Sadhu Paksha is over and we begin the Moksha Ritau today… It was also Ashram Sadhana day for this month at the monastery and Flag Raising Day.

We had this interesting guest yesterday…all the way from San Paulo, Brazil: Vladimir Paulon. He has a very intimate connection with the Iraivan temple… but only today was he able to actually come… but, we will let Kulapati Deva Rajan tell the story:

This is Vladimir Paulon, a colleague and close friend of Professor Mehta, wanting to visit our temple site. Vladimir lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil and was very helpful to us back in 1999 when Professor Mehta was firming up our engineering of the Iraivan foundation design. ….

“What happened was that Mehta’s co-author of his famous text book on CONCRETE, Paulo J.M. Monteiro, who is Brazilian, made contact with Vladimir Paulon in Brazil and asked him to run Mehta’s calculations through the computers that he had developed there. You see, it is only in the under-developed countries like Brazil, where they are still building their infrastructures such as massive dam projects, highways, bridges, etc., that they have developed software to analyze the performance of High Volume Fly Ash mix designs in ways that we are no longer interested in doing in America.”

As a result of the computer run-outs and checks of Mehta’s concrete mix design by Vladimir Paulon, together with some consulting with William Langley, an engineer in Canada, Professor Mehta felt confident that the proposed concrete foundation design would work for us for Iraivan.

Here is Vladimir with his daughter who, in another interesting connection, lives just down the street with her husband and daughter. They moved to Kauai to be near the big crystal…

We are nearing the winter solstice and spectacular sunsets come early in the evening…

These pink colors are amazing, and Gurudeva chose this very color for the Hindutva Flag of the Moksha Ritau…

He called the color “coral pink.”

At noon all the monks break from their work for the pleasant, uplifting simple ceremony of changing the flag to begin the new season.

Bodhinatha watches as the monks prepare to make the change.

Down comes the “rust” colored flag of the Jivana Ritau.

The monks, silpis, a few of our devotees and some Hindu pilgrims are enjoying a beautiful sunny day.

Bodhinatha connects the Moksha Ritau flag….

Up, up, up….

Looking aloft, I reminder to keep our eyes on the higher things of life.

We have a stiff breeze today and the flag breaks open to show of its color…

This Hindu couple from Chicago, Vinod and his wife had come this morning but didn’t have a chance to meet Bodhinatha or any of the monks. He prayed to Siva that he would be able to “see the saints,” and was delighted to be invited at noon to join us. At age 80, he’s a deeply devoted soul and he and his wife have pilgrimaged to all the holy places in the Himalayas.

Other guests… hugging the Rudraksha trees and taking a big bag of Rudrakshas home with them…. More on the Moksha Ritau tomorrow.