Temple or Aalayam

Temple is a place where individual souls are reabsorbed into their source.  The purpose of temple is to get rid of oneself of the three defilements – ego, lust and maya. Temple topography mirrors the human body, the “temple” of the individual soul, where the gopuram is the mouth, Nandi is the tongue, the flagpole the tonsils, and the various lamps and lights are representing the five senses.  Accordingly, the inner sanctum is the heart and the temple deity is the soul itself.  Where scripture delineates the five koshas or sheaths that encase the soul, the temple has its five prakaras.  Like the koshas, the prakaras are enclosed one within the other with the innermost the sanctum sanctorum.  As one moves from the gross body to the most subtle – the self in its primordial state, so the pradakshina through the five prakaras to the inner sanctum is the symbolic journey from the gross world of form to the subtle realm of spirit and the divine.

Regards,

Tirumalanath

tirumalanath@gmail.com

January 02 Happy New Year 2009

Finally, Year 2008 came to end and endless circle of time has brought us again in a “NEW” year. Although we move forward into new calendar year, we face so many problems backlogging in our lives. Though every year we make resolutions for the New Year, it is same again if we look at our past few year track record. In actual sense, if we perceive it closely, the problem we are facing are those backlogs we have kept for some many years…like reducing weight, learning a hobby, visiting a place or a friend or changing some personal behavior. It is unfortunate that we plan new things but forgot to solve the old problems and behaviors.
Life without the knowledge of self comes near to the death with every rising and setting of the sun. For us, sixty-seventy of age seems to be very long but we are already into the middle of that age. We don’t know how time passes so quickly? There is no power in the world which can bring back even a second of time which is passed? So, just consider yourself, how important is our life? How important is our time which waste without moulding ourselves according to the age and the skill and maturity it brings into our life. Most of the time we spend in sense gratification, totally ignoring the realities of the life and our age - trying to be someone or somewhere and not behaving according to our age. It’s not always the age of 16 is sweet and great, every age may it be 16, 46 or 66 brings with it, the same level of joy, style, decency, romance and responsibility and that is what we are missing in our lives. Everyone wants to be and behave like a 16 year old. Think how awkward it will be for a 50 year old person to behave like a 20 year boy. Just, look around; everyone is imitating the 20 year old guys.
Few people take New Year positively; they make resolutions to overcome their bad habits like smoking, drinking, weight reduction, etc.. Out of them many people are forced to break their resolutions in few days or weeks by their weak consciousness and desire of sense-gratification. But, atleast their desire to overcome their bad habits is appreciable. They know what shortcomings they have and want to overcome them but are forced to bow down in front of their habits. Some frustrated people take a resolution to never make any resolution in their lives….
We know in our heart that certain things are bad and we should leave them but unless we remove the old bad habits or problems from our lives, whatever new year resolutions we make in our lives will not gives us the real happiness we desire for.
So, let us make a resolution for this year:
Leave old bad habits and solve all the old problems in our life on a war basis. Let us clean up all the messed up things in our life from the past, then only can we expect our future to be with happiness, success and satisfaction.


Regards,
Tirumalanath
tirumalanath@gmail.com

karmayoga

Hi,
This blog is about karma yoga.