Thanks to TAKA viewer Maria Alice Santos who suggested that it would help not to miss posts if we had an RSS feed. Well we do, we just did not think to publish the link. But now it is there in the upper right, click to add the TAKA feed to your favorite RSS reader.

With the April issue of Hinduism Today off to press Bodhinatha called for a Publisher’s Desk meeting with the Ganapati Kulam yesterday.

Acharya, Arumugaswami, managing editor brings to table the roster of future insight sections, and features stories.

Bodhinatha shares his insights on areas he hopes the magazine can focus on for future issues. Discussions also involve an in-depth look at the educational materials we have done and still need to create. Bodhinatha himself is at the forefront of the creation of these materials, spending much of his time each day preparing presentations and then getting feedback as he travels.

Today the team focused on expanding the now famous “Ten Questions” booklet to Twenty Questions: one more in-depth question to add to the current ten and 9 more smaller ones. These creations are first launched as Insight Sections in Hinduism Today, and run in the center of the magazine where they can be “over printed” with the result being 10’s of thousands of “booklets” on the subject. These are very popular and are being ordered by the case load from our Minimela.com store for distribution to various communities.

Seeing the Amsterdam artist's new paintings on TAKA last week, a CyberCadet in India wrote this little ode: You flow through the brush You flow through the words You flow through chisel and stone Constantly You draw us closer to Source nearer to Home, to YOU! Faces five or None You are Beauty-full Dancing or still You are Wonder-full Water or Fire, Earth or Air Or even the full and empty Space You are All, the all in All Who constantly draws us Closer to Source Nearer to Home, to You! Soothing is the light of Your Presence Comforting the power of Your Grace Empowering – sometimes overpowering! - is the force of Your Energy Abundant is the life in Your Breath Utterly unconditional is compassion in Your Love! O! Lord of my heart Draw me close Closer to Source Nearer to Home, to You! Aum Namah Sivaya!

A magnificent and giant statue of Siva in India (see the tiny man at the top of the stairs?)

Another magnificent Siva, this one the sixth and final master work of art by Pieter Weltevrede of Amsterdam, sent this morning. He asked for Palaniswami's take on it, and here is what Paramacharya wrote: My reaction? You know what I think, but let me put inadequate words to it. First, thanks for placing the Agamic Mandala below Siva. It is an important and usually neglected one and bringing it forward like this will have an impact in the South Indian iconography world. In all of the works, you have achieved an ambience people are calling "sacred space" these days, a sense of a Divine presence and energy. You are gifted, so may not know how very difficult this is to accomplish. It must flow not from technique but from intuition, from deep within. I have discovered that we can only create from what we are, and that you can call forth through your brushes an image that is sacred and full of shakti speaks of your own spiritual depth. Yes, I'm thrilled with the series and know when it reaches our magazine later this year it will be marveled at. For details: thanks for the kundala (earrings) and the geometrical shapes and colors, a subtle but, for us, meaningful touch. The slightly tilted Siva and mandala are effective, surprisingly so for so little angle. The outstanding details have to be Siva's hair and implements (check out that pot of fire), the dancing nagas, the color swath through the center, breaking apart the Himalayas and the nascent Ganges below. In fact, the waters dropping down like that surprised me, such a bold move, symbolically making Siva the Source of the Ganges (and thus the source of All and Everything), and dropping the viewer into a rock and water space below, nothing to support us but the unimaginable waterfall that crashes to Earth below us, bringing Life and Sustenance and Destruction all at once. Well done!

Here the five faces/powers/graces painted separately by Pieter.

Our Hinduism Today web site has undergone a major upgrade.

For the “web geeks” among us, we use the XOOPs PHP Content Management System and this upgrade was to the latest XOOPS version 2.5. The theme does not look much different than before but is more refined, runs much faster and now sports a a really cool rotating video presentation on the home page. Paramacharya Palaniswami used his Keynote skills to highlight current issue features and Senthilnathaswami ported this to video.

Hindu Press International on the web site will be back online this afternoon, having been off the site for some time during the upgrade.

Check it out: Hinduism Today

Amsterdam artist Pieter Veltevrede sent the fifth of the Sadasiva series of canvases yesterday. Here is Palaniswami's note responding to Pieter's request for a reaction: Aloha, Pieter! Isana has a dimensionality that I love, sitting there in space-akasha. You have so poetically captured the profound insight about microcosm and macrocosm, the there is Infinite Galactic space virtually the same size as Sub Atomic space. Our Gurudeva taught that the microcosmic inner space is actually larger than the macrocosmic outer space, and that seems to be one of the songs your art sings here. And the ethereal lotus-that's my WOW! for this one, the petals of space dust and light, a celestial flower extending to the edge of existence.

Sadhaka Satyanatha has been working on a project for several years which has been the digitization of our entire physical photo collection. Most of this is complete, but it will take a long time to go through all the files to see what we have. He found these precious pictures of one of Yogaswami’s chief disciples: Markanduswami.

Here we are in Jaffna, on an innersearch long ago, meeting this completely renounced tapasvin ascetic.

Markanduswami had a special gift and a special sadhana: He only spoke out the words of his Guru, Yogaswami.

Sadhaka Satyanatha is happy to show us the final production of the annua Maha Samadhi Souvenir. He has been the driving force behind this work each year.

This year we have a beautiful booklet that he designed with quotes from Gurudeva and two DVD’s with videos of Gurudeva never seen before. These were all exquisitely printed in Malaysia by Sampoorna under the direction of A. Selvam.

These are being shipped out to all the initiated chelas of Bodhinatha and Saiva Siddhanta Church.

Stay tuned if you are not in the above group as they will be available soon at our Minimela eStore. To reserve your copy (it’s a limited edition) or to pre-order, contact books@hindu.org .

Inside designs are taken from Iraivan temple decorative drawings….

Gurudeva: “Be the noble soul you came to this Earth to be.”