Satguru, Shanmuganathaswami and Siddhanathaswami are off to Florida for satsang. See if Satguru is coming to a town near you on our travel page.

After arriving back home on Kauai, we received a series of great photos taken and captioned by Vasaant Krishnan. They tell the story of our visit to the UNESCO World Heritage Orchid Gardens, and we thought all would enjoy them. Aum Namasivaya!

Our three homeless wayfarers finally stumble on the Iraivan worksite on Tumkur Road outside of Bengaluru, the place where, for 28 some years, the carving for Iraivan Temple has been (and continues to be) taking place.

We are taken in by the noble Rajashakar family, supped and soon provisioned with extravagant viands which we were compelled to consume sans utensils, all of which proved to be a welcome soporific.

Jiva and Thurai took us from their home to the adjacent worksite where the yogis discovered that the entire team of some 18 silpis is working on the cladding stones for the kadavul Nandi, korimaram and balipeedem. It's a project that has been in the planning stages for some years and is now manifesting, a major upgrade to the entrance of Kadavul Temple's stone work and a fulfillment of a long-time wish of Gurudeva (more of which in future TAKA missives).

A mot delightful few conversations with the family, with discussions of items to take back to Kauai and their own imminent arrival on the island (Thurai and his wife Swapna leave on the 20th for almot six weeks on the island, her first time outside of India).

We are so grateful to Kanmani and Neesha and her Amma for the kindnesses showered on her road-weary guests. Sadasivanthaswami saw a few items that he deemed destined for Siva's Sacred Garden and Kanmani was commissioned to grow some plants for the aadheenam. Sheela Venkatakrishnan surprised all by driving all the way from Chennai just to say aloha to us. Yes, we felt loved here in Bengaluru!

The slideshow tells the story of a short visit to a tall Hanuman near the worksite, a 36-foot-tall, 100-ton, monolithic sculpture commissioned in recent times by the Gujarati community here.

Aum Namasivaya!

We received this beautiful letter from the Virashaiva guru from Mysore who we recently visited: October 8, 2011 We are delighted to write about our visit to your Monastery few weeks ago. It was one of best moments of our brief stay in the US. The idyllic location of the Monastery combined with the true exponents of Saivite philosophy, thousands of miles away from its origin, is not merely surprising but exhilarating that such a monastery exists in reality in its pristine originality. We were indeed overwhelmed at your hospitality. The Monastery is functioning exceedingly well under your guidance. The unusual spiritual comradeship is not to be seen elsewhere as it is found in Kauai's Hindu Monastery. The dedication with which the Hinduism is practiced is worth emulating. We once again express our deep sense of appreciation for maintaining the monastery exceptionally well. Our regards to all the Swamijis and others of the Monastery. With best wishes, Yours in the service of God, Jagadguru Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji Jagadguru Sri Veerasimasana Mahasamsthana Math Suttur Srikshetra

Our trusty chariot is sitting in front of the hotel waiting to take us to Palani Hills, that amazing citadel that is Tamil Nadu's riches temple and one that is dear to Gurudeva and the monks. We have arrived late and decide for the first time to take the little cable car to the top. Twenty fit into each train, so 40 at a time ride slowly up the hill. We do pradakshina and then are taken to Murugan's shrine. Just in time, the hour-long abhishekam has just concluded and as the curtain is drawn aside He is dressed ornately, His face pure white, His darshan more than potent. No photos allowed, so we can't share that part here.

We visit Bhogar Rishi's shrine, alive with his mystic power. Remember, he is the one who made the murthi here using nine metallic poisons and is said to still be meditating in the mountain below. You may not know that some years back the temple trustees hired our own Selvanathan Sthapati to resculpt eroded sections of the murthi, for which he did extensive research as you can imagine.

We stayed for the 7-8pm procession of the chariot around the entire temple. Hundreds follow and push the golden chariot which stops at nine stations for arati.

We seem to have stood out, and throughout the procession families, groups of teens and sadhus came up to us shyly inquiring: "Photo? Photo with us?" Mostly we relented, til it began to slow down the entire event and we had to just keep walking in front of the chariot.

There is such a genuine and universal respect for the path of the sannyasin here and even those who don't have the courage to ask for a photo, place palms together, smile or nod approvingly as if to say, "More power to you."

Our hotel, the new Ganpat Grand is so close we opt to walk the busy street back. If ever you are in Palani, this is a great little hermitage.

Off tomorrow to Karnataka State and Suttur Math. Aum Namasivaya!

Yogi Mayuranatha: "Nataraja was so powerful. The purity and dedication of the priests inspiring. The stones ancient, emanating over a thousand years of devotion. A truly divine experience."

"Always worship this great God. Never fear Him. He is the Self of your self. He is closer than your own breath. His nature is love, and if you worship Him with devotion you will know love and be loving toward others." With these words from Gurudeva ringing in our ears on March 7th evening we three reached Chidambaram, called the Center of the Universe. Sadasivanatha told the two yogis how one day he was traveling with Gurudeva by train out of Chidambaram after some days of being at the feet of Nataraja. Across from them sat two European men sitting on both sides of a black box with the look of science on it. They told Gurudeva they were several years into a survey of the earth's gravitational field, mapping where it is strong and weak. They shared that it was at the Chidambaram temple that they had just recorded their highest reading ever. Seems Siva's home here is a heavy place indeed!

The next day was all about Siva Nataraja. Here the murthi does not show the more common form with flailing hair, which is for His Great Dance of Creation, Preservation and Dissolution. Here the hair is normal since the dance is quieter, one of joy and bliss.

Sheela Venkatakrishnan drove all the way from Chennai to guide us, and introduced us to Prakash Dikshitar who took us around the entire temple (to shrines that if located anywhere else would be major temples themselves, carved 1,200 years back) and brought us to the morning crystal lingam and ruby Nataraja abhishekam at 10am.

The 3-inch perfectly clear crystal is worshipped six times each day and the ruby (a 6-inch-tall Dancing Siva) once a day. The Dikshitars hold that this morning puja is absolutely necessary for the existence of the cosmos. It is, they say, akin to the message from the brain that tells the human heart to beat. Similarly, the puja creates a powerful force that keeps the life of the universe going.

The monks meditated in the Chariot Madapam afterwards, the place where Gurudeva often gave dikshas during Innersearch here.

During a banana-leaf lunch at the Dikshitar's home (it is 11 feet wide and 120 feet long and three generations live here, 20 of them in all), we learned something new about the Dikshatar's disciplines. Not only must a priest be married for him to perform the rites in the temple, but throughout their life each month during her retreat he is not allowed inside the temple. Next we visited the home of Ananta Nataraja Dikshitar, who guided us during so many visits here in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We meet his son Guru Murthi whom we knew well in the olden days, and his grandson Raju Dikshitar.

To our amazement Raju took a photo from the living room wall See it in the above slideshow), of Gurudeva and Sadasivanathaswami holding him and his younger sister in our laps. Seems they regard that moment as a special one in their lives and though it was about 1995 speak of it as if it were yesterday.

Raju arranged for us to attend the last puja of the day in the temple. Amazingly, he took us into the place where the abishakam is held, and we stood in that ancient chamber for an hour, just 8 feet from the crystal is it was worshipped, alone with the priests who ran past us with the efficiency of having done this thousands of times. It was a potent moment.

After the last arati, the priests cleared the chamber and we were alone with Siva in the night. Raju said, "This is a good time to talk to Siva. He can hear you better without all the noise." So we spoke with Him wishing a flood of blessedness upon all of Gurudeva's devotees. Then Raju said, "I pray now for the success of Gurudeva's mission. It is so important, what you are doing. We are so proud to know all of you. I pray for Iraivan to be completed as Gurudeva saw."

That ended our day and we left filled and thrilled with Siva's light and love.

Jayanatha: "We had a wonderful visit to the center of the Universe today. Our lineage has a kinship with Chidambaram's Dikshitars that became more obvious the longer we spent there. In the evening as the temple became quiet, we were invited into the inner prakaram to witness the Spattika Lingam abhishekam up close. Quite a blessing. For such a small crystal Lingam, it holds great power. The hall is topped with gold tiles equaling the number of breaths we take in a day, patterned to the number of Nadis in the human body. Nataraja is at the heart. This being the Akasha temple, there is also a chamber to the left of Nataraja where arati is done to empty space. Our kind of temple. We feel blessed to have had such an experience."

Off we go through the Indian traffic to Tanjavur, arriving at a different place. At our last hotel the yogis learned that even the best hotel in town does not necessarily have little amenities like towels, hot water, soap or elevators that work. The little garden hotel in Tanjurvur has all those things, and we were welcomed by at least 8 staff!

Off to a brief darshan in the night, holding our real visit for the following morning. Dinesh did his magic (if you think something in Dinesh's presence, it happens). He arranged a milk abhishekam for 8am and we were there to witness the amazing 10-foot-wide Sivalingam, so large they had to install the lingam and build the vimanam above it. No photos are allowed here, but the awe factor is high and you can imagine gallons of milk flooding over this massive black stone (the priest stands on a 12-foot-tall scaffold to pour offerings.

The temple itself is also magical, with thousands of feet of hallways holding who knows how many lingams, all different sizes and shapes. The carvings are intricate, and the dwajapalakas (the guardians at the doors) as tall as our Dakshinamurthi.

Here is what Wikinatha has to say regarding the name:

Brihadishvara(IAST: Bihdvara) is a Sanskrit composite word composed ofBrihatwhich means "big, great, lofty, vast",[11]andIshvarameans "lord, Shiva, supreme being, supremeatman(soul)".[12][13]The name means the "great lord, big Shiva" temple. Locally, the temple is called the big temple, while in historic inscriptions it is also referred to as RajaRajeswara,RajarajeswaramandPeruvudayartemple.[14]

The amount of human effort seen in the sculpture here is humbling. Humbling, too, that with all our modern means the human race cannot replicate this treasure.

We are on the road now (yes, still connected to the Internet), heading to Madurai where Sundara Meenakshi is waiting for us...

As the two yogis and I travel deeper and deeper into the South, we are discovering, again, life on the road in India. It is a world of horns and near misses, and certainly gives one a sense of detachment from this body. It seemed apt to reprise a 1996 editorial I wrote for Hinduism Today. Most will go in this story, with the final parts in the image captions. Enjoy...

Traffic as Epistemology
By the Editor


NATIONS ARE DEFINED, IN PRACTICAL REALITY, NOT BY THEIR FINANCIAL CLOUT OR MILITARY STRENGTH, NOT BY CULTURAL HERITAGE OR NATURAL RESOURCES, NOR EVEN BY THEIR POLITICAL SYSTEM AND HISTORY. THEY ARE DEFINED BY THEIR TRAFFIC. SHOW ME A NATION'S ROADS, AND I'LL SHOW YOU ITS VERY SOUL.

Think about it for a minute. Germany has the Autobahn, where not-so-poorish engineers in highly-engineered Porches ply the wide lanes at 200km/hour. Americans are limited to 100km/hour, but they make up for that since they are conceived, born, live, work and all-too-often die in their cars (and in Southern California die for their cars), which are outfitted with exotic toys like hydraulics, TVs, fax machines, cellular phones and computer maps that show where the stars live. Singapore has no roads, having reinvented the notion. Instead, with its miles and miles of very narrow parks and lush gardens through which cars are permitted to pass, it has raised driving from progress to epiphany, reminding us that destiny is more than destination (except you could get caned for entering a restriced zone without a permit).

China has something like a road, but it is used for tractors and trucks, bicycles and such, since there are only 256 cars in the entire country. Which brings us to India--ah, India, where roads are not a way to get from here to there. Roads are here and there. Roads are slept on, walked on, spat on in India. Roads are used to store and winnow the rice crop, to dry acres of red chilis, to milk the family cow. Roads serve as temporary shops. Not only is every type of transportation found on every road, but every kind of living thing. Goats and ducks are shepherded in front of screeching busses. Elephants stop dutifully at the red lights and water buffalo meander aimlessly and fearlessly. While life in America is lived inside the car and not much else exists on the street, in India it's all on the outside. Bikes and lorries fight for their place. Pedestrians--using a NASA-developed form of Doppler-based sonar software that allows them, without looking back, to "see" vehicles approaching from behind--step gracefully aside exactly 10 nanoseconds before being run over.

There are no traffic rules of the ordinary kind one finds elsewhere. Signs forbidding littering? Forget it! Fines for jaywalking? Are you kidding? No street people?Au contraire, everyone is a street person. Speed limits? Who would enforce them? When our plane landed in Goa a few weeks back, there was actually a road crossing the runway, and traffic had halted behind a railroad-like barrier to let the aircraft land! It's a lawless land, India's highways, where each one makes up her or his own rules.
But wait! In the absence of man-made laws there must be some cosmic principles guiding one billion human beings in their urgency to turn cars into carnage. Indeed, guidelines exist, but like guarded secrets of yoga, they are known only by the initiated. They have never been consolidated, interpreted and codified. Now, for the first time in history, we reveal these arcane rules to our readers with the certain knowledge that lives will be saved by this disclosure.

Rules of the Road, Indian Style
Traveling on Indian roads is an almost hallucinatory potion of sound, spectacle and experience. It is frequently heart-rending, sometimes hilarious, frequently exhilarating, always unforgettable--and extremely dangerous. Most Indian road users observe a version of the Bharat Highway Code based onRickshawsutra, a disputed Sanskrit text summarizing ten regulations (vidhi) of the road and also referred to as the road warriors' rules of engagement.

VIDHI I:
The assumption of immortality is required of all travelers. If death frightens you, stay home. India has the world's original mass transit system, which is hereby defined as "mass rules the road." If you are bigger, you have the right of way, no matter what other conditions prevail. However, in the case of accidents this rule is reversed, and the driver of the larger vehicle involved in any collision is, a priori, guilty and may be summarily beaten by passers-by, lest the short arm of the law fail to exact his due punishment.

VIDHI II:
Indian traffic, like Indian society, is structured on a strict caste system. The following precedence must be accorded at all times. In descending order, give way to: cows, elephants, heavy trucks, buses, official cars, camels, light lorries, buffalo, jeeps, ox-carts, private cars, motorcycles, scooters, auto-rickshaws, pigs, pedal rickshaws, goats, bicycles (goods-carrying), handcarts, bicycles (passenger-carrying), dogs and pedestrians. 1992 Addendum: The above is superceded when any one of the above is ahead of another and both are traveling in the same direction. The vehicle in front is allowed any and every movement. Those behind must submit appropriately.

VIDHI III:
All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail, to stop is defeat. This is the Indian drivers' mantra. In observance of this rule three things shall be required of every licensed driver: a good horn, good brakes and good luck.

VIDHI IV:
Cars (class II,4,b): Use of a horn (also known as the sonic fender or aural amulet) is manditory. Drivers caught neglecting a horn for more than a minute will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
1. Short bursts (urgent) indicate supplication, e.g., in clearing dogs, rickshaws and pedestrians from path. Even if they can see you clearly, others will not acknowledge your presence unless you blare, at least a bit.
2. Long bellows (desperate) denote supremacy, e.g., to oncoming truck: "I am going too fast to stop, so unless you slow down we shall both die."
3. Single blast (casual) means: "I have just seen someone out of India's 870 million whom I recognise," or "There is a bird in the road (which at this speed could go through my windscreen)" or "I have not blown my horn for two minutes." Trucks and buses (class IV,2,a): All horn signals have the same meaning, viz: "I am at the helm of a 12.5-ton juggernaut, am tired, late to my destination, unafraid of death and have no intention of stopping, even if I could. Do what you think is prudent."
4. Incessant din indicates either A.) Cautious, professional chauffeur is approaching, or B.) Driver is napping for a few minutes with his head on the horn to clear the road ahead. Vidhi IV remains subject to the provision of Order of Precedence in Vidhi II above.

VIDHI V:
Never stop for an accident, except to pummel victims as outlined in Vidhi I. As you drive past the mangled mountain of metal, show compassion by thinking to yourself, "That's karma," or in the case of a big collision, "That's truckma." All maneuvers, use of horn and evasive action shall be left until the last possible moment to assure an uninterrupted flow of automotive-induced adrenaline.

VIDHI VI:
1. Speed: It is the responsibility of each village and community to control the velocity of vehicles. Since signs are ineffectual and traffic will move at the fastest speed possible, this is done by a well-planned program of road negligence whereby an 80km/hour roadway is assiduously maintained once every twenty-five years and a 40km/hour thoroughfare is never subjected to repairs. 2. Roundabouts: India recognizes no roundabouts. Ostensible traffic islands in the middle of crossroads have no traffic management function. Any other impression should be ignored. 3. Rapid transit: A known oxymoron.

VIDHI VII:
1. Rights of way: Traffic entering a road from the left has priority. So has traffic from the right, and also traffic in the middle. 2. Lane discipline: Vehicles are permitted half of the roadway. White lines, when provided, are used to center your vehicle on the road, so your half is taken precisely out of the middle. When similarly aligned on-coming vehicles approach, do not relent your position until the last minute, lest they deem you a feckless road warrior and drive you mercilessly into the nearest paddy field.

VIDHI VIII
While God is omnipresent in India, seatbelts are omniabsent, though one, located in Puna, was justly described as "uncomfortable to sit on." Therefore, car occupants shall wear garlands of marigolds. These must be kept fastened at all times. Upon arrival at one's destination, a moment of grateful prayer is compulsory--a large donation to one's favorite temple is optional.

VIDHI IX:
Overtaking is mandatory. Every moving vehicle is required to overtake every other moving vehicle, irrespective of whether it has just overtaken you or whether you are in a rush or not (stories of drivers who were not in a hurry still circulate in remote villages). Overtaking should only be undertaken in suitable conditions, such as in the face of oncoming traffic, on blind bends, at junctions and in the middle of villages/city centres. No more than two inches should be allowed between your vehicle and the one you are passing--and two millimeters in the case of 3-wheelers or pedestrians. When two lorries are engaged in passing a passenger car simultaneously, other vehicles are advised to wait for a narrow bridge or roadside accident to begin passing procedures. Corollary Rule: If one car is ahead of another, it shall, by deftly swerving across any number of lanes, make a responsible effort to keep others, even ambulances, from passing, preserving thereby the ancient tradition that no one gets around an Indian.

From the golden temple we drive three hours to Tiruvanammalai, famed for its Siva temple associated with the fire element (four other elements are represented at distant temples). It is called Annamalaiyar Sivan Koyil, from the name of the nearby mountain range of the same name. Mannikavasagar sung thiruvasagam here.

In the evening we went to the 5:30pm puja. The hotel had worried we might not get in, as foreigners are strictly forbidden. Not only were we welcomed, but by chance (for those who still believe in old superstitions) the head priest caught us entering with our flower offerings and rushed to our side. His family has been in charge for 13 generations and he performed the most recent kumbhabishekam for this temple. Off he took us, deeper and deeper, faster and faster into the inner chambers. He called out to the officiating pujaris to open the sanctum gate (puja has just ended but he got us in!) Then off to Shakti and Nataraja and.....

We wanted to meditate and he took us to a locked chamber where his grandfather meditated after puja. We were able to feed ladus to the elephant on our way out! Yogi Mayuranatha was amazed to see the structure of an elephant's tongue.

As we exited through the gift shop (two long lines of open stalls on either side of the road where, clearly, the above exit strategy was first (3,000 years back?) invented, we found some small items. Mayuranatha was taken aback when a local sadhu blessed him for giving some rupees. We all felt blessed by everything here.