Jai Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami!!!

Today we celebrate Satguru’s 81st Jayanti. This evening the monks have prepared a special meal for him and will sit together to enjoy his darshan (followed by cake and ice cream, of course!). Please add your birthday wishes to the comments. We’ll make sure he sees them. Om Namah Shivaya.

From the Kularnava Tantra:
And Lord Siva said: There is One Real. Call it Siva. This Parabrahman is formless, stainless, one without a second, changeless, beyond the highest. This Mahesvara is all-knowing, all-doing, sovereign of all, self-luminous, without beginning or end. All embodied souls, jivas, all the born creatures, are portions of Me, like sparks of the fire. But human birth is the most important, for it is then that one becomes awake, aware of his state of bondage and the necessity of release. It is then that one is in a position to take steps for his liberation from bondage’s hold.

At the root of meditation is the form of the Satguru. At the root of puja are the feet of the Satguru. At the root of mantra is the word of the Satguru. At the root of Liberation is the grace of the Satguru. In this world all holy actions are rooted in the Satguru. Therefore, the Satguru is to be constantly served with devotion for fulfillment.

A new path has been built leading from Hanuman's Mountain into the Rudraksha Forest. It is six feet wide and 200 feet long, to be planted with grass in the weeks ahead. Now visitors can enjoy the sacred forest without tripping on roots. The path leads to San Marga, where it connects with the larger, 8-foot-wide Pilgrims' Path leading to Iraivan Temple.

Satguru's recent Publisher's Desk editorial from the October/November/December, 2023 edition of Hinduism Today Magazine.

Jai Kailasa Parampara! Recently Satguru visited Texas for a satsang at the Easwaran's home. This special slideshow of the event was put together by Rajkumar Manickam.

More photos of the event from others who were there.

Today, a song from Saint Tayumanavar for our contemplations.


CANTO TWENTY

The Indescribable
Song 1

You, the Being Absolute beyond speech, the ocean of bliss, the light effulgent, leaving me in invincible maya, where did You hide? Alas! Alas! You have offered me as victim to the dark God of death. So hard-hearted is He that easier by far is it to spin yarn out of stone than to expect mercy from Him. So tightfisted is He that He would store a whole sea in a mustard seed. Why You did this I know not.









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Shanmuganathaswami and Siddhanathaswami attended the 4D Summit to continue education in our database software, while Satguru could catch up on communications and invigorating walks.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and Shanmuganathaswami are traveling for a few weeks, starting in Canada with visiting temples and meeting with formal and informal devotees in Montreal and Toronto. Here is a first collection of photos.

Aum Namah Sivaya

These last few weeks, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and Sannyasin Shanmuganathaswami have been traveling in Canada and the East Coast, US. They visited the Vinaayagar Hindu Temple of Toronto, as well as held satsang and visited with members and devotees. They stopped over at Chicago, and then made their way south to Charleston, where they met up with sannyasins Siddhanathaswami and Tillainathaswami. While there, our monks met with our representative at Blackbaud, the company that makes an important accounting software that we use. The group then headed to Atlanta, Georgia, where they are now. Here, Shanmuganathaswami and Siddhanathaswami are attending a conference for the software we use for running one of our important internal databases at the aadheenam. Aum.

"Brings that temple closer to completion." Gurudeva wrote those words back in 1957. If written today, it would be stone. Here the silpis are working at Iraivan, doing several maintenance tasks and some creative carving as well. Afternoons they work at Kadavul Temple after the morning pilgrims have left since it is a bit noisy installing the red granite flooring tiles near Nandi.

We are inspired to share one of the 1,452 songs by Tayumanavar today, something the editing team is working on almost daily. This poem is entitled "Where is God?"

Is it on top of this universe? Or beyond the top of the universe, or in the midst of the solar region, or in the midst of fire, or in the midst of the ambrosial lunar region, or in the worship of images that Your devotees adore with flowers and a melting heart? Or is it in the four directions, or in the rims of the horizon, or in the spaces vast, or in the sphere of luminous bindu and nada, or in the state of Vedanta-Siddhanta, or in the innumerable things seen, or in the invisible state of the void, or in the tenses three, or in the state of creation, or in the devotees who have conquered the sense potencies and sense organs? Where are You seated? Will You please tell the secret to this slave? O ocean of bliss that is cosmic light! The pervasive God of pure formlessness!

Our employee and longtime friend Dennis Wong has finished laying rock and gravel in the lower section of the official pilgrims' path to Iraivan Temple, and now he is heading up the straight San Marga path, from the svayambhulingam heading backwards.