Gurudeva and other Rishis of the East have often used the metaphor of the Lotus for the spiritual evolution of the soul

One of the amazing legacies of our Guru Parampara that comes to us from Gurudeva is Shum: The Language of Meditation. Towards the end of his life, Gurudeva was very active in working with the shum alphabet, refining the letters, revising patterns for extending words from 2 to 6 syllables and more. Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami is continuing this work and every quarter meets with the editing team to work on the Shum language. For the past week he has been working on this project. For those not familiar with shum, please see this book on line: Twelve Shum Meditations. Click the Minimela Print edition link to get a physical copy for your shrine room and personal study away from the computer.

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The monks of Kauai's Hindu Monastery

We welcome the final installation of our Saiva Saint Path peethams and we reflect on our guru lineage. The Guru Chronicles is filled with the history of the siddhars that guide Kauai's Hindu Monastery and continue to develop the powers it contains. We quote from the book in this slideshow and try to give a glimpse of its miraculous tales.


Introduction:

These are the stories of remarkable souls who knew the
Unknowable and held Truth in the palm of their hand.
They confounded their contemporaries, revealed life’s
purpose and path, and became inexplicably aware of the
future. They worshiped God as Siva, knowing Him as All
and in all, as the God— by other names—of every faith and
path. Many are the gurus; but these knowers of God—those
who have achieved the ultimate goal of yoga, transcending
the mind itself—are called satgurus. Their successors still
live, their powers transmitted and maturing from one to
the next, now flourishing in the 21st century. But their stories
have remained largely untold, a kind of universal spiritual
secret. Here, for the first time, what moved and motivated
them is revealed, to the extent they let it be known.
Here, for the first time, what they said and did is shared
outside the circle of initiates.

Namaste everyone, today we want to take another look into our Character Building Workbook and highlight a few lessons to reflect on.

Why would we reflect on our character? Living dharmicly, or living virtuously, means our actions reflect our values. In order for our actions to reflect our values we actually need to have values. Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami says in his Oct/Nov/Dec, 2016, Hinduism Today Publisher's Desk "In its most general sense, dharma is that which sustains the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature or destiny."

Character is something we all need to work on and it's not usually something that comes naturally. While we move about through today's hectic world, we need to constantly remind ourselves that in order to fulfill our dharma we must continue nurturing our character, build values and act accordingly.

Bodhinatha's recent upadeshas on the new Path to Siva book are bringing powerful clarifications to key questions and issues that face not only our youth, but any Hindu who may lack the verbal toolbox to talk about these key subjects. Don't miss them!

[Tech note: Apologies for the poor audio on Chapter 7. We had a sound system failure and had to pull the audio from our video camera, but the message is "mission critical."]

"Clarifying Multiple Gods and Hindu Denominations" (October 10,2016)

"Temples with multiple deities can be confusing, especially for today's Hindu youth. For clarity, we need to bring forward a more precise understanding of the different Hindu denominations and how the different Gods are viewed from within each denomination. For spiritual advancement it is best to focus on one deity and get to the vibration that deity. When we hear teachings from various Hindus, it is important to understand and identify which denomination they are speaking from. This will avert confusion when that teaching gets contradicted in a different context where someone is talking about the same subject but from a different philosophical background."

Path to Siva, Chapter 7.

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"The Many Facets of Saivite Hinduism" (November 9, 2016)

Bodhinatha reviews the main characteristic of Saivite philosophy and practice with an indepth focus on the four stages of religions evolution, chariya, kriya, yoga and jnana. He highlights how this shows that Saiva Siddhanta is unique and quite different from the modern practice of Hinduism as Vedanta

Path to Siva, Chapter 8.

Click here to go to an index of all of Bodhinatha's and Gurudeva's online audio.

After years of work that began with Book Four of the Saivite Hindu Religion course, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and the media team have completed a brand new book with 68 questions and answers on Saivite Hinduism for youth. The original Book Four had 35 questions and answers with four different languages. Bodhinatha requested a new version be created with only English. This was to serve as an answer to the often repeated query from numerous parents and teachers: "We need one complete but simple course we can teach for out kids!"

To that end we also reached out to our teachers in four different countries to get a list of additional subjects they felt should be covered because they needed these subjects covered in their classes. As editing began, we realized that one or another concept was missing, and slowly the scope of the book expanded until 68 subjects were included in question and answer form. The design concept was also upgraded to a more modern look and feel to be attract the current generation. We are happy announce the release of this book on Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's 2016 Mahasamadhi. We know he would be delighted to see his teachings take this new form for the next generation.

The book has already been printed in Malaysia and we have a few copies here. It is gorgeous! The physical copies will not be available until next month in the Minimela store, but in the meantime we have released the ebook versions on line. When the print edition is available we will send another announcement.

Please go here to fetch your PDF, eBook, or Kindle (Mobi) version. We are also including an MSWord DOCX version for teachers who may wish to extract text for classroom worksheet usage contexts.

Click here to down load your copy of: Path to Siva!

The new book, Path to Siva, speaks to key questions about Saivism and Hinduism in general. Chapter Six answers the question: "Is Hinduism a Religion or a Way of Life." Don't miss Bodhinatha's upadesha on this!

"Hinduism Is Both a Religion and a Way of Life" (October 25,2016)

Here is a brief summery of Acharya Arumuganathaswami's and Natyam Jayanatha's travels in California. After the two left for California's Capitol of Sacramento, they had a day to prepare before attending Day One of the meeting of the California State Board of Education. Following the first day, which was mainly about standards for evaluation throughout the state, our monks attended the second day which was the primary reason for going. This was were the two year process of a revised narrative for History and Social Science was to end, with final approval from the Board. This was also the last chance to attempt to make improvements to the draft, which gives 6th grade students an introduction to World Religions, including a not-too-great introduction to Hinduism.

Several prominent Hindu group were there, Including Hindu Education Foundation members, Chinmaya Mission members and Hindu American Foundation leaders. We also had backing from a very prominent group of scholars, and of course our monks were there too. Over 300 speakers testified about the narrative, many of which were on different sides of various debates about the India section. After many, many hours, the public comments had ended, and the board accepted the draft as it stood, with a few minor changes. Over all, Hindu groups succeeded in making a few important improvements to the narrative, though there was still much that could have been improved upon. Nonetheless, a good step in the right direction. Next comes the textbook adoptions process, which any Hindus in California would be wise to pay close attention to, as it decides the final content which will end up in classrooms.

Following the meeting, our team had a nice vegetarian lunch with some of the California Hindu leaders and youth that had attended the meeting. The next morning our monks caught an early flight home to Kauai.

Aum Namah Sivaya

During the ladies retreat, by popular request, three "bhajan satsangs" were held with Brahmanathaswami. They sang Natchintanai, practiced the shum alphabet, worked on memorizing some core Vedic chants and practiced affirmations. Swami read from Yogaswami's biography, from which we can see how central he held singing to the Gods to be a core sadhana for his devotees. Swami also read from Gurudeva's teachings on affirmations. The key is to understand the meaning of what you sing and chant, so that the songs and chants become powerful affirmations of spiritual truths that can remold the entire subconscious, while also connecting you directly to God, Gods and Guru in the inner worlds through bhakti.