That is me, the webmaster of this site, Guhanathaswami, sitting in the middle, with students around. This picture was taken in May of 2007 when I was on a 5 day religious mission at a rural oil palm estate Tamil School in Lenggeng, Malaysia. I am a lifelong renunciate Hindu monk and missionary (a swami), an initiate of Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927-2001).
Gurudeva, (as Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami was affectionately known by his disciples) was an American born enlightened spiritual master of Hinduism. He was initiated into the Nandinatha Sampradaya, as a Guru of the lineage, by Satguru Yogaswami of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1949 when he was only 22 years old. Satguru Yogaswami sent Gurudeva back to the USA after his initiation and gave Gurudeva the mission to teach Hinduism, especially Saivism globally, and to guide yearning souls to God Realization. Gurudeva setup the ashram, Kauai Aadheenam in 1969, in the ‘Garden Island of Kauai, Hawaii,’ where he lived with and personally trained young men who came to him with the desire to Realize God.
I joined and began studying and training under Gurudeva in February of 1991. After 8 years of challenging training Gurudeva initiated me as a renunciate Hindu monk on May 28, 1999 and gave me the name Guhanathaswami. Following Gurudeva’s Mahasamadhi–his passing to the Feet of God on November 12, 2001, I returned to Malaysia (the country of my origin) with the well wishes of Gurudeva’s current successor, Bodhinathaswami.
On my return to Malaysia I founded the Center for Hindu Studies on January 5th 2003 and began giving personal yoga, meditation and Hindu philosophy classes. This website is an outgrowth of five years of Hindu missionary work that I have been doing in Malaysia.
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