We begin today a series of eleven Hanuman Tails, opps, Tales. It's a fascinating story which will unfold slowly in the days ahead.

We begin with Gurudeva's vision of Hanuman, wherein he saw the God as powerful, overwhelmingly so, inhumanly so, divinely so. Thus it was that Gurudeva set in motion having a massive granite stone sculpture made of Lord Hanuman. His instructions were clear: make Him noble and muscular. He must look powerful, strong.

In Hanuman's left hand, held aloft, Gurudeva asked for a small Iraivan Temple. Just as Hanuman brought the healing mountain from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka (see the story at the end of this TAKA), so He would bring Iraivan from India to Kauai. When future generations ask, "How on earth did an Agamic, hand-carved granite Chola-style Siva temple ever end up on this remote island?" we would smile and say, "Hanuman brought it here."

After he departed to his light-filled world, the monks went to work to fulfill Gurudeva's vision. The Doshi family from California, Tushar and Alka, came forward to sponsor it. They are avid devotees of Lord Hanuman and after their visit to Kauai, they wanted to bring Lord Hanuman to the island.

Jiva Rajasankar and his two sons undertook to commission the 13-foot-tall piece at a patarai south of Chennai. Years later it was moved to our worksite in Bengaluru. But Jiva was unhappy with the refinements of the carving and set our own carvers to work for more years, adding intricate details, especially to the back which the first team of sculptors felt was not that important. They were wrong and Jiva did the hard work of bringing Hanuman up to an amazing standard. In fact, we regard this Hanuman as a true masterpiece, perhaps the most beautiful in the world. In all, it took many man years to make. Finally, in early 2013 Jiva shipped the completed stone, weighing some 15 tons, across the ocean, just as hanuman crossed the sea in his adventures. Here ends Chapter One of our tale.




The Traditional Story from the Ramayana
A battle broke out between Ravana's demon army and Rama's animal army. Lakshman was so badly wounded in the battle it seemed that he would die before sun-rise. (In some versions of the story, many monkeys and bears are wounded too.) The monkeys and bears decided that Hanuman must leap to the Himalayas and bring back the healing herb from the Medicine Mountain to save Lakshman's life. So Hanuman leapt over the ocean, and across the whole of India to the Himalayas.
Arriving in the Himalayas, it took a long time to find the fabled Medicine Mountain. Hanuman found it at last -covered with herbs, but he didn't know which was the magic healing herb. So he wrapped his arms around the whole mountain, pulled it out of the ground and lifted it onto the palms of his hand. He then flew with the mountain back to Lanka. (Hanuman carrying the mountain is reproduced again and again in all forms of art.) On the way the sun began to rise. So Hanuman decided to capture the sun under his arm so that he could arrive back before sunrise in time to save Lakshman. The healing herb was picked and given to Lakshman. Lakshmanwas healed and filled with energy.

Enjoy the sight and sound of stones being chipped and placed for Iraivan Temple and its Nandi Mandapam

Over this last week the silpis have installed all 12 of the pillars for Iraivan Temple's Nandi Mandapam. As mentioned in a previous post, each of these pillars represent a full six months of carving. With the mandapam well under way, the team is also making headway with the three stone steps that sit at the entrance to the Temple. It truly is a wonderful site to have Iraivan Temple moving closer and closer to completion with each set stone.

Aum Namah Sivaya. Sivaya Namah Aum

On this auspicious day of the summer solstice, we held a short blessing for the installation of first of 12 pillars which will stand in Iraivan Temple's Nandi Mandapam. In the late morning, Satguru and the monks gathered at the temple for the event. Satguru placed gems and the first trowel of mortar for this initial pillar and Sannyasin Yoginathswami performed a short Ganesha puja. The pillar was then raised into place with great precision. For perspective, it takes one carver six months to create just one of these pillars. If one person were to have done all these pillars, it would have taken them six years. Even if one were to do this carving with a machine it would still take them one one and a half months to complete.

Satguru Bodhinatha recently came back from malaysia, and while he was there he visited the samadhi shrine of Natha siddhar Swami Jaganatha in the town of Tapah, where there is currently a renovation going on. We are connected to Swami in a mystical way, and we wrote about it in Hinduism Today in 1987.

Our slideshow today contains a blogpost from http://agathiyarvanam.blogspot.com/2013/07/jeganatha-swamigal-jeganatha-swamigal.html

The short article from Hinduism Today is below:

Swami Jaganatha was born in Puri, India, two years after the American War of 1812-a time when the British were establishing a mercantile beachhead in India. He died 145 years later, in 1959, in the emerald jungles of Tapah, Malaysia-his physical home a small, rude hut far from civilization, his spiritual home the infinite realms of Siva consciousness.

He lived in Tapah some 78 years, originally migrating out of India to Burma when he was 18, performing body-numbing tapas (austerities to accelerate soul unfoldment) and finally crossing into Malaysia in his late 60's. Swami Jaganatha was a siddha par excellence of the Natha Sampradaya (tradition of the Siva masters). He left a legacy of pinnacle spiritual achievement for all Malaysia Hindus and a posthumous prophecy of international scope that bore true. Few knew him personally. He mainly strode the corridors of our dream-world, the realities of the Devaloka surrounding this planet.

Finding him was difficult enough even if he inwardly wanted to see you. And the jungle and Japanese soldiers in occupation kept the fainthearted away. But some came. And if they could stand the tests of their own mind they followed Jaganatha as Sat Guru. One such earnest seeker was K.S. Gurusamy Pillai.
Gurusamy Pillai recounts his first meeting: "Some people commented, 'Why do you want to meet the madman who goes about dressed only in a loin cloth and always mumbling to himself!' The hut was almost completely grown over with vines and creepers. The swami asked me to first thank the man who had called him a madman. I sat on a low table. Then swami locked the door. Soon after, the swami disappeared and a cobra descended from the ceiling hissing loudly and, strangely, the hissing sounded like Aum. I was in great fear. Then the swami appeared, and the snake coiled back up to the roof and out of sight."
Three months later Gurusamy Pillai revisited Jaganatha. The swami asked Pillai to write to a close disciple in Sri Lanka telling him to go see Yogaswami (a renowned Sat Guru of the Natha Sampradaya who died in 1964). Then Jaganatha predicted another "soul" from America called Subramuniya would come. "He would reside in Hawaii. Subramuniya will travel around the world and everyone will receive his darshan. Then I, too, will join him," the swami declared. And indeed Sivaya Subramuniya, born in America, look Yogaswami as his guru, founded Saiva Siddhanta Church (headquarters in Hawaii) and travels annually from the West to the East.

Reflections on Tour Day from a local shishya:

"It never ceases to amaze, the brilliance of our Gurudeva! He could have established his monastery on Kauai and remained remote, kept the gates locked and trained his monks in cloistered seclusion without any intrusion or distraction from the outside world. But he seized the opportunity to reach out to those from every walk of life and welcome them in. "Come in and look around, see how the monks live, see how they worship and live, and what they believe—that the soul is a spark from God." It is a breath of fresh air for countless visitors. It is a sacrifice, having people walking through and around Kadavul, their monastery center, seven mornings a week, or for the guided tour—all over the property once a week. A big sacrifice for the quiet work that the monks do. But listening to our guests, their appreciation, their wonderment, in seeing such dedication to spiritual life and their appreciation for the positive message Hinduism has for the world—then you get it, you catch what Gurudeva could see as clear as the morning Sun."

Work is continuing on the temple landscaping, especially on the Western side. Recently we created a rising stairway of faux lava, a path guiding pilgrims to ascend the small knoll to the circle of giant boulders we call People's Park. The paving stones were poured and while the concrete was still somewhat wet, a special vinyl mold was hammered lightly into the surface. This creates the indents and shapes of natural lava rock. We also added our own Hawaiian petroglyphs. The rocks will turn black as the micro-critters begin to inhabit the surface. This area will be planted more in the months ahead, when the rains relent a bit.

Since the concept of the greenhouse has gone far beyond what the monastery ever imagined, the decision was made to order another one. A secondary greenhouse, as explained by Yoginathaswami, can help us move out of the labor-intense raised-bed garden and use less manpower to grow more food. Win-win.

More to come as this several thousand piece greenhouse gets built.

Selvanathan Sthapati, chief architect of Iraivan Temple, arrives on island to begin another phase of our ongoing grand granite project. Below are some photos from Sthapati's past, and ours: