Thanks to our annual Digital Dharma drive donors, we are slowing making progress on a brave new initiative to create a "Mahaapp" for Lord Siva and all Siva's children worldwide. It will be called the SivaSiva in line with this ancient and famous mantra from our tradition. This a sneak preview... full details are top secret until we release betas. it's a huge project because our users have encourage us to make a "one stop shop" app, like they do now in China and Korea (instead of releasing 20 small apps...) Stay tuned. Please continue to give generously to the Digital Dharma Fund to support our extensive development costs.

Andre Garzia, software developer from Niteroi, Brasil (across the bay from Rio) has been working in collaboration with Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami since 2004, crafting on our Himalayan Academy web site and digital applications. Much of what you see on our web site is delivered with a web application largely developed under his skilled hands. For the past year he has been working with Mozilla under a Foundation grant to teach web skills to the general community in the Rio de Janeiro area. He has become an HTML Javascript expert. His official contract with Mozilla as the pilot project he was contracted for is over. He's now almost full time on our team, while at the same time kicking off his own small company in Brazil and continuing to volunteer a lot of his time to the Mozilla Foundation Open Web mission goals.

Andre will be with us for one month. The This is his fifth visit. His wife Elisangela, aka "Lily" will be arriving on the 25th to join him for 9 days.

Andre's current mission has been to create a new panchangam app that users can use on the web and on their smart phones, which can be integrated into our new Siva Siva app and also access directly on the web. Stay tuned for more as the new tool unfolds.

Back in 2009 Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami wrote an editorial for Hinduism Today magazine which was crafted to be an Introduction to Hinduism, especially for those who know little about our vast faith.

A few seekers in Malaysia loved it, and recently translated it into the Tamil language. We offer that translation today, and invite Tamil speaking CyberCadets to share this with friends. It is a most lucid and cogent summary of Hindu dharma.

You can visit the English language version HERE
And the Tamil version HERE

"We need one complete but simple course we can teach for our kids!"

This is a common question, and the Hawaii team teamed up to provide just that. As reported last month, we recently published "Path to Siva; A Catechism for Youth." The hardcover books are available at Minimela.com, and today we announce that the updated digital versions can be found and downloaded HERE.

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

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!

"What is Hinduism -- Key Features" (October 18,2016) Our new book for youth, The Path to Siva, is going to be very popular. It is on the press now in Malaysia and the ebook versions will be coming soon. It contains 68 key questions and answers for young Saivite Hindus. Bodhinatha continues with his weekly series of commentaries on it's contents. In this past Sun One talk, he elucidates the four key beliefs in Hinduism, the three pillars of Sanatana Dharma and Gurudeva's three stages of faith. Primary to Hinduism is the key belief that God is within each of us. To have a well-rounded understanding and experience of Hinduism, to make spiritual progress, adhyatma vikasha, we need scripture, humility, temple worship, devotion. To fully experience God we need the guru to give the spark for meditation and deeper wisdom. Path to Siva, Chapter 5, What is Hinduism?

Paramamesthi Guru Siva Yogaswamigal was a master songster. Singing to God was for him the panacea for the ills of his devotees. Every day his small hut in Columbuturai was full of songs. If devotees requested help, the miracle medicine he gave would be to give them a song that he wrote and sang and then ask them to sing this themselves and through this sadhana invoke Lord Siva's grace into their own lives. "Don't ask me...ask God yourself!"

Of course the power of his songs, known as Natchintanai was that everyone who sang them understood their meaning and through this they could visualize and manifest the "bhava" that divine feeling of transformative devotion that rises up in the heart during intense devotional practice. Because the current generation does not know Tamil, they no longer have access to this spiritual medicine. We now have a few songs in English. Though we can never match the beauty of the original, still there is power in being full cognizant of what you sing as you sing. Please enjoy this very popular Natchintanai in English. You can go here to download the audio and copy the lyrics. Thanks to those who collaborated in refining the translation, which works to be lyrical, poetic and yet true to Yogaswami's original meaning in Tamil. Yogaswami said "Sing to melt the very stones. Worship until you fall into trance like a mad person in bliss!"

We are pleased to release a publication in the Tamil language which tells the story of Kauai's Hindu Monastery Of America. This was researched and authored by Shanmugam Bhaskaran as for his dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Special) in Department of Hindu Civilization in the Faculty of Arts and Culture, Eastern University, Sri Lanka. We encourage our TAKA viewers who would like to share more about Kauai Aadheenam with Tamil only reading audience to share this post with others in India and Sri Lanka. The PDF and ePub may be downloaded by clicking here or you can go directly to the page to read on the web now by clicking here.

Bodhinatha's Latest Upadeshas:"Instinctive, Intellectual, Superconscious Mind" (May 30,2016)

The Hindu point of view. Everyone has a three-fold nature: instinctive, intellectual and superconscious. Everyone is a divine being. Everyone has the seed of divinity. See what phase of the mind we're in and practice controlling it. Once the instinctive mind is under control then we have to deal with the intellect. Temple worship, devotional worship is very helpful. Without God's grace, God's blessings, everything coming out from God, we couldn't do anything.

Master Course, Dancing with Siva, Lesson 48



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

We want to send a special thanks to Arulnageswaran Aruleswaran in Malaysia for sharing his collection of underwater photos to enrich the backgrounds for Word of the Day. Click Next to see more photos. Click the white eye to hide the quote and see the whole photo.