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Monks in New York

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  • A family photo with the Nataraj Family at the Natural History Museum
  • Our monks landed in New York on a sunny spring day
  • While waiting to check into their hotel, they take a Sunday morning coffee-walk in Central Park.
  • The next Day, Gajanan leads everyone through the Natural History Museum
  • Dinosaurs!
  • The 3rd and final day was the conference
  • In the evening, some time to explore the city a bit. Times Square was only a few blocks away.
  • The next morning, our monks flew home with the sunrise in tow.

Jai Ganesha!

Last week, Sannyasin Tillainathaswami and Sadhaka Sabanatha made a quick trip to New York City and back. While there they enjoyed spending time with the Nataraj family, as well as exploring around Manhattan. Our monks were in the city for a conference that focused on AI tools in digital media creation and workflows. There were many high-level presenters and executives there, including creative leaders from LucasFilm, Paramount, Nvidia, Runway Ai, Adobe, and a variety of film companies, who are all finding the best way to implement ai into their creations, without sacrificing the heart of their work—human creativity. Many of the media producers there emphasized that they always start with human ideas, artwork, character design, story, etc. and only use ai to supplement the workflows that follow. Nvidia presented info about their new supercomputers and gave a glimpse into where video-creation ai tools are going, as far as their power and speed. Our monks are working to implement some of the ideas presented, particularly from companies that outlined their creative workflow for their short films and tv shows. Hopefully this will help reduce the friction and time in creating our educational content.

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Monk’s Visit to the Mainland

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Jai Ganesha!

Recently, Sannyasin Yoginathaswami and Sannyasin Mayilnathaswami visited Portland, Oregon. Below are their words:

“Yesterday, we went to Kondapi’s place for breakfast, and then they took us to the Japanese Garden at Washington Park. Namrata and her husband, Jagadish, met us there. It was a beautiful place with many camellias, magnolias, and cherry blossoms in bloom, along with serene Zen gardens. There was also a rose garden right next to the Japanese Garden, but the roses had not started blooming yet.

After that, Jagadish took us to a holy arboretum trail with beautiful cedar, redwood, and spruce trees. It was about a one-hour trail with wonderful trees to see. Then we were taken to a Chinese garden in downtown Chinatown. It was a small place, but very beautiful and interesting, with much to see.

We then returned to Kondapi’s place for lunch. After that, we went back to the hotel to rest. In the evening, we had a short Ganesha puja, and Yoginathaswami gave a talk about Kauai Aadheenam, personal sadhanas, and karma. There were many wonderful questions. Afterward, we had dinner and returned to the hotel.”

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Will Iraivan’s 35 Bronze Panels Last 1,000 Years?

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  • Celestial bronze from Central Europe
  • This panel summarizes the mission/purpose of the monastery.
  • It’s a simple detail but it took many years to create.
  • Local craftsmen install one of the panels.
  • The had to drill deep into the hard granite, so they brought Tiny to do it
  • Almost a decade to sculpt the perimeter wall and the frames for the inset panels.

Recent visitors have asked the monks, “Iraivan is designed to last a thousand years. Will the bronze panels have to be replaced before that?”

A great question since ordinary metal is seen to rust and disintegrate in a couple of centuries. We dove into it to respond meaningfully. What we found was that bronze works from ancient India (Mohenjodaro) are alive and well 4,500 years after they were created. Bronze works go back farther, 6,500 years back in Serbia. Above you are looking at the famed Nebra Sky Disc (c. 1800–1600 BCE) fabricated in present-day Germany. A flat bronze disc with gold inlays, sometimes considered the earliest “designed surface” bronze object. It shows celestial symbols—arguably the closest early example to a true decorated bronze panel.

Our Iraivan panels will survive as long as the temple, carrying forward the history and mysticism of the temple.

You can explore the art and text of any (or all) of the panels here:

himalayanacademy.com/iraivan-temple/bronze-panels-of-iraivan-temple

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Our Newest Book Is Online at Amazon

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  • The book proof arrives from Amazon with a grey “Not for Sale” band across the cover
  • Table of Contents
  • Translator Dr. B. Natarajan hears Tayumanavar’s songs for the first time
  • The poet’s love of religious harmony, samarasam, is depicted
  • Ten of the works of art are by Kerala muralist, Suresh Muthukulam. Here he shows a Vedantist and a Siddhantist both receiving Siva’s blessings. Their love of Siva is feeding both traditions through the intertwined roots below.
  • The Muruga temple near Trichy where many of the songs were composed
  • Inside the Muruga temple, Tayumanavar composes on palm leaves
  • The itinerant mystic poet would often scold Siva
  • A typical page showing the songs in Tamil and English

We are celebrating the publishing of our latest book, The Songs of Tayumanavar. Most CyberCadets will have followed our long process (some four or five years in all) from Kerala art to Singapore audio recordings to design and typesetting and editing and more art by DALL*e, and now it is done. The proof arrived some days back. Finding no errors, we released it for sale. It is available here: nall.ai/tayu-book-amazon. It’s a full-color, 540-page tome, so it is a bit pricey, but it is full of some of the most amazing mystical/devotional poems ever composed. As with all of our books, it will be online in a couple of weeks in PDF format, free to the world. The PDF will make a great gift to all who love Siva. We think it will prove to be the most authentic English translation ever done. The remarkable work (all 1,452 songs) was personally gifted to Gurudeva in the 1980s by Dr. B. Natarajan, the translator.

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Devi, Brian & Kimberly Visit

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Sadasivanathaswami’s sister Devi, her son Brian and his wife Kimberly are on the island for a week or more and took a tour of the garden together. There were some stunning botanical things happening as they drove around and discovered. Devi reports: “Everyone is completely overwhelmed with the beauty of the garden. Brian and Kimberly say this is the most beautiful garden in the world—they both love plants.” The following day Devi and Swami went hunting for seeds in the garden, and today she filled two pots and sowed seeds of a rare tropical palm and a Gold Vine from Australia. Good job everyone!

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