Today is Ardra nakshatra, a time each month when Siva's blessings become extra potent. The Monastery always celebrates with a beautiful abhishekham. The King of Dance is bathed in gallons of water, fresh milk from the aadheenam's cows, fresh yogurt, honey, freshly squeezed citrus juice from the gardens, rose water and an array of other herbs and essences. During this powerful ritual, Lord Nataraja absorbs the prana from the many substances and then radiates the energy out to His devotees. The experience can be quite powerful, and more often then not, a tourist or another other first-time visitor will happen into the temple during the worship, and walk away completely changed. A common question from such a freshly inspired soul is simply: "what did I just experience?" Often times, seeing Siva's blessings upon others is just as, if not more fulfilling than the blessings we receive ourselves. Aum Namah Sivaya!

The world is seen as it truly is--sacred--when we behold Siva's cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Siva's dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Siva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, criticizing the natural processes and movements around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Siva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to accept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of understanding. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Siva. The Vedas state, "The cosmic soul is truly the whole universe, the immortal source of all creation, all action, all meditation. Whoever discovers Him, hidden deep within, cuts through the bonds of ignorance even during his life on Earth." Aum Namah Sivaya.

On the way to the Hindu Students Association retreat in Texas Satguru Bodhinatha had a chance meeting with Rudy Tanzi in the San Francisco Airport. Rudy's been on two Innersearch programs with Bodhinatha. A neuroscientist and professor at Harvard Medical School, Rudy focuses primarily on the research of Alzheimer's disease.

This morning began the new phase with the usual homa. Satguru Bodhinatha is currently traveling, so his paduka reside in his place. Paramacharya Sadasivanathaswami fills in to burn the written prayers to the devas, and to give a short talk after the homa. He the topic of his talk was universal love, and he read from Gurudeva's talk, Love is the Sum of the Law.

From Merging With Siva
Lesson 120:
Love may also be thought of as the full expression of the intuitive mind, a continuing flow from the source of Being. Most people would not be able to withstand the reaction to this force were it to be fully released within them. To suddenly relieve a person of all tension would be like making a poor man rich overnight. The instinctive mind feels lost and insecure under the impact of any sudden change in evolution. As the soul, the superconscious mind, or the light of God, begins to shine through the rest of the mind, the mind will either become reactionary or cooperative. Some people have a terrible fight within themselves as the soul begins to shine forth, and yet their only lasting satisfaction in life is in the outpouring of their individual soul qualities. ¶Sometimes students of Inner Being are able to control their actions or their speech when they become disturbed, but the thought force projected by their suppressed sulking is just as negatively effective. Seeking to understand the condition that has upset you will give control of the negative force and eventually lift you into the state of love which conquers all things. ¶Of course, the practice of understanding must begin at home. You must train yourself to know where you are in consciousness at all times. When you can become fully aware of the states of consciousness through which you pass, there will be no one whom you cannot understand, no one with whom you could not communicate through the medium of love. Until you learn the operation of this law as the sum of all laws, you will continue to harbor contention, to prefer argument and to walk the path of difference. Through bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, the combative mind becomes erased, absorbed into the consciousness of the One Self, the Being permeating all beings. ¶With the help of devotion, you can soar within. You cannot only pull away detachedly from unwholesome areas of the mind, but it is possible to keep yourself in an inward state of expanded consciousness.

Today Satguru Bodhinatha and Senthilnathaswami headed for Lihue airport to begin their three weeks of travel. They will be in Texas through the 12th, where they will meet with the Hindu Students Association, make a presentation at a local temple and attend satsang with devotees. They will then fly to Trinidad for a few days. Bodhinatha has prepared a detailed workshop for university youth at the National Council of Indian Culture there. The two will then flying back to Texas, visit will the devotees and attend the 2014 Annual interfaith event. They will return to Kauai around the 25th of February. We wish them well in their travels. Aum Namah Sivaya.

Click here to see their full schedule.

You wouldn't think an umbrella would make a good story, but it does.

Today we bring you a great surprise (it certainly was a surprise to us) in the form of our Satguru Kadaitswami's umbrella. To which we add a little about this great siddhar from The Guru Chronicles.

As we know, he was never without his umbrella. In South India and Sri Lanka people use umbrellas more for protection from the scorching sun than from rain, and Kadaitswami carried his during his extensive and famed walks. Whether in the marketplace or teaching outside the Siva temple to devotees, his umbrella was never apart from him.

So, Jiva Rajasankar, our site manager in Bengaluru had an umbrella made for Kadaitswami, to go with his murthi which is coming soon to Kauai to be installed with seven others in our paramparai. It's a delightfully graceful umbrella made of black granite, no doubt the first ever of its kind.

Kadaitswami, born in 1810, was famed for his ever-present umbrella, was a judicial officer turned mendicant, an Indian who guided the spiritual life of Sri Lanka, a linguist who preached in the commoners' marketplace and led a renaissance of Saivism among the Tamil people of Jaffna.

Marketplace Monarch
Muktiyananda (Kadaitswami) spent his days at Jaffna Grand Bazaar, walking about or sitting under a huge, shade-giving banyan tree. The shops on the northern and western streets of this marketplace belonged mainly to the Chettiars, or trading community. Muktiyananda did not say his name, so people took to referring to him as Kadaitswami (kadai means "shop" in the Tamil language, so his name simply meant the swami who frequents the marketplace).

It is common in Tamil culture to name holy men after places, for they often do not let people know any other name. History also knows him as Adikadainathan, "Lord of the Marketplace." Kadaitswami would go to a shop and take a piece of bread. While they might object to such filching by an ordinary customer, shopkeepers were always pleased to relinquish a little of their stock to the swami, for they had come to learn that business was bountiful on days he visited. They would even pray that the tall sadhu might come and help himself to something.

People observed, and these small signs gave them faith in the swami, faith in his powers to bless and magically influence the world around him. That is one reason Chellappaswami, his future disciple, was not as popular in Jaffna, for he refused to perform such miracles.

Muthaiyar shares the following: Sometimes Swami would dance in the market and on occasion enter a stall and touch the coins. Muktiyananda was described as lean and tall, dressed in a dark veshti, carrying an umbrella under his arm.

They say he was six feet four inches tall, had curly hair, piercing eyes and a long, pointed nose; his body was gangly, but well formed and of charming appearance. K. Ramachandran provided the following description on a radio talk he gave in the mid 20th century on Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. No photograph of Kadaitswami was ever taken.

The pictures of him that now exist are, in fact, drawings by an artist who was his devotee. These drawings depict him as having broad shoulders, long hands and a radiant smile constantly shining on his face. His long nose, lightly hooked at the tip, lent beauty to his face. There was a spring in his brisk, stately walk and humor in his talk that gave charm to his personality, say those who had seen him.

Click here for description and many more photos of the February Ganesha homa at our Saiva Siddhanta Church Spiritual Park

Vijay and Anjali Dhar, and Arun and Bharti Koul, Kashmiri Saivites visiting from southern California, have been here a couple times before and support Iraivan Temple construction, but this is the first time they are here when Satguru Bodhinatha isn't away on a trip, so they finally got the chance for a darshan meeting.