ஐடஹோ-வில் பழனி ஆண்டவர் கோவில்

அமெரிக்க மாநிலம் ஐடஹோவில் அமெரிக்க இந்துக்களாலும், இந்தியாவிலிருந்து சென்று அமெரிக்காவில் வாழும் இந்துக்களாலும் பழனி ஆண்டவர் கோவில் உருவாக்கப்பட இருக்கிறது.

உங்கள் நன்கொடைகளை வாரி வழங்குங்கள்!

Valley man planning to erect Hindu temple
Ananda Kriya raising funds to support nonprofit project

By TONY EVANS
Express Staff Writer

Krishna Karuppiah, left, and Ananda Kriya are joining together to build a Hindu temple in the hills of the Wood River Valley. Courtesy photo.



One year ago, Ketchum entrepreneur Ananda Kriya stood within a 2,000-year-old Hindu temple in southern India dedicated to Palani Andavar, one representation of Lord Muruga in the Hindu pantheon. According to Hindu tradition, Muruga created yoga and is the keeper of the mystical keys to the awakening of the "kundalini," a yoga discipline that seeks to establish communication between the mind and body.

Ananda's six-day pilgrimage in the Palani Hills last February marked a culmination of many years as an ardent Hindu devotee, and a confirmation of his vision in 1989 to build a similar temple here in the Wood River Valley. For several years, he has been collecting statues of deities cut from southern Indian quarries to populate the Sri Murugan Temple and Cultural Center of Sun Valley, a nonprofit temple structure complex, which he is working to build with the help of temple administrator Krishna Karuppiah, from Tamil Nadu, India. Ananda will be the temple president.

Most everyone in the Ketchum area knows Ananda. Bean thin and as fit as any 20-year-old, he is often seen around the valley Rollerblading, with his distinctive flair. He was born into a Lutheran family in Washington state. At age 12, he began reading Indian literature, including Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi," which led to a yoga practice and a developing faith in Eastern mysticism. During a visit to Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon in 1968, he had an experience of "hearing inner music" for more than two hours.

"It was a sweet and devotional music of bliss," he recalls. "I knew from that point on, everything in my life was ordained. That I was going to find my guru."

Ananda soon gave up ski racing and rock climbing to pursue his spiritual path. He hitchhiked to Virginia City, Nev., and in Sparks began studies with Master Subramuniya, printing Hindu texts on an old Heidelberg press and attending weekly classes in spiritual development, practicing yoga postures, or "asanas," and "sadhanas"—spiritual disciplines. His path led him to studies at San Francisco's Palaniswami Temple, Carl Jung's Case Eranos on Lago Maggiore in Italy, and eventually to the Ganges River in India where his head was shaved in a ritual of devotion to the disciplines of a Hindu monastic.

Ananda spent 20 years at Hindu temples and monasteries in San Francisco, New York, India, Sri Lanka and on the Hawaiian island of Kauai before coming to Ketchum in 1989. He now owns and operates Akasha Organics juice bar and vegan restaurant inside Chapter One Bookstore, in downtown Ketchum.

"Everything is within us," says Ananda. "Sun, moon, and stars, gods and god, indeed the very light of consciousness and the immanent transcendent absolute reality. The great sages have all said the only way out of the enmeshment of ignorance, karma and maya is within."

Akasha Organics is festooned with Tibetan prayer flags, hung with sacred paintings, and features a shrine to the Hindu god Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. It's also inhabited by a growing collection of carved deities from a quarry in southern India where Ananda's guru's lineage derives—a lineage that reaches back hundreds of years and is presumed to have originated in the Himalaya Mountains. These carvings will inhabit his proposed temple complex, the location of which has not been decided. The funding for its construction will begin in earnest this summer when Ananda takes off on a bicycle ride across the northern United States. He will bring a begging bowl along on his ride in order to gather funds for the temple.

"The Hindu temple is believed to be the earthly seat of a deity and the place where the deity awaits his or her devotees," says Ananda. "As such, temple structures are sacred spaces where gods commune most freely with the worshipping devotee. I want to give people a quiet place where they can come to relax and find their inner peace and be able to live a more peaceful and spiritual life and also experience the contemplative depths of yoga."

Donations are being accepted at the feet of the Shiva statue at Akasha Organics in Chapter One Bookstore, where one can learn more about the planned Sri Murugan Temple and Cultural Center of Sun Valley.

For more information, call 726-7555.