Today at Kauai Aadheenam

Many Hands Make Light Work

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  • Monks in Kauai carefully prepare sacred earth for a devotional ceremony.
    Mayilnathaswami digs a new hole for a replacement fence post
  • Construction continues on the new meditation space amidst Kauai's serene beauty.
    Heavy machinery is used for this job
  • Monks diligently clear land for a new meditation space in Kauai.
    Monks diligently repair the fallen fence.
  • Monks maintain the grounds at Kauai Aadheenam with their UTVs.

Jai Ganesha!

A few days ago, the monks of the Siddhanta Kulam came together to repair and replace one of our fence lines separating the Monastery property from the nearby University agricultural property. This fence line is nearby the bamboo corridor, adjacent to the rudraksha forest.

Our monks surveyed the fence line and repaired major damage to both the wire fencing and fallen posts. Our electric vehicles came in handy for straightening the leaning posts. Sometimes this work is done by hand, but using the built-in EV winch to straighten the posts saved time and labor. Some posts needed to be entirely replaced, so a post hole digger and elbow grease were used to dig holes for replacements. Once the holes were dug and the posts in place, sand was added and compacted with a heavy, metal pry bar to insure maximum stability, and the fence’s damaged wire was tightened up.

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Growing a Garden from Seeds

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  • Our propagation area under a Monkey Pod tree.
  • Seeds of a rare desert plant.
  • Agave parryi, about 3 weeks old.
  • A gold vine from Australia, ready to be potted up.
  • Anthuriums needing a few more weeks before they can go out in the wild.
  • A pot of tiny noni trees
  • Thaumatophyllum bipinnatafidam. Easy for you to say.
  • Stephanotis floribunda, fragrant vine.
  • Cat Palms, one of our favorites, since it stays small.
  • More noni trees.
  • Rare palms from the Big Island.
  • Philodendron gloriosum


“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course, all gardens had their beginning in the miracle of the seed. But the monastery’s recent bout with Hurricane Lowell has returned our thoughts to the importance and the promise of seeds. Not that we are oblivious to that fact, but it takes on new significance as we contemplate replanting devastated areas of Siva’s Sacred Gardens.

We begin today’s reflections with the two seeds above. One is Aerides odorata, an orchid famous for having one of the tiniest seeds in the plant world. Amazingly, 3.4 million seeds weigh a mere gram (1/28th of an ounce). The other is a coco de mer (Lodoicea maldivica), a single seed of which can weigh 25 kg, or 55 pounds.

By weight, that means it takes about 85 billion Aerides odorata seeds to equal the weight of one very large coco de mer seed!

Yet virtually every living cell in a seed contains the plant’s complete genetic instruction set, encoded in DNA so extraordinarily thin that it cannot be seen by the unaided human eye.

Within those tiny spiraling molecules lies Siva’s User’s Manual for making the plant. In the coconut palm, that genetic manual contains about 2.4 billion base pairs. If we take each base pair as a single letter of the English alphabet and print the User’s Manual in 12-point type on 7 × 10-inch pages, the entire manual would fill about 6,000 books of 200 pages each.

As amazing as that is, the User Manual for the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), with its vastly larger genome, would require roughly 70,000 such books!

That’s how much information Siva encodes in the DNA of a seed. Talk about efficiency!

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Total Surrender, Part Two

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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.

“Bhakti is a state of mind, an arrival at an inner state of consciousness. People who become angry, people who become jealous, people who are fearful, people who get confused are living in the asura loka. They are the ones who upset others and experience revenge. They have yet to come up even to the āṇava mārga and attain a little appreciation of themselves. They have yet to experience being secure in their own identity. ¶They have yet to “be their own person,” “find their own space.” They must first close the door on channeling asuric entities. Once firmly planted on the āṇava mārga, they begin feeling that they are God’s gift to the world and may seek out a spiritual teacher. If the teacher does teach them karma yoga and bhakti yoga, they begin to realize that there are forces in the universe, souls in the universe, who are much greater than they are now or will ever be for a long time. Once this happens, the die is cast. They are on the spiritual path to their own eventual enlightenment.“

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Trees Fell, Recovery Spirit Rises

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  • Bhairava inspects the excavator
  • Fallen trees are consolidated to later be removed
  • While Pradeep operates the excavator, his helpers chainsaw and use the backhoe
  • Pradeep operates the large excavator

Vel Muruga!

Pradeep and his two helpers continue to clear fallen trees on the Aadhenam property. Today, they are working on trees located in the cow pasture area. They skillfully chainsaw fallen banyans and palms. They freed up the pasture area so the tractor can mow and cows can roam again. Cleaning these areas brings back access for the monks to care for the animals. After the pasture was cleared, two major trees were handled that fell over the ditch. The area was very narrow for the excavator to access so his helpers started by clearing the way through.

After many hours of chainsawing, Pradeep needed to get across the ditch to access the fallen branches on both sides in order to move them. Pradeep used cut sections of the fallen banyan as a bridge to maneuver across. It was amazing to see his ingenious idea accomplished safely and effectively.

Our German shepherd, Bhairava, inspects the excavator that Pradeep operates during the day. He is very happy with the progress. After a productive phase for all the kulams, the monks head into a full moon retreat to replenish their pranas and prepare for another phase of dancing, living, and merging with Siva!

Aum Namah Sivaya!

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Blooming Nature

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  • Roses
    “Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil.“
  • “Flow with the river of life and merge in Siva’s ocean of oneness.“
  • “Of course if you love Siva, obviously you have to love everyone else. Love brings forgiveness. Love brings understanding. Love brings feeling.“
  • “Self Realization is finding That which is beyond even superconsciousness itself, beyond the mind—timeless, causeless, spaceless.“
  • “Yogaswami, said, ‘It was all finished long ago.‘” – Gurudeva
  • “Hope for a future life makes this life worthwhile, joyous, contented and happy, because the Hindu can live and deal with current problems, knowing that they are transitory problems, that they will not last forever; nor will they affect us forever.“

Jai Ganesha!

Today is a bright, sunny day at the aadheenam. The flowers are blooming and the lizards our out enjoying the warming light. We thought you’d all enjoy some photos of seevral of the amazing new flowers that we’re growing for the temple.

“Your journey on this Earth has only one goal, Self Realization. You are here to attain the highest possible states of consciousness. You are not here to react to the petty incidents that occur in the valley of the subconscious.” – Gurudeva

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The Path of Change

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  • Uprooted bamboo clump
    An uprooted bamboo clump
  • 30-40ft bamboo poles stacked away from the path
    30-40ft bamboo canes, stacked away from the path
  • chainsaing is complete!
    Chainsawing is complete!
  • These bamboo will heal in the years ahead!

Aum Namah Sivaya

As many are well aware, Hurricane Lowell damaged many of the trees and plants around the Aadheenam’s acreage, including uprooting several large bamboo clumps along the bamboo corridor, near the Rudraksha Forest. Today, expert excavator operator Pradeep, successfully replanted the wilting bamboo with his machine. Bamboo is very resilient, so despite being fully uprooted these ones will most likely survive. Pradeep’s team of skilled arborists pruned the plants’ branches so the they wouldn’t loose much more water to their drying leaves, while trying to re-root themselves.

This area along San Marga—from the forest to the gate below Muruga Hill— is known as the entrance into the first world. It reminds us that the Bhuloka is the most impermanent plane of Lord Siva’s Universe, because it is the most subject to change. May the bamboo’s struggle remind us that despite our seeming hardships, we can always recover and carry on down the path towards merger. Fresh growth will return to this part of the Aadheenam soon enough!

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