The Center Of Rational Spirituality

Dr. Mamas continued his fourth year of weekly podcasts. Pandit prasad continued his daily, weekly,monthly and annual ceremonies on the same schedule as usual. Many visitors to the temple volunteered to help us in serveral ways. Since we were busy upgrading our wells, septic systems, and buildings, our food service was limited to one or two weekends each month. We were able to serve food on 5 week-ends from december 2023 thru june, 2024. Many visitors brought their own personal food to our available picnic areas, especially during the times when we were unable to open for a limited number of hours. The rest of the time, we were able to offer commercially packaged food, snacks, and drinks. In addition to upgrading the wells, septic systems and buildings, the maintenance crew kept up with the landscaping as well finding professionals to upgrade fire alarm systems in the student union, and the necessary maintenance at the visitor center, the cottages, the temple and temple house. The landscaping in the outdoor area around the temple has been improved, and well maintained, including the shaded areas and outdoor areas that are protected from rain. We plan to have more shelter available to the visitors, especially during the cold times of the year. Our online reservation system is active and well received by the visitors. We continue to make improvements as we find out what our overnight visitors want and need. Getting our food service established again is a top priority the mountain view room at the visitor center continues to be available to the visitors when the student union building is closed, except during construction times which are primarily on the weekdays. Free internet is available for the visitors at the student union building, cottage rentals and the visitor center. Our visitors still bring food staples such as rice, ghee, honey, milk, spices, nuts, dried fruit and flour donations for the temple throughout the year. Many visitors who visit us on a regular basis volunteered to provide meals on some of the week-ends that were approved for food preparation and service. As we have listed in prior years, there are a variety of events carried out by the temple which support cultural integrity and harmony, including the following events: mahashivaratri, toli ekadashi, guru purnima, shravan maas, krishna janmashtami, ganesh chaturthi, sharad navaratri-dussehra, diwali, annakoot, kaarthika maas to name a few, monthly events such as gowri tritiya, havan for sarvadevatas, karthikeya puja, pradosham, sankatahara chaturthi and satyanarayana puja along with the daily events, archana, rudrabhishekam and aarathi.