Dinanatha is currently visiting the island, on pilgrimage from Russia for this year's Mahasamadhi celebration. This time he brought us samples a monumental work: a full color edition of Dancing With Siva translated into Russian. The book is beautifully printed, and we're happy to say that Dinanatha is planning to continue his work to create future translations of our other publications.

This afternoon, the Ganapati kulam is hard at work on their digital and publications fronts. Currently, the next issue of Hinduism today is on the horizon as pages are being written and articles edited. More energy is being put into our digital efforts as well. Our Himalayan Academy website is getting some attention with the updating of old content and the gradual addition of our vast stores of media, including music, artwork and historical audio and video.

This puzzle is slightly harder with 36 pieces! It took me over 5 minutes the first time and then 4 minutes the second time. Beware it may be hard to follow the advice of the finished puzzle once you start! Tips: puzzle does not fill the whole space; pieces can hide behind other pieces.

This puzzle requires Flash to be installed in your browser (i.e. does not work in iOS devices but should run fine in Desktop and Android browsers )

It has been observed that Gurudeva's teaching style in his early years when he was working a lot with the general public, was, as one might expect, very much like Bodhinatha's today: very practical, straight forward language that brings the spiritual work we have to do into sharp focus for implementation in daily life.

The last section of this talk from 1962, is perhaps the earliest recording of Gurudeva teaching the principle of maintaining harmony in our relationships and in our group. He speaks of this in terms of residing in a true state of spiritual perception. The audio quality is as best we can get it for this old recording but the teaching is a perennial "Golden Gurudeva." Click here to go to the page which includes a transcript. Thanks to a new sevak Iain Morland in Wales who did the restoration work on the original, very difficult sounding audio file. (see: http://www.iainmorland.net

Now that our media studio is functional (though lots of refinements lie ahead), we are back to work on our digital productions. New Ganapati Kulam member, Sadhaka Rajanatha is being trained in web IT for Himalayan Academy Publications. One of his first projects is to bring to the web, as individual titles/books, the educational insight sections from Hinduism Today. Valuable resources for parents and teachers that are buried inside the book What Is Hinduism? or in the page of Hinduism Today, can now be downloaded one-by-one as needed. This is a work in progress, but you can check out what has been placed on line to date. We have to thank our Digital Dharma Drive donors whose contributions allow us to get all these ebooks created for the next generation. Click here to see the current offerings.

Acharya Arumuganathaswami and the Ganapati Kulam have been working with our long-time friend Dr. Shiva Bajai for over a decade on books for Hindu education. This collective initiative to produce the book, the "History of Hindu India," has been Himalayan Academy's/Hinduism Today's response to the problem of negative portrayal of Hinduism and India in school text books. While school boards and courts and publishers wrangle over making changes, we went ahead and produced the content that really should be in those books. After the printed lessons and book by that title were so well received, the initiative took on a new development when a video was proposed and the Uberoi Foundation agree to fund this effort. We are proud to announce today the official release of The History of Hindu India (Part One) on YouTube. Versions with sub-titles in other languages will be coming on line in the weeks ahead. Special mentioned goes first, of course, to Shivaji, who is Professor Emeritus of History, California State University Northridge as he was instrumental in guiding the content development. We also thank video producer Sushma Khadepaun for her infinite patience and long hours she put in both here and in India to get this done on a shoestring budget. Kudos also to narrator Raj Narayan for his collaboration and drive to produce the best audio track we could. This video is intended to provide an authentic presentation of the history of India and Hinduism for use in American 6th grade social study classes, as well as Hindu temple study groups and general presentations on the Hindu religion and history. The documentary is based on the first chapter of the textbook, The History of Hindu India, published in 2011. For more information and for class lesson plans based on the book visit http://www.hinduismtoday.com/education/. Funded by the Uberoi Foundation, Institute for Curriculum Advancement. May be freely distributed for educational purposes. Directed and Produced by Sushma Khadepaun; Produced and Narrated by Roger (Raj) Narayan

The online version of the July/August/September issue of Hinduism Today will go live in a day or so. Here is a sneak preview of the feature on Rishikesh. You may have heard about this fabled city on the banks of Mother Ganga but always wondered what went on there. Learn all about it in the July issue of Hinduism Today. You can also view the longer slideshow with captions by clicking here