Three keys to finding time to engage in spiritual practices.

OK, so you, like most everyone else, have never heard of Scribd. Back in the day, we remember explaining to visitors the magic of a little search engine we found useful–Google. Well, Scribd is to printed publications what Google is to search and YouTube is to video, a rapidly growing, free place for anyone and everyone to share their writings–poems, user manuals, vintage novels, scientific papers, government documents, useless scribblings and precious masterpieces. The monks discovered Scribd about three months back, and have been working since to get Gurudeva's teachings on this important site, as tens of millions of people are discovering it, visiting it and downloading publications from it. This month a push was made to get Hinduism Today on Scribd, and that's just what happened. If you visit www.scribd.com you will find dozens of issues of the world's most valued Hindu magazine online, for free. Soon every back issue will be there, and it's all searchable! Thousands of readers have already discovered us here, and we have just begun. The monks plan to have virtually our entire library of teachings here. They thought, for a while, that Google Book Search would be the place, but that model proved too illegible and cumbersome. Scribd is the Google Book Search of the future.

The editing team continues work on “Seven Mystic Gurus,” the stories of our mystical lineage, the Kailasa Paramparai. Amazingly, yesterday we brought into the light a story told long ago by James George (that’s a photo of him some years back), former Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, India and Iran, a brilliant diplomat who was deeply influenced by Yogaswami. You will all enjoy this remarkable 1994 first-person account of his experiences with Gurudeva’s satguru, the Sage of Lanka who lived from 1872 to 1964. The following are his words.

The Tamils of Sri Lanka called him ‘the Sage of Jaffna.’ His thousands of devotees, including many Singhalese Buddhists and Christians, called him a saint. Some of those closest to him referred to him as the ‘Old Lion,’ or ‘Bodhidharma reborn,’ for he could be very fierce and unpredictable, chasing away unwelcome supplicants with a stick. I just called him Swami. He was my introduction to Hinduism in its pure Vedanta form, and my teacher for the nearly four years I served as the Canadian High Commissioner in what was still called Ceylon in the early sixties when I was there.

For the previous ten years I had been apprenticed in the Gurdjieff Work, and it was through a former student of P. D. Ouspensky, James Ramsbotham (now Lord Soulbury), and his brother Peter, that, one hot afternoon, not long after our arrival in Ceylon, I found myself outside a modest thatched hut in Jaffna, on the northern shore of Ceylon, to keep my first appointment with Yogaswami.
I knocked quietly on the door, and a voice from within roared, ‘Is that the Canadian High Commissioner?’ I opened the door to find him seated cross-legged on the floor sitting erect with a commanding presence, clad in a white robe, with a generous topping of white hair and long white beard. ‘Well, Swami,’ I began, ‘that is just what I do, not what I am.’ ‘Then come and sit with me,’ he laughed uproariously.

I felt bonded with him from that moment. He helped me to go deeper towards the discovery of who I am, and to identify less with the role I played. Indeed, like his great Tamil contemporary, Ramana Maharshi of Arunachalam, in South India, Yogaswami used ‘Who am I?’ as a mantra, as well as an existential question. He often chided me for running around the country, attending one official function after another, and neglecting the practice of sitting in meditation. When I got back to Ceylon from home leave in Canada, after visiting, on the way around the planet, France, Canada, Japan, Indonesia and Cambodia, he sat me down firmly beside him and told me that I was spending my life-energy uselessly, looking always outward for what could only be found within.

‘You are all the time running about, doing something, instead of sitting still and just being. Why don’t you sit at home and confront yourself as you are, asking yourself, not me, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?”‘ His voice rose in pitch, volume and intensity with each repetition of the question until he was screaming at me with all his force.
Then suddenly he was silent, very powerfully silent, filling the room with his unspoken teaching that went far beyond words, banishing my turning thoughts with his simple presence. In that moment I knew without any question that I AM; and that that is enough; no ‘who’ needed. I just am. It is a lesson I keep having to relearn, re-experience, for the ‘doing’ and the ‘thinking’ takes me over again and again as soon as I forget.
Another time, my wife and I brought our three children to see Yogaswami. Turning to the children, he asked each of them, ‘How old are you?’ Our daughter said, ‘Nine,’ and the boys, ‘Eleven’ and ‘Thirteen.’ To each in turn Yogaswami replied solemnly, ‘I am the same age as you.’ When the children protested that he couldn’t be three different ages at once, and that he must be much older than their grandfather, Yogaswami just laughed, and winked at us, to see if we understood.
At the time, we took it as his joke with the children, but slowly we came to see that he meant something profound, which it was for us to decipher. Now I think this was his way of saying indirectly that although the body may be of very different ages on its way from birth to death, something just as real as the body, and for which the body is only a vehicle, always was and always will be. In that sense, we are in essence all ‘the same age.’

After I had met Yogaswami many times, I learned to prepare my questions carefully. One day, when I had done so, I approached his hut, took off my shoes, went in and sat down on a straw mat on the earth floor, while he watched me with the attention that never seemed to fail him. ‘Swami,’ I began, ‘I think…’ ‘Already wrong!’ he thundered. And my mind again went into the nonconceptual state that he was such a master at invoking, clearing the way for being.
Though the state desired was thoughtless and wordless, he taught through a few favorite aphorisms in pithy expressions, to be plumbed later in silence. Three of these aphorisms I shall report here: ‘Just be!’ or ‘Summa iru’ when he said it in Tamil. ‘There is not even one thing wrong.’ ‘It is all perfect from the beginning.’ He applied these statements to the individual and to the cosmos. Order was a truth deeper than disorder. We don’t have to develop or do anything, because, essentially, in our being, we are perfectly in order here and now, when we are here and now.
Looking at the world as it is now, thirty years after his death, I wonder if he would utter the same aphorisms with the same conviction today. I expect he would, challenging us to go still deeper to understand what he meant. Reality cannot be imperfect or wrong; only we can be both wrong and imperfect, when we are not real, when we are not now!

Sivakatirswami has begun work on typesetting Dancing with Siva in Tamil. This work has been on the shelf for years. Originally done by Pundit Mylvaganam in Sri Lanka the text was entered in a Tamil font that is no longer functional on our current platform. We also wanted to move forward to using unicode so that we can put our Tamil works on the internet with actual characters instead of images

Bodhinatha has been wanting to get this into the hands of the Tamil reading people for many years and now finally it is happening. As of 2009 Adobe's Indesign program which the monks use for publications, is now capable of handling Unicode.

Swami had previously converted the book to the Mylai-Sri font. With the help of the ever supportive collaborator Muthu Neduraman, one of the world's top Tamil language IT experts, (founder of Murasu Systems in Malaysia — see his company online: http://www.murasu.com/), we now have the book in unicode.

Just for this project Muthu wrote a C program to convert the book from Mylai to Unicode and also generated a Unicode compatible version of his lovely Anjal font. This is in Anjal Chittu Slant. Thank you Muthu! So, look forward to more Tamil in the future and now, being unicode, after we put it on the web, you will be able cut and paste to email.

The next issue of Hinduism Today is in the final days of editing and design at the monastery. It reminded us to share news of our newly redesigned website.

The editorial excellence of Hinduism Today magazine can now be seen online in a modern interface with enhanced organization, interactivity, moving graphics and many more resources than before. It’s now easier to read, navigate and have your say. You can comment on any article you read, and see the opinions of others. Plus, you can download any issue as a PDF to enjoy on your computer, with all the visually stunning impact of the printed edition. All for free. With new navigation tools you can get the latest news from Hindu Press Internationa–and link to our Twitter page.

This next issue takes us all over the world, covering subjects seen in the word cloud here.

Easily peruse our publisher’s latest insights, his Introduction to Hinduism, our many videos and an archive of Hinduism Today going back 30 years. Enjoy the comments of renowned readers of the magazine, see a list of the latest lifetime subscribers and read an in-depth story about the magazine and how it is produced. See the best and most relevant Education Insight sections from the magazine in the What Is Hinduism? area of the site.

There is a great interview with Jill Taylor who found a higher state of mind one morning when she suffered a stroke, which she calls here “Stroke of Insight.”

Read and download the acclaimed series of lessons on Indian and Hindu history created for America’s sixth-grade students. You’ll also find an updated FAQ about Hinduism and Hinduism’s core beliefs. Join the Hindu renaissance by exploring Hinduism Today’s new website!

Return of Fictionary, the monastery’s dictionary for words that don't (yet) exist, but should. We share a few from the Fictionary, and invite the wordologists (not a word) to send in more.

alphabet heaven: The place where words go when deleted from e-mails, computers, iPhones and all digital media.
horizonticious: tending toward a supine position following a big meal or a bout with dizziness. Not vertical and moving to less vertical by the minute.
druthers: Gurudeva's word for personal preferences that inhibit selfless service and spiritual growth. From "I would rather…." Said quickly, Id'ruther, hence druther.
chrystaloligist: A crystal person with deep knowledge of the subject.
wordoligist: Not merely a wordsmith, but someone who knows words in all their infinite subtle dimensions.
permanentize: Make something permanent
blunderous: The missing adjective for blunder.
liquous: Fluid-like, flowing, watery.
paragraphilia: The love (some would say the obsession) of dividing text into logical, meaningful and linguistically imperative units, called paragraphs. Antonym: aparagraphiphilia, the affliction which cognizes no meaningful distinction between sentences and paragraphs. See also scriptocontinuum.
Jaffnian: Native or citizen of Jaffna, Sri Lanka
consugusting: Excessive Consumer Spending is so Disgusting. (From a TAKA teen CyberCadet)

We asked our master buildeer, Selvanathan Sthapati, to explain the faces on Iraivan. Here is his response, received today from India: With regard to swami's question of Mahanaasi / kirtimukha – the difference in this two terms is as follows; Mahanasi means a big(maha) nose(naasi).This architectural form is seen on the gopuras and the vimanas. The shape is based on the face of lion and it is believed in tradition that this terrifying naasi form observes all the bad omen/evil things in and around the temple premises. This is the main reason that this form is created on the vimanas and gopuram.

These protective faces are common throughout the Hindu world.

Kirtimukha means Face of Glory or Fame. It is a hip ornamental feature seen on the dress of the gods and goddesses. This feature is based on the lion face with highly rich ornamentation.

There are dozens of these Mahanaasi on Iraivan temple.

In Bali, Hindus make special masks that are fearsome to the asuras and delightful to the devas.

What right-thinking asura would get near these three?

These are another ornamental feature that decorate the walls of the temples.

In fact, everywhere you look in Iraivan you see this.

You can hear these mahanaasi roar. Look closely, that is their roar artistically flowing from the mouth.

The small ones (as per swami's photos) are the chutra nasis (small nasikoodus) meaning a form with the outline of Mahanaasi but without lion face.

May all be protected by dharma. May all be protected by their good karma. May all be protected from harm.