A recent sunrise captured by one of our monks

“You are perfect this very moment. You are all that you will ever be.”

– Gurudeva

Jai Ganesha!

Over the last year, Yogi Dayanatha has spent time gradually adding life and beauty to the area around our monastery's woodfire oven. He's cleared old, shaded foliage and replaced it with rock-encircled mounds of colorful flowers and decorative palm trees. The area now feels open, airy and bright. The array of flowers—which will eventually overflow their beds in polychromatic abundance—include Impatiens, zinnias, marigolds and roses. Aum.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives part nine of a series of talks which give insight and elaboration into a variety of fascinating concepts revealed in the Shum language of meditation. Here, Satguru gives special attention to the 54 mambashum—important areas of the mind detailed by Shum.

Click here to view our June 2021 Newsletter: www.himalayanacademy.com/monastery/newsletter

Mark Twain's Favorite Brewery
[This is a story from The Guru Chronicles]
Following a 1962 summer retreat at Angora Lake, Gurudeva visited nearby Virginia City, Nevada, to find a piece of property that could serve as a permanent retreat center. He didn't have to look far. About a quarter mile down the canyon from this legendary boom town of the Old West, he found a large, ramshackle brewery, originally built in 1864 on the site of the famed Comstock Lode Gold Rush. It was for sale.
Its austere Sierra Nevada mountain terrain, with its sagebrush and pion pine landscape, something that might intimidate others, was appealing to him. It was yogic, almost desolate. It was a place where the inner was more important than the outer. His first thought, when he stepped inside, was, "What a wonderful ashram this would make!'' He wandered through its cavernous rooms, on three floors, and, despite the dilapidated condition of the landmark, he arranged to purchase it.
The building, known as the Old Nevada Brewery, was the favorite haunt of American humorist Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens (Twain's real name) was first a writer and then the editor of the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City from 1862 to 1864, a time during which he wrote his famed novel Roughing It. Each afternoon, it is said, he took refuge in the beer gardens of this biggest and most popular pub, telling tall tales to rowdy miners. And there were large crowds. In those days, Virginia City, with 30,000 people, was nearly half as populous as San Francisco, due to the gold rush which brought people from all over the world to the Wild West to dig into the sage-covered hills.
The landmark had been a silent memorial for half a century when Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, the new owner, stepped into its brick and fancy-woodwork rooms. Its age was showing. The resident caretaker was a grizzled old prospector who kept his mule in the basement and a pig in the shower. He was hard of hearing and required more than a little convincing that his residence had indeed changed owners.
The ashram became the Skandamalai Monastery (also called the Mountain Desert Monastery), reflecting Subramuniyaswami's insight that Murugan, Skanda, is the lord of renunciates, who would be its residents.
It would also be home of Comstock House, a major publication and printing facility, and the new center for the burgeoning Himalayan Academy courses and programs. For years, at this remote and desolate mountain aerie, 6,500 feet above sea level, the satguru would train his renunciates and issue forth the teachings of Vedanta, Siddhanta and the Saivite religion through literature, travel programs, seminars and courses.

There is a cave down Six-Mile Canyon Road, perhaps a mile beyond the monastery one of the hundreds of abandoned silver mines that honeycomb the region's hills, but horizontally deeper than most. One can walk for half a mile into its chambers. When Gurudeva discovered the cave one day, he was thrilled, and immediately set up a program for his monks. Most often alone, but sometimes in pairs, he sent them to meditate in the dark chambers. Taking only water, no food, the monk would enter the cave, walk through the long tunnel, dodging the massive wooden sup- ports that prevented cave-ins, until there was no light, then walk some more. Once inside the blackness of this space, he would settle down to stay for a day, for two days, as instructed, rarely more. He was to chant and meditate, nothing else except, and this was the sadhana, to seek the light within, the clear white light of the mind.
Sometimes, when meditating, one does not know if he is seeing the inner light or perhaps seeing the luminous space of the room beyond his closed eyes. But in a cave, deep in the Earth, there is no peripheral light. There is blackness. There is silence. There is nothing else. Monks would dive into themselves in that cave, distracted at first with the random intrusions of recent experience, of their projects back at the monastery, the paucity of food, whatever. But as the hours flowed by, the silence grew, and that silence worked well to bring them into the light of the mind.
And when you see light in a darkened cave, you know it's not coming from anywhere else; it is coming from you.
A few monks returned to speak of extraordinary moments when the light coming from within also illumined the floor and walls of the cave, brightly enough for them to discern details of the tunnel, bright enough for them to walk out without turning on their flashlight. Such was the way of the guru in those days. Gurudeva wrote about the inner light shortly after these cave experiences:
"Remember, when the seal is broken and clear white light has flooded the mind, there is no more a gap between the inner and the outer. Even uncomplimentary states of consciousness can be dissolved through meditation and seeking again the light. The aspirant can be aware that in having a newfound freedom internally and externally there will be a strong tendency for the mind to reconstruct for itself a new congested subconscious by reacting strongly to happenings during daily experiences. Even though one plays the game, having once seen it as a game, there is a tendency of the instinctive phases of nature to fall prey to the accumulative reactions caused by entering into the game.
"Therefore, an experience of inner light is not a solution; one or two bursts of clear white light are only a door-opener to transcendental possibilities. The young aspirant must become the experiencer, not the one who has experienced and basks in the memory patterns it caused. "

Jai Ganesha!

With our team of gold gilders on island working on Iraivan Temple's domes and flagpole, it was the perfect time to regild Kadavul Temple's kodimaram. The full flagpole was just recently finished and is shining brightly in our tropical sun. Aum.

Jai Gurudeva!

Today our monks began their new week with our monthly puja at Gurudeva's shrine in Kadavul Temple. Yogis Dayanatha and Haranandinatha performed the puja and abhishekam. Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and the other monks attended, chanting Sri Rudram and meditating. Aum.

"There is no intrinsic evil. God Siva has created the principle of opposites, which are the means for the soul's maturation--beauty and deformity, light and darkness, love and hate, joy and sorrow." - Gurudeva

Jai Ganesha!

Gone are the days of placing buckets under leaks in our wood shop roof. Recently, a hired team completed the installation of new roofing material for the wood shop. The previous roof was made of clear, corrugated, plastic roofing, which over time had succumb to our strong UV and heavy rains. Our new metal roofing should last much longer. It also includes several clear sections as skylights, letting in some sun to keep the shop well lit. Aum.