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On December 25th we celebrated Hanuman Jayanti at our ashram in Chennai, where the presiding deity is of Sri Panchamukha Hanuman. From morning till evening thousands of devotees visited for darshana of Lord Hanuman. Bhajans were sung by devotees, and prasadam was distributed to all of the guests throughout the day.
Here is a small story of an interesting meeting we recently had with a sadhu from Jharkhand named Hari Baba. He stays in a small village in Jharkhand, and was attending the annual Gita Yagya at Rambaba Ashram, near Jamshedpur. He is a very unique sadhu, always in a type of inner trance, not very aware of the outside around us.
Ma kichakeswari temple mentioned in the Mahabharata. It was destroyed completely to the ground by muslim invaders along with a number of other temples located together in the same temple complex. It lay in ruins for four hundred years and finally was rebuilt with pieces of the broken temples in the last century.
The amazing temple tank at Thiruvarur Shiva temple, location of the famous Tyagaraja Swamy deity which was brought from Indraloka by King Muchukunda. I have never seen a temple tank as large and beautiful as the one in Thiruvarur. Even though it is off the usual path of travel, anytime I go South I make an effort to visit this temple.
The water at Dhanushkodi is crystal clear, but the small waves are very forceful, and feel like you are being punched in the chest.
98 year old sadhu Brahma Chaitanya Das, who is known in Odisha as Chakratirtha Baba is visiting our temple in Chennai on his way to Rameswaram for tirtha yatra.
Sugar – we all crave it, from children to adults. We indulge in it, from sodas, cakes, and assorted candies, during times of sadness and times of celebration. But crystallized sugar, first invented in India, has a dark history, involving conquest, secret societies, and exploitation.
Did you know that Mayapur was once the capital of the Eastern Empire of India, and that the king’s palace lies in ruins a short walk from ISKCON Mayapur?
Just behind Chand Kazi’s samadhi are the ruins known as Ballal Dhipi, which even today no one really knows much about. If you ask locals they have no idea what it is or what it was. Up until 1980 it was a giant earthen mound 30 feet high, covered in grass. No one knew what was underneath.
This is an ancient Vetala deity worshipped in Goa at the village of Loliem, who is over 8 feet tall. Vetala are a type of mystical ghostly species of beings. A famous example of them occurs in the book Kathasaritsagara, in which a king tries to capture a Vetala, but each time the Vetala tells him a story with a riddle at the end. This occurs 25 times, and those 25 stories are the basis of much of the world’s folklore (Arabian nights, Panchatantra, etc.).
The name of this country “India” is a word with no meaning. We have accepted the name given by foreign invaders, and consider that fine. But if someone says we should restore the ancient name of this land, people will say it is “communalism” (religious fanaticism).
