Bodhinatha joined other board members of the Kauai Aloha Endowment during the retreat to make a $10,000.00 grant to Na ‘Āina Kai Botanical Garden-Kauai. More about that below.

Meanwhile today was another beautiful day on Kauai (temp. high 70’s).

Here are Milin and Bijal Shah from Atlanta with 1-year-old daughter Aryana resting high above the Nani Kaua Pond and waterfalls. One can see Mt. Waialeale in the background and to the right the Iraivan Temple.

This is their first visit and they were overjoyed that a Hindu Temple such as Iraivan is being built here on Kauai.

They were also very happy to know that the Aadheenam has produced such comprehensive books on the Hindu Religion for Hindu children and their families living in the West.

Back to the retreat. Na ‘Āina Kai Botanical Garden-Kauai is a huge estate, beautifully from the ocean shores to inland hills, landscaped with numerous amazing outdoor exhibitions. It is the work of Joyce and Ed Doty who retired to Kauai to create this amazing place. You could pack a lunch and spend a whole day here.

The exhibit is a huge outdoor replica of a “slice” of the island, like a pie piece from the top of the mountain to the sea. The Hawaiian kings would divide the islands like this to allow each community to have a equal share of all the environments from the shores to the mountains.

Marvelous bronze statues have been created and placed among native plants. Here a Hawaiian women is working in a sweet-potatoe patch.

This is Kuamo’o tending a taro patch.

The exhibit is meant to serve as a permanent visible reminder of Hawaiian culture and for this reason was deemed worthy of a grant from Kauai Aloha Endowment. Normally entry into Na ‘Āina Kai requires a paid ticket, but educational visits by school children will be free.

Hawaiian Village structures.

A large outdoor mural of the Hawaiian life.

A young Hawaiian man works on a fishing line.

Tending a baby.

The full life-size statues are exquisitely crafted.

Dwarf Bananas… only three feet tall.

These fish in the pond are artificial, an never move.

It is a very low maintenance fish pond!

Visitors can climb up to this view point to see the whole expansive exhibition. If you are ever on Kauai, a visit to Na ‘Āina Kai Botanical Garden-Kauai is a must!

A new phase began today with homa this morning. Bodhinatha read from Gurudeva’s 1968 writing, the Advaitan, in which Gurudeva delves deep into the nature of realization. It was this small book that led to Gurudeva’s creation of the Shum language, when he found it impossible to convey the inner states of mind for lack of words to name them with.

Bodhinatha reading from the Advaitan, afterwhich he explained in very practical terms some of the high ideas that that Gurudeva was conveying in this talk.

Brahmacharini Shama Kumaran hosted several families.

Three Japanese Buddhist visitors from Osaka who were moved by the absolute holiness, beauty and peace of the Aadheenam.

Four Hindu family arrived for the morning Siva puja at the Kadavul Siva Temple. After worshiping in the temple, they toured the grounds and the Iraivan Temple complex.

In front of the Umbrella Ganesha on the path to the Iraivan Temple.

On the path to the temple, we discovered a truck transporting Japanese Koi fish to be distributed to the many lakes on the Aadheenam property. (more on that later…)

In front of the Dakshinamurthy deity.

On the left, Praful and Jayshree Patel from Winnipeg, Canada on their third visit, along with her brothers, Chandrakant from Kona, Hawaii and Kiran Patel from Ontario, Canada.

On the right R.S. Raju from Illinois, Rajeswari Sonni from Florida, as well as Naga Bhushanam and Srimani Koneru,Raghava Ramkrishna and Swati Anumolu, and Nagendrasai and Sarita Koneru from the Mainland.

With the very beautiful hand-carved white granite Iraivan Temple in the background.

and to the lotus ponds where everyone performed abhishekam to the sacred Narmada Lingam.

Later in the morning we received another delivery of Butterfly Koi fish with the long wavy fins and tails. Kulapati Durvasa Alahan (on the right) and a team of our young monks tended to the transfer of fish to our ponds

A few portraits of the helper team:

Sivanadiyar Dharmaraj

Task forcer Robin from Reno, Nevada.

Teja….

Tandavan….

Sadhaka Satyanatha, photographer.

Sannyasin Yoginathaswami is finally back from his trip to India.

And, the rest of our photos: visuals of a beautiful morning at the Aadheenam.

Mahendran, Krishnamurthy and Thenagaran visited us from Singapore for a couple days. They’ve wanted to visit for a long time, and one of them used to attend Kulapati Dohadeva’s Saivism classes years ago. They had a a good darshan meeting with Bodhinatha.

They asked good questions about how to practice more religion in such a hectic work schedule that Singapore puts them through. Companies typically make employees work much longer hours than they should. One of the men leaves for work at 6:30am and heads back home at 10pm. Bodhinatha gave advice about how their Hindu principles can be practiced right in the workplace.

~~~~~~~~~~~
END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming two-day retreat,
until Dasami Tithi, Sun One, Saturday, January 27th.

Today was Sun 5, the day the Ganapati Kulam shares news on it’s activities. The focus has been on the last days of the editorial production side of the April issue of Hinduism Today. Another project being undertaken by task forcer, Joe Chikiar is putting Lemurian Scrolls on line. If you have not purchased the new edition, you really, really should! Today we offer you a sampling of color artwork in the latest edition. It is comprised of three very unusual kinds of art. We have the fabulous depictions of scenes from ancient Lemuria as described in the book, rendered by our artist iWayan in Bali. Then we have also exquisite patterns hand crafted by our own Sannyasin Natarajnathaswami and finally a special treat: “finger paintings” done by Gurudeva himself. Gurudeva used wet vibhuti to draw these images, which were later scanned and superimposed on textures. These web images do not do just to what is in the book. Click here to get your copy today!

This first painting is called “Pilgrimage to Earth” being a representation of a soul, just arriving from another planet, manifesting into the Earth atmosphere by absorbing the pranic offerings.

“First Temples” depicts the living appearance of Mahadevas on the platform, communicating directly with devotees.

“Continuity of Wisdom” from the chapter describing the artisan-apprentice system of passing knowledge of ancient crafts and skill to the next generation.

“Message from Devas” depicts someone meditating in nature and the inner plane spirit send messages which come thru bird song and other signs of nature.

“Senior Minority Group” Depicts the ancient system of administration of monasteries by the senior most residents who gather to listen to the guidance from the Guru’s secretary and to report their observations on monastic life back to the Guru.

One of Natarajnathaswami’s masterful patterns.

Paintings by Gurudeva.

Bodhinatha is working on a some pamphlets on the basics of shum describing the basic alphabet, chakras, dimensions and the 12 monthly meditations called “Mamasane.” All to be unfolded later this year.

It is quiet at the Aadheenam. The Siddhidata Kulam reported on their activities this phase: mostly working on all their “routines” which comprise a carefully scheduled system of maintenance of equipment ground, machines, vehicles, garden etc. all tracked in our database.

We continue to push forward on posting Bodhinatha’s talks with the steady help of Hitesvara Saravan who is transcribing them for us. We are now posting talks he gave in July of 2006 and gradually catching up. Watch the side bar link on the right for updates daily, or every few days.

Pilgrims Mahendran Kanappa, Krishnamurthy Seenivasan, and Thenagaran Anippan Rammiah all visiting from Singapore.

They take lessons on Gurudeva’s teachings from Kulapati Doha Deva in Singapore.

Yesterday they visited the Iraivan Temple site. Today they went to the Narmada Lingam where they did abhishekam with milk.

They are very impressed with all that they have seen and experienced here.

Today was tour day! Siva came to see us in many bright and smiling forms. Here is the 9 am group.

Tour days are always a wonder and a display of the spiritual power that permeates Kauai Aadheenam. People share small bits about their spiritual life, talk about how special it was to come and how much they can feel God here. Emotions are often intense. A visitor shared that he had never felt so unconditionally loved. Sometimes people weep just because of the feeling of being in Siva’s home in the West.

Our 11 am tour group. Around 120 or more total today.

The groups today had many questions and were very eager to know more about Hinduism. One man had lived in Kauai for seven years, and never felt ready to come until today.

A very sweet lady well-versed in the native hawaiian language was here today, with a big mino’aka (smile) always on her face. She told us of a word in Hawaiian that reminded us of the spiritual practice of living in the now: “i keia la,” which means “in this sun.” Not the next time the sun rises, not yesterday, but just “i keia la.”

Mahalo to all who came.

Today the Pillaiyar Kulam shared news of their many activities. Of special note was the activity at the Mini-Mela web store. Our pamphlet collections presenting Hindu life and philosophy are very “hot” these days, as are vibhuti and kumkum we import from India.

Marketing is underway for the rather magnificent (dare we say so?) “What Is Hinduism?”book which will be available soon. And you can watch here and the Mini-Mela web site for some incredible one-of-a-kind sculptures that will be available soon.

Today we bring you the final installment slide show of the monks’ recent 6-week pilgrimage to India.

Several days ago, Santosh and Karuna Krinsky visited our monastery for the first time. We have known them for 15 years, since they began advertising in Hinduism Today. They are the founders of the famous and highly successful Lotus Press which publishes a great diversity of books on Eastern spirituality. Here, they are meeting with Shanmuganathaswami and Sadhaka Jothinatha, sharing some spiritual matters and, yes, “talking shop,” too, as book publishing and distribution is an area we fondly share together. We were impressed with the Krinsky’s depth of spirituality and vision and are looking to working with them more closely henceforth.

Below is another slide show of Iraivan carving work in Bangalore showing floor stones, the cobra stones, hanging stone chains and the Kodimaram flagpole.

Followed by a light-hearted movie, “The Beasts of Kauai Aadheenam”

It is a quiet day at the Aadheenam. With New Year’s holiday well behind us, the visitor traffic has dropped, leaving the monks to their quiet life and work.

The Ekadanta Kulam shared news today. That is a team of one: Saravanathaswami, with occasional help from Sadhaka Satyanatha

Swami share some of the many tasks he has been involved in:

• Answer Innersearch inquiries. We have nearly 50 enrollments so far for the coming innersearch. Don’t wait too long to make up your mind!
• He worked in finding birth syllable for Joe and Robin who want to take a Hindu first name as one of their next steps on the path.
• A lot of work on the advance preparations for Bodhinatha’s coming mainland retreat in the fall which included arranging for insurance at the retreat center and finalizing books at gathering venues.
• He order some special pens to be used as a gift to acknowledge donations to the Kauai Aloha Endowment.
• I reported the first major grant was made by the Kauai Aloha Endowment to a worthy Kauai recipient
• He initiation the first round of invitations being sent out people who we feel might want to join Bodhinatha on the retreat in California.
• There have been some communications with the North American Hindu Temple Council who have sent an invitation to Bodhinatha for some future event.
• And he has been working on tithing reports from members.

All of this an more while all the while hosting pilgrims.

We don’t have any special photos today from the Aadheenam so we bring you a few from the art collection of Rajam paintings on the life of Yogaswami.

Here is Yogaswami with his Guru, Chellappaswami, begging from a merchant. Chellappaswami would make him beg from time-to-time as a way of instilling humility.

It was not uncommon for Yogaswami to ride in the cars of his devotees who would spot him walking and give him a lift.

Yogaswami’s itinerant habit of leaving his hut in the morning and wandering all day, came to an end when he injured his hip.

It gave his devotees an opportunity to gather around him all day long during the last days of his life.

Bodhinatha met with this wonderful pilgrim from Sydney on the retreat. It was the last day of her pilgrimage. Her parents were devotees of Siva Yogaswami and she knew him when she was a teenager. She shared several stories of Yogaswami. One was how he refused treatment of his broken hip, telling his devotees to just “let it be.” When asked if he wanted to have his body interred in a Samadhi shrine he said no, they should cremate the body. She said: “He was like that you know… he didn’t want people to put the Guru too high up, he wanted them to look up to God.”

This Ganesha was a gift to Bodhinatha and we took his picture to include in the new CD of Ganesha images.

Our phase began with homa as usual.

Bodhinatha gave an inspired talk on the 6th and 7th dimensions of Shum, drawing on writings by Gurudeva.

We are getting a number of requests for these talks… stay tuned. They will be posted soon here on TAKA.

It is a quiet day at the Aadheenam but the steady stream of pilgrims continues, a few every day.

Bodhinatha is actively working on the Shum language, putting in many hours a day.

~~~~~~~~~~~
END OF PHASE
Today is the last day of our phase.
This edition of TAKA will remain posted
over our coming two-day retreat,
until Dasami Tithi, Sun One, Friday, March 24th.

The Ganapati Kulam shared news today. A few highlights that touch
on just a few of the projects in progress.
* Communications are in progress with Shi Wen in Shanghai on the translation of the Trilogy into Chinese. Copies of the books are on their way to China as he has only seen the teachings on the internet!
* Ten Questions in Telegu arrived from India. For those of you who may have tried to download it yesterday our link was fixed…try again now: Click here to get Ten Questions in Telegu. Did you know that Telegu is the second most spoken language in India after Hindi?
* There is a big focus on Hinduism Today articles as the last three weeks of production are upon us for the April 2007 edition.
* Special DVD’s of 1008 image of Ganesha and Hindu Art DVD are nearing completion.
* The soon-to-be-world-famous book “What is Hinduism” came out of production and is moving now into shipping channels.
* And Online Lexicon, Hindu Dictionary of over 3600 terms from all the glossaries from all of the books of Himalayan Academy Publications is being developed and may be ready to Go Live on the net in the next week or so.
* Yogi Japendranatha is back in the saddle on the team here and the big news today was a breakthrough in the configuration of our Maha Image Catalog software called Portfolio that uses a MySQL database to catalog over 328,000 images. It was a bit slow but with the help of Tech Support at Extensis we made some changes. One testimony on the value of this new tool: Sadhaka Satyanatha was realizing that we did not have many images of Muruga on our Art CD. He did a search in Portfolio for “Muruga” and found 300 images that would have otherwise never be findable before.
* As you have all seen our slide show technology is getting “tweaked” on a daily basis. Latest improvement: long captions with scroll bars are now possible. Everyone seems to enjoy the new presentation. It also allows us to exceed our former self-imposed limit of 43 photos per day. That was a 1 megabyte download when you opened TAKA. Now we can include any number of photos in individual slide shows.
* We are pushing forward on “Satguru Speaks” and hopefully in the not too distant future we will be posting Bodhinatha’s latest talk on the internet the same week that he gives it… Satguru upadesha fans should keep the “eyes peeled” and watch the side bar on the right for updates.

Karthik and Archana brought their 8-month-old Advait from Vancouver for blessings. The couple visited here first in 2005, then met Bodhinatha briefly in Vancouver when their son was only a few weeks old, and now have come to Kauai again. Karthik said there is just something about this monastery/temple that he can’t describe, really likes it and wants to come back once a year. Little Advait was ceremoniously carried into the sacred sanctum of the Kadavul Siva Temple this morning for a special blessing.

A very happy and satisfied family as they prepared for their departure on the people mover.

Off to the west, Sacred Mt. Waialeale “place of many waters” mystically ringed by an almost constant presence of clouds, these past few windless days.

In front of the Iraivan Temple where they learned about the wonders of this awesome temple from the Shilpis themselves who spoke their language, Tamil.

Today was also tour day and Chelliah, a fine artisan, is drawing and explaining a design for the many curious and very interested visitors.

Rejendran showing our visitors how it is done. Try it, its easy!!!

And speaking of temples… we bring you today another slide show of pictures from the monastic Yatra to India.

On the publications front we have received a big break through from India. Ten Questions People Ask About Hinduism has been translated into Telegu! Read about it below.

You can also:
Click here to view a large sized image of the cover.
Click here to download the PDF for printing.

And to close today’s TAKA, photos from our two tours. The first one had 100 people and the second one, 60.

Here is the 9am group. A wonderful group of smiling souls greeted Satya for their morning tour of the Iraivan Temple. People from many different countries all eager to hear about the magical Hindu Temple that is being constructed here on the Island of Kauai. Some read about Iraivan on-line while others hear about Iraivan from others who have experienced this sacred site.

The 11 am tour with Sadhaka Satya who patiently answers all of their questions and explains the joys of Hinduism and the glorious future of Iraivan to all.

It is a another quiet day at the Aadheenam. The monks are busy about their duties… Here is Bodhinatha at a temple on one of his travels.

Speaking of travels. Today Yogi Japendranatha brings us another installment from the trip to India. This time he tells about the famous temples of Chettinad. The carvings in temples of this area are not well known, but must be seen to be believed. Don’t miss a trip to this area of Tamil Nadu on your next pilgrimage to India.

Jeremiah Umakanthan and his family Padminidevi and Janani at the Bali Hai waterfalls.

They have been here on pilgrimage for a few days and plan to return again in July. They have made Kauai Aadheenam a twice yearly visit.

Another couple joins them at the temple site.