Jai Gurudeva!

Yesterday evening our monks gathered in Kadauvl Temple to observe our monthly Chitra puja and abhishekam at Gurudeva's shrine. Yogi Dayanatha and Nirvani Tejadevanatha performed the abhishekam while other monks chanted Sri Rudram. This day is our monthly celebration of Saturu Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's mahasamadhi which took place during the Chitra nakshatra. Aum.

Aum Namah Sivaya

After many years of bright sun and heavy rains, certain ares of slate tile outside of Kadavul Temple have become loose. With water collecting underneath them, the grout was failing and some tiles were even breaking under uneven pressure. In an effort to remedy the issue, Vishvanathaswami and Tejadevanatha spent several days removing large portions of tile and cleaning up the concrete beneath them. They were able to rescue most of the original tiles, meaning we won't have to purchase many replacement pieces. Soon after their work, our hired worker Doug went about placing the tiles with fresh mortar and grout. He made sure to properly slope the tile, which had not been properly done before. This is what was causing a lot of the issues, as rain water would collect rather than flow off of them. After nearly a week of work the job is much closer to completion, with only a few more sections of new tile to lay. Aum.

Jai Ganesha!

Here at the aadheenam, the work on the temple continues. After several weeks break, our lavarock wall team is back on the job and progressing around the northern side of the temple. The silpis are working on the tops of the pillars inside. They are removing calcite buildup and stains while also improving the grout joints. In related news, progress is being made on the planning for the granite tiles which will reside atop the temple's outer plinth. Aum Namah Sivaya

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylaswami gives an Part 4 of his upadesha series on the concept of awareness and omnipresence from the yogic perspective.

We now have a new feature:

Topics
     Activity By Interest

that appears on each of the groups:

Monastery | Read & Learn | Look & Listen | Live Spiritually | Visit

There are now 200 categories. Now you can search for the category by the subject that you are interested in. There will be 11 categories. You go into a particular area, say "Family Life." From here you go to "Conflict Resolution" and we come 25 items: audio, text (book), video.

By now we should be coming to grips with a wealth of our resources!

Vel Muruga!
January 27th at 4:30pm the aadheenam celebrates Thai Pusam with a puja and abhishekam to Lord Murugan in Kadavul Temple. Join us live:

Jai Ganesha!

Today we visit our greenhouses for an update. The last time we brought you to our newest hydroponic tomato greenhouse, the plants weren't more that a few feet tall. Now we have four full rows of abundantly producing tomato varieties. With this crop in full production we have hundreds of pounds coming in every few weeks. We've been using them in a verity of ways. we of course use them in curries, soups and chutneys, but we have also been dehydrating them for sauces (including some homemade ketchup!). The system can seem immensely complicated, but once the basics are down our monks of the Siddhidatta kulam can work quite efficiently at keeping this operation going. We of course have our other greenhouse as well. It produces many other veggies and greens, including our constant supply of (the world's best) lettuce as well as our daily greens used for our lunches.

Recently we had a new work of art commissioned, painted by Kailas Raj in India. After nearly a year of careful correspondence to adjust and perfect small aspects of this painting, it is finally complete. While our temples and shrines are replete with images of Siva, Ganesha and Muruga, another important image is that of Ardhanarishvara. In our tradition Siva and Shakti are not seen as male and female but rather as a one divine being, and in no other form is that more evident as in Ardhanarishvara whose right half is masculine and left half is feminine. This piece of art was created as something that devotees of the aadheenam could use for their shrine rooms at home, and soon it will be made into prints for just that. We'll keep you posted as to when they become available through the Minimela. Aum Namah Sivaya.