one day provide a time-lapse history of the temple’s progress over the years.

Stones await their time…

The scaffolding is secure on the northern side of the vimanam, ready for the roof of the Chinna Gopuram that will go up soon

Pots with lotuses…

One of the many gifts Kanda has given with his own hands through the years have been the wooden Tiruvadi, that are blessed by the feet of the Satguru and then sent to the homes of senior sishya where Pada puja is performed at mission satsangs. He did this for Gurudeva and continues the offering with Tiruvadi he brought for Bodhinatha on this trip.

Tour day today.. about 40-50 souls…

Mother and son… “on the rock…”

Colorful crowd!

Hugging the healing rudraksha trees.

These little chameleon lizards always seem to have a curious streak and the look back at you as if there was a deva inside… who is watching who?

A few from the publications building…

In the Kadavul Temple Kulapati Deva Seyon and Tandu Sivanathan decorate the shrine for this evening’s monthly Chitra pada puja for Gurudeva at 6pm.

Tandu is a master of bonsai and flower arrangement…..looking for the perfect balance.

All the seeds that Gurudeva planted are growing at a great speed, as if his wind and prana is blowing everything forward from within. This plant exemplifies how it feels to be at the Aadheenam… you look at it… it is perfectly silent, perfectly still, yet growing at a miraculous speed.

At the Aadheenam today, it’s quiet on the inside, but there’s lots happening:

The Siddhidata Kulam is working on clearing containers that are standing by in Honolulu.

The Pillaiyar Kulam reports that more educational pamphlets have been posted at our web store at incredibly low prices. The aim is not to make a profit but just to cover costs and keep the price low enough that teachers can order lots for their classes.

Lots of Himalayan Academy Publications event promotion is coming up at conferences in the months ahead.

The Ekadanta Kulam sent out a mailing to the island residents with the Open House invitation.

Our travel department is very busy with making arrangements for various trips…

Ben and Gail la Mar are visiting from San Francisco. Today they enjoyed seeing all the changes to the grounds and Iraivan Temple since their last visit here.

Gail is a Level 1 Master Course Correspondence student and they both come once a year to Kauai.

The gilding of the left door of Kadavul Temple is underway…

The exposed wooden edges will be painted black… which is what they are working on first.

Another padma completed on the temple doorsteps.

More pictures from Mauritius arrived today. Also a new home page for our center there has been created. See:

Saiva Siddhanta Church — Spiritual Park of Mauritius

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The March 2005 Ganesha Homa sponsored by the Mardemootoo/Pallanee kutumbas turned out as usual into a memorable religious moment for many. The large black granite Pancha Mukha Ganapati looked radiant on that day.

One devotee brought some traditional Indian musicians as a love offering to entertain those present at the Park. We felt like being carried into the traditional temples of South India…

Each month on the first Sunday many new people experience the homa ceremony and burning of prayers for the first time.

The Ganesha Mandapam is always filled to capacity on these events.

Hundreds of prayers are being burnt into the Homa fire from devotees coming from all over Mauritius. Beautiful testimonies are being shared later during the testimony sessions following the Homa ceremony.

Here is one devotee lovingly sharing a testimony with those present…

This is sishya Tirumati Malini Peruman with her lovely looking daughter.

Every month some friends of the Park sponsor lunch to devotees after the Homa. Our members come forward to help the sponsors with the food serving at different food stations.

Mr Raj Sookool and his family have never missed a homa ceremony… For Raj Sookool this ceremony makes a difference the way it is being organised every month. He deeply appreciates the seva of the stewards of the Spiritual Park.

A happy couple, Tiru Vishwanaden Moorooven and his wife Tirumati Lomavadee Moorooven with their new born baby girl Venilla. They have both been long time sishyas of Gurudeva.

Tiru Sivan Murrugappa Naicken from the south of the island greets everyone…

It’s Ashram Sadhana Day for this month at the monastery. Everyone one worked in their personal and kulam areas in the morning and then in the afternoon we split into two teams. One worked in the temple and the other worked in the kitchen and our food store room and refrigerators… *everything!* was removed from every shelf, every cupboard and the whole place scrubbed from top to bottom.

Meanwhile our gilding team completed the work on the Chinna Gopuram in record time today and this afternoon moved on to another project which is to gild the doors of Kadavul. For this we will only use gold leaf on the image of the Deities on the doors and use a new “composite” gold leaf made of copper and zinc for other portions. This afternoon we all took down this door…

And then moved it to the Banyan Mandapam where our team can work on it. Here is Deva Rajan who is managing the project.

That’s all for today. Cleaning, scrubbing, fixing, repairing.

The Ekadanta Kulam gave its report today. Saravananathaswami continues to work on communication relating to Bodhinatha’s travels and also mentioned up-and-coming task forcers and pre-monastic activities from young men here and there. Sadhaka Dandapani continues on preparations for the open house.

We’ve been having some spectacular dry sunny weather…. everything is blooming and visitors are amazed. Today one said “My wife and I visited every single famous garden on Kauai and paid to get into them all. But here… it’s more beautiful than any of them!”

The plant lies dormant for months and then starts growing several inches a day… stay tuned.

Tandu Sivanathan, Deva Rajan, Deva Seyon, Kanda Alahan are joined today by Isani Alahan, Lila Shaktidevi and Shama Kumaran for gold leafing.

The work is going very fast. The entire stone is almost done.

Nearby, the silpis are working on the lower levels of that same Chinna gopuram.

All the fitting is carefully tested and adjusted at ground level first.

Pillars of Iraivan.

Shanmuga Sthapati, who is usually supervising, shows off some of his deep knowledge and skill by working on some ornamentations from “scratch”…

Back at the gilding station. The key seems to be to come back at exactly the right time, when the sizing has dried to just the perfect tack… no too wet and not too dry… and then you can apply the gold quickly and get excellent coverage without a lot of waste.

Deva Rajan demonstrates to Silpi helper Kumar how the work is done…

Though Kumar knows very little English, he got the idea right away.

It is such a joy to work on the temple… it looks like they are almost done and will have completed the whole job in two days!

It’s Sun One following a 3-day retreat and Bodhinatha gave a wonderful talk this morning following the homa. He is continuing to articulate the very important message that we need teach the Agamic perspective that Siva and Vishnu are the same being, not two different Gods, and not perpetuate the misconceptions of the Puranic literature that Vishnu is the Preserver and Siva is the Destroyer.

Writing prayers…

Monks in meditation… the temple was full of power this morning.

Yogi Japendranatha performing the homa…

We’re happy to have Kanda Alahan, Deva Rajan and Nitya Nadesan from the mainland with us today…

Deva Ceyon shares something with Bodhinatha

Silpis greet Bodhinatha ….

OK, your TAKA caption writer got initiated into the new camera this morning and went to take pictures for a Hinduism Today article and took a detour… Here is Sadhaka Adinatha, watering the mung bean sprouts which he does twice a day…

He has mastered the logistics with a sterile container, pumping to provide on site water…

These sprouts provide an integral part of our diet.

Sadhaka has also been work with orchids and tree planting, he said “I have story for you… spring is here and all our orchids are starting to form buds”

like this one here…

“But the first one of them all to actually blossom was right over Ganesha”

“Of course! It’s only right that the first one bloom over Lord Ganesha, because the orchid family must have decided to follow the Hindu tradition and worship Lord Ganesha first!”

note: [story slightly embellished…smile…]

Sadhaka Adinatha also took a team to Himalayan Acre over the retreat… Mahogany trees are ready for planting and hydrogel has been prepared in barrels…

Yogi Japendranatha took a break for his high tech world of computer administration and went along

About 700 trees, half of which got planted on this day.

This row is inset from the outer row of ironwood trees (off screen on the right) which will be the wind break. it has been tilled and plastic mulch layed in. The first step is to poke a hole through the plastic with an iron bar and make an opening into the soft dirt for the tree.

Sadhaka Haranandinatha, Yogi Japendranatha, Natarajnathaswami, Arumugaswami, Sadhaka Jothinatha and Sadhaka Adinatha planted 350 trees in one morning!

Back at the Aadheenam this morning here is Sadhaka Nilakantha on the tractor…

He’s one of our highly competent Siddhidata team that keeps some many things running. Sadhaka is the lead man on the food growing area…

Today he was rototilling a new bed for tumeric.

Tumeric “grows like crazy” on Kauai but periodically you have to move the beds to a new location as the mass of old roots that form over a few years begin to decay under the soil. So, you dig them up and place them in a new bed.

Back at the Ekadanta Kulam where we will drop off the camera to our official photographer, we find him wired to the phone working on event coordination. The July open house is one of his big projects… and planning an event for the expected 700 island guests is a big job.

Meanwhile Sannyasin Saravananathaswami is reviewing correspondence, invitations from temples and plans for Bodhinatha’s future travels. See the Guru Travels page for a picture of Bodhinatha’s busy schedule.

The work on the n
ext Chinna Gopuram is going well and it’s time for the gold-leafing again. Deva Rajan, Tandu Sivanathan and Kanda Alahan get started today. Earlier this morning they applied “sizing” (a kind of special sticky varnish) to the stone… and are back to begin….

After a few hours, the sizing dries to just the perfect “tackiness” and it is time to apply the gold leaf..

Tandu has one already down…

Deva Rajan demonstrates technique to Kanda… this is Kanda’s first time, but Kanda is a craftsmen, fine woodwork and cabinetry expert and he will no doubt have a good touch…

Doing large flat surface is easy…

You lay the paper sheet with gold backing on the stone and pull it off… the gold sticks on and then you lightly burnish it down with a brush.

Tandu puts on a second layer for thorough coverage.

Tamping lightly from the back with the brush, pull back and the gold stays on the stone.

Ok, finally… the *real* reason for this photo shoot… Sivakatirswami is working on a story for Hinduism Today on neem.

You will be happy to know that India has won it’s ten-year long battle to void the US granted patent on an anti-fungal product, Neemix, made by multinational WR Grace.

India’s 2000-year-old knowledge of neem and its properties will remain free and open to the world! Read about it in HPI