The meaning of Gayatri Mantra

I like to know the meaning of slokas and mantras I recite. In this regard, I will publish in this blog, some of the slokas I recite and the meaning of the same.

Gayatri Mantra
Om Bhur Bhuva Swah, Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi, Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat ||

Interpretation
We meditate upon that Lord's glory, who has created the universe (Physical, Astral and Celestial planes), Who is fit to be worshiped, Who is the embodiment of knowledge and light, He who is the remover of all sins and ignorance, May He enlighten our intellects.


More info at this link
Wikipedia has details on the origin of Gayatri Mantra

Panchamukha Hanuman

During the battle of Lanka, Mahiravana of Pathala loka (Under world) put Lord Rama and Lakshmana under a spell and abducted the brothers so that Ravana could win the battle. Lord Hanuman entered pathala loka in search of Rama and Lakshmana. He found out that to kill Mahiravana and retrieve his Lord he had to extinguish 5 lamps at the same time. In order to accomplish this, he took the Panchamukha form with Hanuman, Hayagriva, Narasimha, Garuda and Varaha faces and extinguished the lamps. Mahiravana was terminated with immediate effect.

The story apart, Sri Panchamukha Hanuman was the upasana deity of Sri Ragavendra Tirtha, the saint of Mantralaya. The place where he meditated on Panchamukha Hanuman is now known as Panchamukhi, wherein a temple for Panchamukha Hanuman has been built. There is also a shrine for Panchamukha Hanuman at Kumbakonam which I am looking forward to visit.


Sloka (Panchamukha Hanuman Gayathri)

Om Anjaneyaya Vidmahe

Panchavaktraya Dheemahi

Tanno Hanuman Prachodayaath ||

Firefox Addons

I am a huge fan of Firefox web browser. And why shouldn't I be, its undoubtedly the best browser in the world. I have tried others in the past. But have stuck to Firefox for the last 3 yrs. And you know what, my love of this web browser is increasing every day. This is mainly due to their growing addons. Here in this writeup, I am listing some of the must have Addons based on their utility value (not in any order of importance).

PLUGINs
Firefox comes with various plugins. All plugins can be accessed from the following link - .
Upon installing firefox, the first step is to install the plugins you require. The most important plugins you should not forget to add are - Adobe Flash and Media Player plugins.

PicLens
It converts Firefox to a 3D photo viewer. If you search for images in a website like flickr, webshots, photobucket, google, etc. This addon puts a play button on the image's left hand bottom corner. By just clicking the play button, the addon gets invoked and you will be able to browse all the images in a 3 dimensional environment from your firefox. This is a new addon and I am yet to explore it completely.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: ***

IE Tab
There are still some stubborn websites that will force you to use Internet Explorer. For Firefox fans, who do not want to use IE, IE Tab is the best option. By clicking on a button, the current tab in Firefox turns to IE. So Internet Explorer is invoked from Firefox. Now isn't that cool?.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: ****


PDF Download
This is a simple addon that prompts you when a PDF file is about to open in the browser. This way you need not repent of opening a PDF that takes a long long time to load blocking you from browsing other tabs. The addon gives you various options including saving the PDF to disc. Which is quite useful. Talking of PDF files. I have moved to using Foxit instead of Adobe for PDF handling. You should try it. Its amazingly fast and easy.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: *****


Download Manager Tweak
Firefox comes with its own download manager. But this particular addon is like a shot in the arm for the existing download manager. It makes you feel that you are in control of the download. And what more, even if you close the browser, the modified download manager ensures your download continues till completion. Its a must have addon.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: *****

Forecastfox
This is a great weather forecast addon to your browser, It hooks up with Accuweather to bring you an updated weather information. Not only that, if you travel frequently like me, you will love it even more, just create all your towns and cities and just with a click of a button, you can get the updated weather on any city you want. It is fantastic considering it pulls weather info for cities in India as well. It was amazingly simple to configure and operate for me, But my wife took sometime to figure how it works.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: ****
Utility Value: ****


Language Packs
This is something I came across recently. There are a set of Language packs for Firefox and I tried 2 of those (Hindi and Tamil). Upon restarting the browser after installation all Firefox menu started coming in the other language. It still spelt out the english words. I did found it interesting but not userful, then again, it will be of great use to Non-English users. Beware: Ensure you know to read the language you install, else you would be fishing on the tools menu for addon uninstallation.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: ****
Utility Value: **


Foxmarks
This is an addon for firefox that helps in synchronizing your bookmarks (favorites in IE) across your computers. Its very useful to me since, whenever I update my bookmarks, Foxmarks helps to synchronize them at my home computer, my wife's computer, my parents' computer as well as my in-law's computer. This way all of us are able to view the same bookmarks. Foxmarks notonly gives you an option to download bookmarks but also merges with the one you might not want to delete. This way you can choose to merge/overwrite the bookmarks. Be careful on what you choose, else you will lose all your bookmarks on the server.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: ***
Utility Value: ****


ScribeFire
This is an addon for firefox for active Bloggers. It connects to various Blogs and helps you to configure your account on Scribefire. Scribefire offers an editor like interface (just like the one your blog service provides). The editor comes up on your firefox by clicking a small notepad icon on your status bar. This is fantastic to post something on your blog. Scribefire has come a long way and the latest version is very simple and easy to you. Try it and you will like it a lot. Please note Scribefire would put in a non-intrusive Ad on all you posting. But if you reload the post, remove the ad & re-publish it, it goes off.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: ***
Utility Value: *****


Adblock and Adblock Updater
This is a fantastic Ad blocker to firefox. Adblock when coupled with the updater (separate addon), is very good. It filters all the ads and is also customizable so that certain sites may be whitelisted or completely blocked. You will not notice any changes until you use IE and see how many ads come through. Tip: Suggest you suppress the message on updater whenever it performs an update this can be done on the addon options.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: ***
Utility Value: **


NoScript
This particular addon is amazing. It secures your browser to the highest level. All sites through numerous scripts that are intrusive and annoying if not dangerous. Noscript gives one the power to control what sites are allowed. Don't trust my word, check it out yourself. Install this addon, go to a website like weather.com (it may not load properly at first). Checkout the small icon (S sign with a strike across it in red) on the status bar of the browser. Click on it and it will reveal all the other host sites that have scripts on weather.com. Just allow the base URL (address) and your website will be rendered properly but preventing other sites you want to keep out of your browser. Use it for its the best addon of all. Again it is simple to use for me but not for some of my friends.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: **
Utility Value: *****


Dictionary (spell check)
This is a quite addon, it sits on your browser advising the user whenever he types emails or writes something on websites or on Scribefire about spellings. It just puts a red underline on words that are mis-spelt. Just right click and correct your spellings. People who like the spell check in MS Word, will find an amazing similarity in using this addon. Its a must have addon

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: *****


QTL
This is an addon from the famous Babylon software that I ones used on my desktop to help me provide a dictionary and encyclopedia. The tool is also non-intrusive. By just double clicking on a word that you want the meaning of or you would want to look up in an encyclopedia (like Wikipedia), this particular tool pops up a small window with the result. Its very simple to use. Its a must have addon.

Personal Ratings
Ease of Use: *****
Utility Value: *****

Hope this article is of use to all Firefox users.

Reference: Ancient Hindu Texts

I found this website having a good collection of English translation of the Hindu texts like Vedas, Bhagavat Gita, Upanishads and Puranas.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm

Please Note: I haven't started reading these and hence am not sure about the accuracy of these translations.

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SV Temple, Pittsburgh

Introduction

I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in Apr 2003. This was my first trip to US and had been looking forward to see places. My friends, Balaji and Vivek had been studying in Morgantown, West Virginia. So they happen to be the ones who took me to the temple for the first time. Since then I had been to the temple on a number of occasions that hence do not track the count anymore.

The temple is located at Penn Hills around 15 miles from Pittsburgh downtown on I-376 towards Monroeville. The first time I visited there, I felt good to see a place that resembled Tirupati. I wanted to be closer to this temple. Little did I know that my silent wish would be fulfilled shortly when my work location moved closer to Monroeville in few months. I moved to an apartment about 5 minutes from the temple.

Later, I had the opportunity to invite my mom over to US. She loved the temple and the area I was staying. She also attended few concerts in Carnatic Music and Classical Dance at the temple auditorium. When I returned to US after my marriage, I ensured I brought my wife to this place and seek the blessing of the Lord at this temple.

This temple is very special to me and will always be. Below is the photo of the gopuram of the temple.


About SV Temple

SV Temple is the "Desi" short form of Sri Venkateshwara Temple, Pittsburgh. The temple's main deity is Lord Venkateshwara. There is also sannidhi for Thaaiyaar, Andaal & Lord Ganesha. The most important aspect of this temple is that it is modeled after the Venkateshwara Temple at Tirupati. You can read more about the temple and its importance here.

The website for this temple is SVtemple.org. You can find below the terrestrial view of the temple (courtesy Google Maps).

Temples in United States

Temples in United States

I have been in US for over 3 yrs now. During this time, I had been to quite a lot of places in the East and West coast of this nation. Of the many things that make you feel at home in this distant land, the Hindu temples here in the United states definitely tops the list. In the next few write ups, I would want to focus on some of these temples I had an opportunity to visit.

• Sri Venkateswara Temple, Penn Hills (near Pittsburgh), PA
• Hare Krishna Temple, New Vrindaban, WV
  
• Shiva-Vishnu Temple, Livermore, CA
• Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Temple, Flushing (in Queens), NY
• Sri Venkateshwara Temple, Bridgewater, NJ
• Shiva-Vishnu Temple, Lanham, MD
• Sri Ranganatha Temple, Pomona, NY

I will also try to attach some snaps and recollect my experiences during my visit to these places.

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