Yogaswami sang:

O Guru Gem! Guide of my life,
Reveal the goodly way and make me thine.
Transform my stony heart with thy grace
And tune my eternal self to realize Thee.
Heal my ills with tonics effective
And let me bask in thy radiant Presence,
Seeing Thee in all and all in Thee.
Grant Thou the boon of constant remembrance.

–Natchintanai. 73.

Welcome to the digital edition of Kauai’s Hindu Monastery on the Garden Island.

Today everything is digital. Bodhinatha’s Sun 1 talks are being archived on DVDs this morning, to preserve them and make them more available on the web. That’s our video workstation, which has been running about 12 hours a day this last month, capturing Gurudeva’s old videos too.

Even our printed magazine is digital. And welcomes you again. Here we see a series of screen shots of the magazine on a 22″ Apple Display. Every word, every image, every layout is faithfully rendered on your computer, searchable and sharable. This page provide special navigation buttons to access many Hindu resources.

Yesterday we released the digital Hinduism Today application and today we are basking in the glow of a difficult project completed as planned.

As an ancient Greek soldier once said:

The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow knew a thing or two about accomplishment, writing:

The heights of great men reached and kept,
Were not obtained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.

Thomas Jefferson knew of the struggles of success:

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

George Bernard Shaw was bold about it:

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Speak of making your circumstances, the Patel family visited two days back, from San Diego. Their twin sons presented a new publication they are producing, called South Asian Journal. Palaniswami is holding it up here, and Poovan is holding Hinduism Today, while his brother Palak looks on.

There was great conversation about Hindu issues and on how our Hinduism Today team can support and strengthen this new magazine, full of dharma’s take on real-life issues and meant for a college-age audience. They even have plans to spread to all the UC campuses once the enterprise gets strong enough. The world needs more young Hindus like these bright young men. Oh, yes, Amy Patel, not a family member, is part of the team, too, not pictured.

Work is going on with the carving of Iraivan. So we share the sculptor’s sketch of the small Nandi bull that will be kneeling before Siva in his own pavilion. If you look closely, you can see he has an earring in his left ear. It is part of the same stone from which he is carved, and is loose and can be twirled! Now that’s craftsmanship.

Who is Nandi, you ask?

Nandi means “the joyful.” He is a white bull with a black tail, the vahana, or mount, of Lord Siva, symbol of the powerful instinctive force tamed by Him. Nandi is regarded as the perfect devotee, the soul of man, kneeling humbly before God Siva, ever concentrated on Him. The ideal and goal of the Siva bhakta is to behold Siva in all.