Roshan Sivayogam has recently arrived from Malaysia for another tenure on task force. He's currently working with the SK, helping with many projects around the monastery grounds.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NHLSIQCkto Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami reads his editorial from the Jan/Feb/Mar 2014 edition of Hinduism Today magazine. "An abbreviated daily regimen designed for those who find that today’s busy life allows little or no time for introspection"

Yesterday Afternoon Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and Shanmuganathaswami attended a Siva Yogaswami monthly Guru Puja in Sydney Australia, at a nearby community center for the elderly. The program consisted of singing, mainly Natchintanai, and arati to a picture of Yogaswami with a short talk from Bodhinatha at the end. These are some of the pictures taken on the occasion.

Devagharan Nallakumar, wife Kumari and daughter Devina are on pilgrimage from Dallas/Ft. Worth area of Texas. They've been here twice before over the last 15 years, and are from Malaysia originally

Click here for report and more photos of the December homa at our Mauritius Spiritual Park

Our Aloha dinner in Sydney, Australia included a book launch of Guru Chronicles for Australia Mini Mela. The event was held at a hall affiliated with the Durgai Amman Temple. Chandran & Mathini Wigneswaran were our hosts for this visit. They had encouraged many of their family and friends to attend which brought attendance up to 206. Tickets for the dinner were $40 and they raised AUS $8,250 for the Iraivan temple building fund. In addition, a few individuals sponsored the actual costs of the hall rental and the food, so the full amount of AUS $8,260 goes to Iraivan. Additionally, of the 30 copies of The Guru Chronicles we carried with us, 24 or 25 were sold and most of them were signed by Bodhinatha. Some copies of the Jan 2014 Hinduism Today were given out as well. The program included singing Natchitanai, Bharata Natyam, talks by Dr. Nagaratnam (now 88 years old) and Ganga Sivanathan, the Iraivan update video with a book trailer on Guru Chronicles, plus a forty-minute slot for Bodhinatha to present keynotes on Four Yogas, Four Ashramas and a few minutes on The Guru Chronicles.

Yesterday Satguru Bodhinatha and Shanmuganathaswami left for a long flight to Australia. They will be gone for 10 days, returning to the monastery just in time for Ardra Darshanam.

Last year, several months were put into the creation of the Media Studio's ceiling coffers and tongue and groove boards. Today they're finally being installed. Three karma yogis, Deva, Aditya and Haran, have offered to help the monks and do the complex installation. The wood was taken from trees felled near the monastery, it was then milled, cut, planed and oiled into it's final form. Another team is simultaneously applying the stucco to the building exterior. The first coat is going up, which will be followed by another and then the final colored coat. These two projects are fast creating a complete transformation of the building.

As you can see from the banners atop our pages, the monks have begun our 60-day Digital Dharma Drive to push forward on our web resources and presence. Like Wikipedia, we have decided to not advertise on our sites, and to not charge for our Hindu resources, art, videos, magazine, books and .... well, everything.

Still there are not-so-trivial costs involved if we are to keep Hinduism's flagship sites among the best in the world. We have over 100,000 visitors to our sites each month. And if you Google the single word "Hinduism," you will find (on most days) two of our sites in the top ten returns. A great accomplishment, yes, but to keep us there we need to not let up. So, we are turning to our CyberCadets (a Gurudevaism that we like) to help us evolve in the year ahead.

We present here a small slideshow of some of our pages. Also a before and after of the main room in the Media Studio, which will partially benefit from this drive. Please read Bodhinatha's and the editors' letters giving details of our DDD past and present, what we have done and what lies ahead. We urge you to consider the Digital Dharma Drive in your holiday giving plans.

Mahalo nui loa--that's our Hawaiian thank you!

At a public function held in Kottayam, known as the media capital of Kerala, on Nov 24th, Kerala State's Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan honoured G. K. Nair, the Hinduism Today correspondent for his contributions in the field of spiritual journalism, i.e. Hinduism Today, by wrapping a shawl around him. Others in the picture on are Prof Sreepadam Easwaran Nampoothiri, an academic poet and on the right, Prof Reghudev, Editor of Devaja, the publication which was recognizing Mr. Nair. Prof Reghudev dedicated the auspicious event in the premises of Sree Mahadeva Temple, at Thirunakkara, Kottayam, at "the lotus feet of Jagadguru Sivayasubramuniyaswami and all the Rishis of the Kailasa parampara." Mr. Nair explained that it was his first meeting with the Jagadguru that changed his and his family's life. "It was, indeed a watershed in our life. The continuous guidance of Satguru Bodhinatha Veylan Swamiji, the present Dharmacharya and Madhadhipathi has placed us on the right path of Saiva Dharma. Mr. Nair said it was their blessings that brought him here to be honored by us," stated Prof Reghudev.