Ramanathaswamy Temple Cleaning Fund

April-May-June 2009 Newsletter

Ganga Sivanathan of Adelaide, Australia, was awed by the Ramanathaswamy Temple (the same temple in our sacred wells article, page 64) as she walked its rhythmic, ornate, pillared corridors for the first time with the Innersearchers of the 2008 Asian Odyssey Innersearch pilgrimage. But the Innersearchers also saw that the huge temple, whose foundations were laid in the 12th century and whose corridors are said to be the longest of their kind in the world, urgently needed a cleaning fund.

A major pilgrim and tourist magnet, the Ramanathaswamy Temple, located on the island of Rameswaram just off the eastern shores of Tamil Nadu, has all the maintenance needs of lesser known temples, multiplied by age, size and its proximity to the sea, 700 feet away. Ms. Sivanathan stayed in Rameswaram for several days in February as part of the Innersearch travel-study program led by Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, head of Kauaiís Hindu Monastery in Hawaii.

"Itís an extraordinary town and extraordinary temple," she said, recalling the townís coming alive at 4:00 each morning to the high-volume music of the traditional instruments of the Periya Melam (temple band). "The town has a wonderful spiritual feeling about it," she added. "Everybody there seems to have an association with the temple." But the wear and tear on the temple, which offers a minimum of six ceremonies daily and has twenty-two wells for ritual cleansing, is unmistakable.

Seeing signs of neglect in so holy a precinct, the Innersearch pilgrims met to establish and provide the first contributions to the Ramanathaswamy Temple Cleaning Fund (#73) at Hindu Heritage Endowment. They hope to build the principal to $50,000, using the interest "to keep the temple clean and tidy" in environmentally friendly ways. Ganga and fellow Innersearcher Devi Marks undertook to establish the fund on behalf of the Innersearchers. The pilgrims see contributions to the Fund as a way to have a direct connection with one of the twelve most powerful Siva temples (jyotirlinga) in India. They believe that the Fund will appeal strongly to Hindus everywhere. "You can visit and know you are a direct part of that great temple," Ganga enthused. "Itís an amazing feeling."

Ms. Sivanathanís interest in Indian spirituality and Hinduism began during the mid-90s during a business trip to India for a global software development company. She later used her senior management experience to establish and head Indra Process and Performance Consulting, a management consulting firm. She incorporates many of the teachings of Gurudeva, late founder of the Kauai Monastery, into her consulting practice which helps businesses identify and work with "organizational paradoxes," competing goals commonly found in all types of for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. Accommodating worshipers while keeping a temple tidy, for example.

October to December Endowment Contributions

MISSION STATEMENT

Hindu Heritage Endowment is a publicly supported, charitable organization recognized as tax exempt by the IRS on April 22, 1994. Employer ID 99-0308924. Founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, its philanthropic mission is to provide secure, professionally managed financial support for institutions and religious leaders of all lineages of Sanatana Dharma.

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