Greater than life itself is good conduct. Those who conduct themselves with rectitude possess everything that is worthwhile. Non-killing, non-stealing, non-vituperation, non-covetness, truthfulness and humility–these are useful assets for virtuous living.

In whatever pursuits you are engaged, you should train yourself to work with zeal, keenness and delight. Such a discipline will lead you to acquire steadfastness of the mind. It is then that the mind develops the power of one pointedness, which in turn will lead you to enjoy an abundance of anma-sakti. Thenceforth everything will be bright, and you will not be disturbed by the agitations caused by seeing the difference in objects, as friends and foes, light and darkness.

“Everything originates in me; everything finds permanency in me; in me everything revolves in dissolution.”–So must we become suffused with such pure thoughts. Further, we must frequently meditate as follows: “Nothing do I lack; everyone loves me and I too love all.”–Meditating thus, one should endeavor to live up to this ideal. If one can practice spiritual sadhana in this way, the capacity to know everything and the power to do anything will develop spontaneously.

A mystic morning at the monastery, temperatures dropped last night below 60 degrees fahrenheit, making for a mist in the early morning sun….

Always a stunning site to see Waialeale reveal itself as if God was pulling down some cosmic shade…

“The next time the same experiential pattern appears, we approach it from a mountaintop consciousness, because we have conquered those instinctive elements. Our intellect has been trained by family and friends, schoolteachers and business acquaintances. We have to build a new intellect, an intellect from the soul, out into the intellectual mind rather than from the instinctive area of the mind into the intellect to be successful on the path of enlightenment.” –Gurudeva

It was a perfect last day of the phase for our crowd of tourists and Hindu pilgrims… Lord Siva came in the form of 50 souls.

After the 9am puja we hosted the Ramamurthy and Suresh families, from Texas and Washington D.C. respectively.

We went to see Iraivan Temple and surrounding
grounds….

They enjoyed trying their hand at carving stone…

hugging our healing rudraksha trees…

and walking around our giant Dakshinamurthy.

Toward the end of the morning Ajay and Lata Shah, their children Kavita and Rohan, and relatives all visited together. It has been a couple years since they were here last and they were impressed with the progress on the temple.

Steve and Karen were among our tour day guests today. They are celebrating their 32nd wedding anniversary and joining them on the island is their daughter, Jessica. Congratulations on your 32nd year from all of us
here at the monastery and thank you for being a wonderful example of a happy together family.

We are upgrading our publication tools with a new color printer/copier from Xerox. Two trainers came today and met with Yogi Japendranatha for several hours on the high end technical features of the new machine. Then he took them for a tour of the temple.

Mark Tindall is from Honolulu and Laura Frailey is from Kauai, wife of the salemans who helped us get the new machine.

Dakshinamurthi looks amazing to guests.

Work at the temple is focusing for the past week and coming weeks on the west Chinna Gopuram.

The challenging task is the installation of the jalakam lattice pieces.

Painstaking measurements are made….

The first pieces are inset at the base.

The afternoon sun cutting across the carving brings out the beauty of Iraivan.

Pillar carvings….

Remarkable ornamentation of the Bhadra pillars….

This jalakam is
just a bit too tall and the silpies will need to remove a layer stone, evenly across the whole top surface.

The golden capstone shining in the setting afternoon sun..

Meanwhile the Aadheenam’s plant and agricultural side is moving along in a dynamic way. Sadhaka Adinatha has been taking the lead in tree planting initiative on the Himalayan Acres land across the way. As one way to support the cost of those plantings, he acquired some teak tree seeds and raised the seedlings up and sold them to another tree farmer. The seedlings were ready today and went off to their new home.

Hanging yellow jade flowers….