Kauai Aadheenam

Happy New Year. This morning we had a Siva homa and hoisted a new flag to mark the change of seasons into the Nartana Ritau.

Here follows the passage from Saiva Dharma Shatras about how we should approach this new season:

Nartana Ritau, the season of Dancing with Siva, begins on Hindu New Year. This is the period of creation, the warm season, from mid-April through mid-August. The key word of this season is planning. The colors are orange, yellow-gold and all shades of green–orange for renunciation, yellow-gold for action, and green for regeneration. High above, the main Hindu flag flies the color orange, heralding the Nartana Ritau throughout this season, symbolizing sadhana and self-control. The other colors adorn smaller flags. This is the season of giving special attention to those in the grihastha ashrama. It is a time of awakening, renewal, review. The emphasis is on seeing ahead, planning for future years. It is a time of planning retreats and other activities for youths and adults for the entire year. During this time of looking forward, the Church’s six-year plan is updated by the Guru Mahasannidhanam and stewards and another year added. The Saiva Dharma Shastras are studied; and any needed additions in supplementary manuals, representing new growth, are made.

The practical focus is completion of unfinished projects. Secular holidays to observe among the families include Mothers Day in May, Fathers Day in June and Grandparents Day in August. In the monastery intensive cleaning of buildings and grounds takes place. New clothing is issued and old garments mended.

This season of harvest and new growth is also the time to review and reestablish picking and planting routines for the gardens. It is a time for ordering seeds and plants for the year, of planting trees, fragrant vines and the annual crop. Review is made for scheduling the care of all realms of the Aadheenam. Kadavul temple and the Guru Temple are cleaned and renewed during this season, and the adjacent grounds receive special, abundant attention.

The daily sadhana is the Sivachaitanya Panchatantra: experiencing nada, jyoti, prana, shakti and darshana. In Sanskrit, it is a time of learning new shlokas and mantras. Shrine rooms are renewed and redecorated for the year, and the clothing of all is renewed in the Hindu style of the current fashion. It is a time of doing things for others, religious outreach. In the missions, Nartana Ritau is the time of bringing in new students and Church members. It is a time of hatha yoga and philosophical teaching.

The main festival of Nartana Ritau is Guru Purnima. The mathavasis hold special conclave on Vaikasi Vishakham, the full moon day of May.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.

“There are many things in life which endeavor to keep us away from our true being. These are the cycles of life. We must watch and be careful of these recurring cycles in our life. These joyous and sorrowful occurrences that awareness experiences, sometimes each day, sometimes each week, sometimes each month, are totally dependent upon the positive control that we have of awareness. But then there are greater experiences that have even longer cycles—perhaps a three-year cycle, a five-year cycle, a ten-year cycle or a fifteen-year cycle.“

Bridge not finished; waiting for drier weather after a downpour

New crop of rudrakshas falling from the tree next to Kadaitswami

One of the many areas being cleared of weeds around the Path of Satgurus

Here we are on the looping Path of The Satgurus. Another shortcut bridge is being added just to the right of Gurudeva’s statue and the Narmada Lingam. It caters to those who desire to reach that popular sadhana spot sooner than later, or who just take pleasure in whimsically walking over a gurgling stream as often as possible.

Then a couple more current looks on the Path of Satgurus.

Nearing the end of a day’s installation.

We have an outdoor workshop adjacent to the carpentry shop whose tent frame and cover was worn down after many years. Yesterday we replaced the entire frame with larger, sturdier pipes and installed a new tent cover. The A-frame is now taller and steeper than before, no longer fitting under the carpentry shop eave, so we have to cut into the eave and pull the frame into it, then build a protective covering. The end result is that rain water draining off the carpentry shop eave will fall on the tent and then off the sides to the ground.

The annual temple festival puja concluded with final abhishekam yesterday, which was livestreamed. We also took still photos of the preparatory homas to energize the main kumbha water for Mahalingeshvara and smaller kumbhas representing various shaktis and Siva’s five-fold powers of Isana, Tatpurusha, Aghora, Vamadeva and Sadyojata.

Newly delivered palm tree material

The ever-accumulating main piles

The longer the material stays in a pile, the more it breaks down into rich dark soil

Various plantings recently covered with mulch

Probably not!

Mulch is defined as “material (such as decaying leaves, bark, or compost) spread around or over a plant to enrich or insulate the soil.” Much of our monastery land has a small layer of topsoil and then hard clay underneath, so enriching it is very helpful. Though we have a large property, even if we collected up all the leaves and chewed up all the fallen branches (which would be a huge job), it would barely make a dent in our needs for mulch. As we’ve interacted with tree trimming companies over the years, a great boon came our way, whereby nowadays all the companies who are trimming trees in our general vicinity will deliver the ground-up material to us for free. If they took the material to a county refuse transfer station they would have to pay a fee, so it’s a great deal for them too.

Besides keeping our vegetable garden beds and fruit trees covered which you’ve seen in the past, mulch is used for many plantings on the grounds, basically as much as we have time to transport.

For decades we’ve had a lone teak tree in the far corner of the property, but it is shaded out by many nearby trees. Later we began a plantation across the Wailua River on the leased land we call Himalayan Acres. Then, one or two years ago the Siddhidata Kulam planted a row along the road near their new building. These, along with the adjacent banana trees will provide a noise and visual buffer between us and neighbors in the ensuing years. Many of these teak trees are now about 15 feet tall and growing fast.