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Jai Ganesha!

As of October 1st, our 4th-quarter 2024 issue of Hinduism Today is available to read online on our Hinduism Today website. You can read the issue in its entirety here.

You can also download our free Hinduism Today app here

Embark on a cultural and spiritual odyssey with the latest issue of Hinduism Today, where every page is infused with the rich heritage and profound teachings of Hinduism. This edition brings to light the grandeur of the little-known Mahasivaratri Festival in Mandi, a unique gathering where 200 deities converge from as many villages, attended by hundreds of thousands of devotees celebrating Siva’s Night with great reverence and joy.

Our 14-page Insight Educational centerpiece (“Visiting a Hindu Temple”) explores the deep significance and proper etiquette of temple worship through a detailed guide designed to enhance your spiritual encounters and understanding of these sacred spaces. Each part of a temple visit is illustrated and explained. A great resource to share with first-time visitors to our temples around the globe.

In a series of thought-provoking articles, Hindu leaders share their insights on integrating spirituality with modern living, offering perspectives that bridge ancient wisdom and contemporary challenges. Our publisher, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, writes of willpower and concentration, clarifying that our inner life and outer life are more intertwined than we often think.

Discover the unusual history of Siamese Brahmins who perform religious rites for the king of Thailand. There’s an article on the monastic centers in Tamil Nadu that serve as guardians of South Indian Saivism, with stories of how they are modernizing. A US lawyer calls for Dharmic bylaws in the diaspora temples, assuring the welfare of temple priests who are not always treated well, it seems.

Anne Petry and Padma Krishnan team up (photographer and writer) to give us an in-depth look at how cows are treated in India, where they enjoy life as nowhere else. Vanamali Mataji, an 84-year-young sage in Rishikesh, gives us a master class on the sacredness of women. Plus, there are articles on the benefits of turmeric, one woman’s journey into Hindu chaplaincy, “Digital Tools for a Spiritual Life,” how parents can inspire their kids by example, and more.

The popular Quotes & Quips section is rich with humor, cartoons, and sagely sayings; Global Dharma explores mini-stories from around the world. It’s a rich issue, with something for everyone.

Jai Ganesha!

We have created three wonderful applications for everyone around the globe to enjoy. The idea was to develop apps where people can access some of our teachings and educational materials, allowing them to explore and learn more about these topics.

The first application is the Hinduism Today app. Through this app, you can read all of our latest and archived magazine articles. You will receive updates and new issues instantly, without any delays. Additionally, all the access you have on the website will be available in the app as well.

The second application is the Spiritual Workout app, one of our most popular apps. It is currently only available on iOS, but will be made available on the Play Store for Android users later this year. The Spiritual Workout app was created for those seeking a tool to enhance their meditation and prayer practices. You can set timers for your meditation sessions and daily sadhanas. This app was designed with the intention of providing users access to various methods of meditation, enabling them to carry their spiritual practice with them wherever they go, without the need to carry multiple books.

The third application is the recently rebuilt Gurudeva app, which is a wonderful app those who have followed Gurudeva and his teachings for many years. This app provides random quotes from Gurudeva, many of which have had a profound impact on people’s lives. The app also lets users share and save quotes to read later, especially when they need inspiration.

The images below show the options available in these applications:

So without wasting any time, visit this link https://www.himalayanacademy.com/our-apps/ and download these applications for use it for your daily life and spiritual enhancement.

Jai Ganesha!

Tomorrow we have a boon in the Sacred Garden. Siva has arranged for another part-time (20 hours a week) helper to keep the landscape in order. In the tropics the biggest challenge is not growing things, but keeping them from taking over the world. There is an ongoing need to cut back the foliage, mow, weedwhack, trim, prune, weed and such. And as CyberCadets know, we have 70 acres to tend to, some with intense needs and much with moderate demands.

We decided to celebrate the additional manpower with two before and after slide shows. There is a charm in these before and after images revealing the same subject years apart. They make us time travelers as we sit in the now and take a one second journey to the past. In an instant we can experience decades of effort and progress. Today we have two such adventures, both near Iraivan Temple. The temple aerial looks down to the right into Rishi Valley, which is the mudflats in the first slider.

The heavily used back road going towards the new Siddhidata Kulam building has a culvert to channel downslope rainwater. It’s easy for gravel and debris to be pushed off the road and start blocking the culvert. To prevent this, and also for the safety of vehicles crossing the narrow space, a thick cement barricade was created on the edge. The other side is being prepared for the same.

In the new Siddhidata Kulam building office, SSC sishya Easvan Param was just here with a team to install electrical materials for the office and also plan for a solar panel installation on the roof. After he finished, our employees and monks are just finishing installation insulation in all the walls.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami’s October 2024 Publisher’s Editorial from Hinduism Today Magazine.

“We all know individuals who don’t connect their inner life to their outer life. They give meditation a high priority when they sit to meditate and want to go within. Outside of meditation, when they are at work or school, they don’t apply the same level of willpower and concentration. Some even belittle ordinary life, taking a “whatever” attitude: “It doesn’t matter as much. The inner life—that’s what’s important. The outer life—that’s something to be endured.” What’s wrong with such an attitude?”

There is an art (and hard work) to working on ourselves, and most don’t want change enough to make the effort. But some do, especially those on the evolutionary path. A couple of years back Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami wrote a most earthy and unusual book with the above title. He developed it as a tool to help children and adults build, transform and improve their character. He created a list of sixty-four character qualities and presented them in such a way that anyone could pick a trait and work to improve it. He includes examples of each trait, and its opposite. For instance, attentive/distracted, compassionate/uncaring, grateful/thankless, selfless/selfish. For families with pre-teen children old enough to understand the concepts, the booklet can be used in a simple way by choosing one character quality at a time, posting it in big type somewhere in the home and discussing it now and then for a few weeks. It’s a way to get everyone in the family to focus on improving life by improving themselves. Recently, a devotee in Bengaluru put the entire book into Tamil and we have now posted it online. You can find it (and download the pdf or epub) here: bit.ly/TamilCharacter

If you know Tamil-speaking families looking for good tools for improving our habits, reactions and nature, please share the link with them.

Sample pages from the book are shown below.

A typical spread from the book is shown below. It’s about being hospitable.