Loving Ganesha – Colophon

LOVING GANESHA: HINDUISM’S ENDEARING ELEPHANT-FACED GOD WAS DESIGNED AND ILLUSTRATED BY THE SWAMIS OF THE SHAIVA SIDDHANTA Yoga Order at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery on the Garden Island in Hawaii. This second edition of Loving Ganesha was edited using Quark XPress on a Ethernet network of Power Macintosh G3 computers. Original input and author’s editing were created on an ethernet-based series of Macintosh PowerBooks using Farallon’s Timbuktu in a Winnebago &Mac222;eld of&Mac222;ce. Text was typeset in Adobe’s Minion family of fonts, to which diacritical marks were added with Fontographer. The text is set in 11.5-point Minion medium with 13.5-point linespacing. The glossary and index are set in Minion, 9 on 11. For Devanagari and Tamil, we used fonts created by Ecological Linguistics in Washington, D.C., and by Shrikrishna Patel of Cupertino, California. Pages were output to &Mac222;lm and printed by offset press on 60# Finch Opaque paper by Sheridan Books in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The cover design and Himalayan Academy logo were created by San Francisco artist John Kuzich. Sanskrit proofreading and guidance was studiously provided by: Pandit Satya Pal Sharma, founder of the Vedic University of America in San Diego; Vyaas Houston, founder of the American Sanskrit Institute; Dr. P. Jayaraman, Executive Director of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Woodside, New York; Pandit and Jyotisha Sastri Laxmishanker Trivedi and his son Devendra of Fremont, California; and Professor Jayaram Sethuraman at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Assistance was also given by Dr. Deendayal Khandelwal of the Hindu University of America in Orlando, Florida, and Sri Sri Bairavasundaram Sivacharya at the New England Hindu Temple. Comprehensive proofreading was accomplished by Tirumati Sundari Peruman of Houston, Texas; Sri Krishna Mohan of Boise, Idaho; Tirumati Chamundi Sabanathan of El Sobrante, California, and the family members of our Saiva Siddhanta Church Wailua Mission.

The multi-level index for further study and research was created with the professional help of Jordan and Vita Richman of Writers Anonymous, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Similarly, we are most grateful for the extracts from Tattvaloka, a monthly religious journal edited by Sri T.R. Ramachandran and produced under the guidance of H.H. Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Shri Sarada Pitham, Karnataka, India. Sections on Pranava Aum and the life and teachings of Auvaiyar Ma are from Aum Ganesha, the Peace of God, a work of Ratna Ma Navaratnam, respected educationalist, author and close devotee of my satguru, Asan Yogaswami, whom we worked with in promoting the dharma in Sri Lanka for over 30 years. My dear friend Sadguru Sant Keshavadas kindly contributed “A Special Collection of Ganesha Mantras” from his book Lord Ganesha. Sangaratna Dr. S.M. Ponniah of Malaysia, a renowned Hindu scholar and Sivabhakta, produced the chapter “In Praise of Pillaiyar,” a collection of Tamil devotional poetry translated into English.

For all this noble, talented and selfless assistance, we want to offer our heartfelt appreciation. May many blessings come to each one who contributed to this tome.

In defining the practical and esoteric aspects of Hindu liturgy, as reflected here in the chapter “Home Liturgy,” we were blessed with the insights of Sri Sambamurthi Sivacharya of the South India Archaka Sangam, who in the mid-’80s sent to Hawaii two expert priests, Kumaraswami Gurukal and Shanmuga Gurukal, to train my Saiva swamis in the performance of Saiva puja.

Calling forth the blessings of inner worlds, Dr. A. Anandanataraja Dikshitar and others of the ancient hereditary Dikshitar priesthood at Chidambaram Temple in South India (see illustration) performed monthly pujas blessing this work for many years. At Kauai Aadheenam’s Kadavul Hindu Temple on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, the world’s most remote land mass, during the two years it took to create this edition, my monks, mathavasis, held (and continue to hold) successive three-hour vigils around the clock and performed puja every three hours, night and day, without fail.

Going back even further in our history, deep thanks and appreciation go out to a wonderful soul, Kandiah Chettiar, who assisted in introducing me to the culture and holy people of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and especially for taking me to meet my satguru, the venerable Sage Yogaswami. Indeed, Lord Ganesha was there to bless our journey. On the way from Colombo to Jaffna, Chettiar, my guide and mentor appointed by Yogaswami stopped the car at the small roadside shrine in Murukandi. He explained that travelers who did not halt to worship here were not admitted safe passage to the psychically protected area of the carefully guarded northern Saiva peninsula.

We got out of the car just as night was falling. We could hardly see the Deity but for the flames of camphor that the many pilgrims were burning. In the twilight could be heard the loud crack of coconuts being broken for safe passage. I remember standing transfixed near that little Pillaiyar shrine, not far from our car. My sahasrara chakra began to spin powerfully, and I inwardly observed a flame at the top of my head about three or four inches in height. It remained with me for a week or more. At that moment, I knew Ganesha’s grace and blessings for my travels now and in the future would always be with me. I was twenty-two at the time. Five decades later this has proven to be true. Little did we know, in that summer twilight in 1949, what doors that wise, elephant-faced Deity would open to us in the years ahead.

We conclude Loving Ganesha with abundant thanks to all His devotees who participated so willingly in writing this biography of a universal God. All who enter the path to Self Realization do so through His grace and His alone. This has proven to be true through the many years of my life.

**Credits to and published by Himalayan Academy