Towards the end of the recent Singapore/Malaysia ladies sadhana retreat here on Kauai, Satguru gave a presentation on progressive levels of personal spiritual practice. Here is a summary of the contents-- Satguru's presentation is drawn from Gurudeva's teachings on daily practice and is entitled "Six Levels of Practice". In this presentation, Satguru explores each of the six practices, namely (1) Making Dharma Your Own; (2) Pancha Nitya Karmas which is comprised of worship, observing holy days, pilgrimage, virtuous living and rites of passage]; (3) ten-minute spiritual workout; (4) sadhana and daily vigil; (5) extending daily vigil to an hour; (6) vigil in sannyasa ashrama.

Beautiful flowers!

A book of Natchintanai by Siva Yogaswami: Seventy-three songs full of the wisdom of the Sanatana Dharma and the enlightened vision of one of the most evolved siddha yogis of modern times, Siva Yogaswami.

Since 2009, Natchintanai - 73 Spiritual Songs was available with MylaiSri text for the Tamil. It was not possible to put it online, because that Tamil font would have rendered as gibberish. But now that Tamil has been re-entered in Arial Unicode! Now that it is in unicode, it can be copied and pasted across any web platform or in your email. The publication is also available in the EPUB:

https://www.himalayanacademy.com/view/natchintanai-73-spiritual-songs

Dedication:

This song book is dedicated to Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, affectionately known as Gurudeva. He gave us these instructions regarding the heritage of songs from his guru, Siva Yogaswami of Jaffna, Sri Lanka:

"All my followers shall revere as sacred scripture the songs of Sage Yogaswami, called Natchintanai, which entirely embody the teachings of our lineage and command one and all to 'Know thy Self by thy self.' Aum.

They and my noble mathavasis all follow the path of service so vigorously hailed by Asan (spiritual master) Yogaswami in his many Natchintanai hymns which embody our philosophy."

Aloha all, We were recently reached out to by the owner of a Youtube channel with over 200,000 subscribers called Supreme Yogi. He frequently publishes short videos highlighting the teachings of various Hindu Sages such as Ramana Maharishi and Sri Ramakrishna. Yesterday, with our permission, he posted a 16 minute video presenting some of Gurudevas teaching as well as stories from the guru chronices. The video so far has got over 13 thousand views in only one day! Go check it out and give it a like, if you like. Aum! Here is the video in full!

The Guru Chronicles is the inspiring tale of our Nandinatha Sampradaya, a spiritual storybook which explores over 2,000 years of the history and lives of seven extraordinary gurus. Gurudeva set the book in motion in Sri Lanka back in 1972. It was decades in the making and was finally printed in English in 2011. Today, inspired by the Hindu New Year, we announce the release of the recently completed Tamil translation of this important book.

You can go here to download the pdf, epub or mobi:
https://www.himalayanacademy.com/view/the-guru-chronicles_ta

To learn about the amazing work required to create the book, go to the web link below which takes you to the English version of the preface.

https://www.himalayanacademy.com/media/books/the-guru-chronicles/web/09_fm_09.html#para-1

And, we will soon upload a version to the web, so that you can read it online.

Easan and Sundari Katir bring us one of several short videos introducing conversational Shum. In this video their son Kartikkeya has added english captions. You can click the "cc" button in the lower-right, or turn them on via the gear icon so that you can understand the meaning. Moolingshum Easan and Sundari!

You can learn some of the basics about Shum here: himalayanacademy.com/readlearn/shum

Jai Ganesha!
Today we are pleased to announce the initial release of Himalayan Academy's Sanskrit Chanting Guide!

This new website, sanskritguide.com, is a free course "to help aspirants learn correct pronunciation of Sanskrit, with particular focus on reciting mantras with ease and confidence. With time and practice, the phonetic perfection of Sanskrit will reveal itself. The exercises contained within this manual are designed to facilitate discovery of the perfect form of articulation within the mouth so that the Sanskrit sounds and mantras come to life, taking shape within the various meters of verse. This is the study of śikṣā and uccaraṇa."

"Śikṣā (from the root śikṣ meaning to impart) refers to the transmission of a mantra’s potency from guru to disciple, planting the seeds of perfect pronunciation, understanding and intention. Uccaraṇa (from ut, meaning uplifting, and caraṇa, meaning with movement) refers to the applied effort of the disciple in nurturing that seed into a sturdy tree that produces spiritual fruits. In this way, the fruits of Sanskrit propagate from generation to generation through the oral tradition, preserving the majesty of thought discovered by the Vedic culture so long ago."

The course was created by Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and co-written by Sanskrit scholar Adaityananda Sarasvati (Adam Welch), with contributions from Ekatmananda Sarasvati (Robert Rogers)

Future updates will include newly recorded chanting audio to listen to and learn from.
Aum.

We now have a new feature:

Topics
     Activity By Interest

that appears on each of the groups:

Monastery | Read & Learn | Look & Listen | Live Spiritually | Visit

There are now 200 categories. Now you can search for the category by the subject that you are interested in. There will be 11 categories. You go into a particular area, say "Family Life." From here you go to "Conflict Resolution" and we come 25 items: audio, text (book), video.

By now we should be coming to grips with a wealth of our resources!

A reminder that Himalayan Academy has a thriving series of online learning courses. More than 500 people have signed up thus far. We chose the THINKIFIC platform (they have more than 40,000 teachers!) and have created some extensive and some simple material for students of our teachings. The entire Master Course trilogy is there, in three parts. So is our youth catechism Path to Siva, in both the teenage version and the 8-year-old simplified form. There is a course on Know Thy Self. Beginning to Meditate is our newest addition. The lessons are illustrated and designed to take ten minutes a day, or less.

As we all know, this is how learning is done in the digital age. You can be anywhere in the world and study the courses, pass the tests and follow the suggested practices.

We are working on more lessons. Meantime, visit Thinkific's site here (https://courses.himalayanacademy.com/) and begin your study.

Om Namah Sivaya!

India's Popular Impact Today

Today we present the fifteenth and last song in Hinduism Today's History of Hindu India Music Video series. It is a song for children intended to complement the fifth chapter of our popular History of Hindu India documentaries, "21st Century India." The documentaries and songs neatly supplement the study of India and the Hindu religion in American middle schools. This music video covers the the popularity of Indian food, Ayurvedic medicine and Bollywood movies across the world today.