The photos from this morning's prayers:-
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva represent the three qualities separately, which are Rajas, Sattvam and Tamas. Each quality predominates and is always associated with other two qualities in minor quantities. Human beings are also of the same nature. Anybody with some specific type of nature likes to worship the form of God of similar nature. A scholar likes to worship Lord Brahma. A good administrator with peaceful and balanced nature likes to worship Lord Vishnu. A fast emotional person likes to worship Lord Shiva. These three qualities are separately involved in various stages of spiritual effort and also in various tests conducted by the Lord. These three Lords are only the three functional forms.
A police officer on a festival day goes to temple with traditional dress and you can see a totally different pious nature in him. The same officer while dealing with the issues of administration of family or office will be found with lot of balance and calm mind to solve the problems. The same officer while going to attack the terrorists along with his team looks totally in a different way with emotion and valour. The difference in the situations and functions change the atmosphere even though the same person is involved. Realization of the same one unimaginable God in all the divine personalities of all universal religions is the climax of spiritual knowledge. This is the last step in Pravrutti and first step in Nivrutti. - Thomas Mathew
If you are worshipping Lord Subramanya as single, use red kanagale (nerium oleander) on Tuesdays Thursdays and Sunday, millige (Jasmine) on Friday and Monday along with kanagale , bilva on Wednesday and Sunday
If you are worshipping Lord along with his wives valli and devasena offer your prayers with dhavana and maruga along with above mentioned flowers on any day - Avinash MN
Ultimately, you should seek a qualified Shakta or Smarta Guru who can guide you in your path of devotion to Maa Parvati. Pending initiation in Tantrik Shakti Bija Mantras to Maa Parvati, you may freely use mantras like “Aum Namo Bhagavati Parvatyai Namaha”.
In the meantime, start worshipping Her. Do regular Pujas to Maa Parvati. You can offer vermilion, mehndi, red flowers, etc. to the Goddess. It’s best to get up early in the morning, have a bath, and then make offerings, at a home altar and/or by going to a Parvati temple if you live near one. You should also make offerings to Lord Shiva, Her husband.
Monday is especially dedicated to the Goddess Parvati. If you want, you can observe fasting on Mondays, beginning at sunrise and ending at sunset. Make evening prayers to Maa Parvati around sunset, and afterward eat food.
Sing devotional songs to Her. Practice loving all beings, as She does, and treating them accordingly. Make and protect beauty in this world, and promote harmony. Be gentle and nurturing, yet without sacrificing your strength and power, your potential for ferocity if/when needed. Be a voice of encouragement, reason, and freedom to your friends and family. Resist injustice, and take action against it. Always realign yourself to reality, and adapt to the needs of circumstances. Share food with others, especially those most in need. If you have abundance, spread it around. Embrace your strengths; acknowledge your flaws. Practice determination and perseverance in what you know in your heart is right for you. Work with great effort to realize your true potential, awakening the Adishakti in yourself. These are the things that Maa Parvati wants from Her devotees.
Celebrate festivals like Navaratri, especially with a community of fellow Shakti devotees if at all possible.
I highly recommend reading the Lalita Sahasranama, and learning to chant it. This holy scripture contains many of the deep secrets of Shakta devotion, especially if you have a learned Guru or Acharya’s commentary to unlock it.
May Maa Parvati bless you on your path! - Devala Rees
The best way to worship Maa Saraswati is the way that you experience to most enliven and expand your devotion. That is my real answer; the rest are just suggestions.
The Vedas contain many mantras to Saraswati Devi or Vak Devi. If you are initiated in these mantras, they are wonderful ways to worship Her, given directly by Vak Devi Herself to the Vedic Rishis and Rishikas. I especially enjoy chanting the Medha Suktam.
Saraswati is the Goddess of Learning and Knowledge. One of the best possible ways to worship Her is to learn. Learn anything you wish, and consciously dedicate your process of learning to Her, recognizing that She is the learning process itself, as well as the knowledge that you gain. By learning, you commune with and honor Her.
Likewise she is the Goddess of Art. Express yourself artistically in some way - sing, play music, draw, paint, dance, write, carve, sculpt, or whatever it may be. Honor Maa Saraswati through your artistic expression. Doing so even in the smallest way is better than none.
There are of course many more ways - perform Puja to Her, especially on Her holy days; go on Yatra to Her temples and rivers, etc. All of these are very good ways to worship Maa Saraswati, as long as you are in tune with your natural devotion to Her. - Devala Rees
Hindus believe that Brahma is the creator of the universe and all the living creatures in it.
According to Brahmajnana Brahma is the god of creativity.
Brahma symbolizes the manual force, Vishnu symbolizes the semi automatic force and Shiva, the automatic force.
THE BRAHMA FORCE:
This is a transient force, directly under our control and separates the activity using this force from other activities of life.
Brahma force is the negative half the wave like Vishnu force, the positive half being Shiva. Thus, Brahma can't enable activities of life and can enable activities that are disconnected from life.
THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF BRAHMA
1. Brahma is the best god for experiments.
2. He is the god of creativity and thus, of change
3. He is the god who converts practicals into theory.
4. He is the god who enables us to start a new life after our life is devastated completely.
4. He is the digital to analog converter. Thus, he enables activities that has to be learnt at once into activities that can be learnt slowly and in a controlled way. Thus, he enables us to understand Brahman through Vedic mantras in a very controlled way. Thus, the Vedas are attributed to Brahma.
5. Through small changes Brahma prevents familiarity breeding contempt. It is Brahma who makes marriages last long.
6. He is the god of language, speech and symbols.
7. He is the god of data because through creativity he give us many options.
8. He is the god of equality. This is because the manual force he represents enables us to interact comfortably with people of other classes.
9. The lotus which symbolizes Brahma is found with Trimurti and Tridevi, indicating that Brahma is a very useful god.
Thus, Brahma is a very versatile god and Hindus have many reasons why they should pray to Brahma.
- by : Sahil Gaikwad | साहिल गायकवाड
Usually, people ask for material benefits while praying to Krishna. Like please make me rich, or please help me get a car etc. But this is not what we should ask for while praying because it's useless.
Material benedictions can give you temporary happiness but in order to get eternal happiness, we should ask for something eternal. What is eternal?
According to Narada bhakti sutra, in the third sutra, it is stated that:
janma karma ca me divyam evaà yo vetti tattvataù tyaktvä dehaà punar janma naiti mäm eti so 'rjuna (BG 4.9)
Meaning the pure love of god is eternal. When a person attains to the perfectional stage of love of Godhead, he becomes liberated even in his present body and realizes his constitutional position of immortality.
Here the Lord says that any person who simply understands His transcendental activities and His appearance and disappearance in this material world becomes liberated and that after quitting his present body he, at once reaches His abode. Therefore it is to be understood that one who has attained the stage of love of God has perfect knowledge, and even if he may fall short of perfect knowledge, he has the preliminary perfection of life that a living entity can attain. To conceive of oneself as being one with the Supreme is the greatest misconception of self-realization, and this misconception prevents one from rising to the highest stage of love of God. But a person who understands his subordinate position can attain the highest stage of loving service to the Lord. Although the Lord and the living entities are qualitatively one, the living entities are limited, while the Lord is unlimited. This understanding, called amåta-svarüpa, makes one eligible for being eternally situated.
In the Srimad-Bhägavatam (10.87.30) the personified Vedas pray to the Lord, "O supreme eternal, if the living entities were equal with You and thus all-pervading and all-powerful like You, there would be no possibility of their being controlled by Your external energy, mäyä."
Upon attaining love of God, a person immediately becomes immortal and no longer has to change his material body. But even if a devotee of the Lord has not yet reached the perfectional stage of love of Godhead, his devotional service is considered immortal. Any action in the stage of karma or jïäna will be finished with the change of body, but devotional service, even if not executed perfectly, will continue into the next life, and the living entity will be allowed to make further progress.
Sutra 4:
yal labdhvä pumän siddho bhavaty amåto bhavati tåpto bhavati
Upon achieving that stage of transcendental devotional service in pure love of God, a person becomes perfect, immortal, and peaceful.
The living entity is part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, and if he performs the duties of the part and parcel, without proudly thinking he is one in all respects with the Supreme Lord, he attains real perfection and becomes peaceful.
So what should you pray for?
You should pray to him to give you never-ending eternal love for him. You should pray for devotional service. Don’t ever be selfish and ask him to send you to heaven after death. Just ask him to allow you to serve his lotus feet. Ask him to let you not get bewildered by maya.
Something like “I know I am the most sinful person, but I seek refuge to your lotus feet. Oh, Damodar please allow me to serve your lotus feet for eternity”.
- Suyash Dubey
Let me answer with a story I heard. Once upon a time long long ago, a young man who just found religion saw a old and devoted saintly sage deep in meditation.
As he watched, a depressed and tear eyed man came to that sage and said “I am unable to deal with all my sins, please take them away and grace me with mental peace”. The sage said “Sure, pour some water from your palm into my hands and repeat ‘all my sins are now yours to bear’ three times”. The man quickly did as instructed, and then the sage told him that all his sins are now gone from him, so he is free to go and live life without worrying about them. The man became very happy, thanked the sage profusely and left.
The young man who was watching all this became very intrigued. He approached that sage and asked him as to whether all sins of that man really were washed away from him and they simply transferred to the sage, and the sage said yes. When requested by the young man how that is possible, the sage said sins are like fires, that will burn you one day if you don’t put out quickly.
He pointed the young man to look behind the sage, and the young man to his confounding saw an ocean of water suddenly appear out of nowhere behind the sage.
The sage said I have no fires stalking me, because I have nothing but an ocean of devotional practices and penance following me, so all the fires of sin I took from that man were quickly put out by the ocean of good karma I have following me. Pleasantly surprised young man then revealed his own troubles and told the sage that he also picked up religion very recently and is now a devotee of the lord and now does daily japa or meditation etc. and yet he experiences bad things only, why is it so? Why isn’t his ocean of devotional penance and practices not burning his fires of sins away like that?
The sage then pointed young man to look behind him. When the young man looked back all he could see were acres and acres of small fires continuously burning behind him!
The sage said, the devotional practices/penances you are accumulating now is but a palm of water, not nearly enough to put out all the fires of sin you accumulated in all your past and current lifetimes. You have a long way to go before they become sizeable enough to put out your past fires, help you to prevent future fires ahead of you. If you don’t keep up with your devotional practices, then your fires will continue to increase behind you and keep slowly burning you, so do keep at it.
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What that story is trying to say is that those ‘bad’ things would have happened regardless of whether you prayed to Ganesha (or any other divinity) or not. Since you seem to be thinking of cause & effects, karma siddhAnta perhaps may provide an easily relateable and understandable answer to your question. Proponents of karam siddhAnta often provide this example about why we do not see the benefit of our new found devotional practices or why they seem to backfire— Think of all your past karma from all the lifetimes your soul had previously lived in, as a bank account.
As you know, money deposited into your account increases your bank balance and withdrawals/expenses from your account reduce your account balance. If you withdrew/spent more than you earned consistently, then one day your bank balance will be negative, i.e. you now owe to the bank and cannot withdraw/spend anymore since your balance is consistently negative. So now all your earnings/income are now forced to reduce your negative bank balance instead of allowing you to withdraw/spend such earnings!
So is it with your karma. If you are born with a significantly more accumulated bad karma than good karma in this lifetime, then all good karma you will do in this lifetime is actually going to go to only reduce such negative balance aka reducing the accumulated bad karma you have in your account, instead of allowing you to benefit from it (by preventing any impending bad events in your life)!
Source: https://vedicsiddhanta.in/2017/07/the-karma-theory-part-3-understanding.html
Knowing this, the answer to your quest should be clear to you now. Use your free will to keep up with the devotion to Ganesha and one day when the ocean of devotion will become sizable in your heavenly karma account, you will start to notice a change. Don’t doubt or stop, just keep up with the devotion! - Jay Brahm
Almighty Courthill Lord Ganesha’s ❤️🙏 MAHA SANKATAHARA CHATHURTHI SPECIAL BLESSINGS 🙏❤️ this evening pooja .
Om Shreem Hreem Kleem Glaum Gam Ganapataye Namaha 🙏🙏🙏
Videos and photos of today's visit to the 3rd Cave Temple, Dewi Loong Tou San Buddhist Temple:
-photos and videos above courtesy of Ms. Rageswary Vadivelu
A write-up on the 3 Caves Buddhist temples:
Walking through Kg. Kepayang in Simpang Pulai.
Walking on tar road towards the hill in front of us.
At this junction take the left 300m dirt road towards the hill. Wat Dhammamonkon temple is on the left side of the hill.
After a 2.5km walk from house, we arrived at Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple which is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre. Nagas are the serpent creatures that stand guard at all the Buddhist wats in Thailand. Nagas guarding a Buddhist stupa to ward off evil spirits. It's religious roots originated with Hinduism.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple is also a Buddhist Retreat Centre.
At the main hall of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple (Buddhist Retreat Centre).
Nagas at the entrance of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple (Buddhist Retreat Centre).
Nagas at the entrance of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple (Buddhist Retreat Centre).
A dvarapala portrayed as fearsome guardian at the entrance of Wat Dhammamonkon.
Another dvarapala portrayed as fearsome guardian at the entrance of Wat Dhammamonkon.
The entrance of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple (Buddhist Retreat Centre).
The under construction dinning hall in front of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The two kuti for monks in front of Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon temple.
The view of the 2nd cave from the fish pond beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The large entrance to the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon temple.
The large entrance to the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon temple.
The entrance wall formation inside the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The entrance road fit for car inside the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon temple.
The outward view from inside the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The outward view from inside the 2nd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The 3rd cave beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The 3rd cave is Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San beside Wat Dhammamonkon cave temple.
The path towards 3rd cave Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San beside Wat Dhammamonkon.
Image of monks near the 3rd cave Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San beside Wat Dhammamonkon.
Buddha's image near the 3rd cave Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
Entrance into the 3rd cave Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
The large 3rd cave temple foyer of Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
The large 3rd cave temple foyer of Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
At the cave’s foyer, you are greeted by a golden Buddha and deities of devotee’s contribution to the cave temple.
The large 3rd cave temple foyer of Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San leading to another large opening.
The large fish pond and the stairs up the cave temple of Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
The stairs up the cave temple of Persatuan Penganut Buddha Dewi Loong Tou San.
The cave also has stalactites and stalagmites, which took years to form.
Ascending a long staircase to upper cave chamber, you be rewarded with munificent view of the vegetation below.
Ascending a long staircase to upper cave chamber, you be rewarded with munificent view of the vegetation below.
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