Puna Dawson, whose full first name is Keikilaniwahinealiiopuna, has had a close relationship with Gurudeva and the monastery for many decades. She is one of Hawaii's most distinguished kumus and travels extensively to share Hawaiian culture, dance, and spirit. Last week, she visited the monastery with over 60 members of her Honolulu group, many of whom had never been there before. Sadasivanathaswami welcomed them on behalf of Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, received their traditional gifts, and guided them through the gardens. At the Iraivan Temple, they were inspired to offer a divine oli, a chant in the Hawaiian language. Their powerful, unified voices resonated against the granite walls, creating a profound experience, especially for Pravinkumar, who had never heard a Hawaiian chant delivered with such potency. They toured the sacred gardens, rang the Bell of Dharma, and left with wide smiles of gratitude.

We start with showing beautiful Iraivan Temple Nandi from yesterday afternoon's bi-weekly Pradosha Puja.

The subsequent photos illustrate framing of the new second-floor offices for the Siddhidata Kulam in the Hale Hana metal building. Local contractors are moving quickly and will soon attach plywood to the framing in preparation for the next stage of drywall.

Here is the other half of miscellanous scenes that SSC sishya Rajen Manick captured during his taskforce period before returning home to Mauritius. He had a darshan meeting with Satguru just before departing to discuss personal life and mission matters in Mauritius. The rest of the photos are mostly from Iraivan Temple's first yearly anniversary pujas.

SSC sishya Rajen Manick recently completed his taskforce period and returned home to Mauritius. Upon arriving, he sorted through the many photos he had taken of the grounds and events, and shared the cream of the crop with us. Below is the first half of his collection.

While here, Rajen participated in many pujas, classes and darshan meetings, and served in multiple seva projects including book translation into French, brainstorming large information posters for the Spiritual Park of Mauritius, helping with the monthly Kauai's Hindu Monastery Newsletter mailing, preparations for Ardra Abhishekam, painting new structures and more. He warmly encourages more sishyas to make the pilgrimage to Kauai and participate in the taskforce program.

Our newest pre-monastic Aspirant, Kodiswara Selvanathan, took a stroll with the monastery camera to capture scenes of Kadavul Temple puja attendees being shown Iraivan Temple afterwards in the late morning. Then he headed over to our original Annapoorna vegetable garden and the newer greenhouses where the Siddhidata Kulam is planting and harvesting.

Some of our new monks were inspired to capture recent scenes of everyday decorations on Ganesha and Murugan. Variations of cloth colors, pottus, turbans, flowers, etc.

Aum Gam Ganapataye Namaha!
Aum Sam Saum Subramanyaya Namaha!

The piping to carry county water and fiber-optic cable out to rudraksha grove entrance and out to Iraivan Temple has been completed. The photos show Pradip, our contractor, trenching the final stretch. Yoginathaswami has been following with a GPS survey device to map exactly where the trenches are located.

The final photo shows the water being turned on near Iraivan Temple. Shortly, we'll dig another trench to bring the water next to the temple entrance steps for feet washing.

Today Sinnathamby came with his family for a first-ever visit, along with his wife Devika, son Aravindran, daughter Sandya and her spouse Praveen. They are of course enjoying the temples and pujas and came over to the Media Studio to say hi. Some sweet time was spent talking story.

Years back, about ten, a Buddhist priest shared his impressions of the monastery gardens. He offered that Iraivan temple is hard, granite, rigid, rectilinear, unchanging, strong--therefore masculine. And the surrounding gardens are soft, healing, pliable, nurturing--that is, feminine. He saw here the perfect balance of the two, Siva and Shakti.

One of the aspects of the Shakti side of this is that the gardens, being so alive, are constantly changing. Today we are dealing with a few of those natural changes. One team is repairing some damage made by the wild pigs in the newly planted Mondo Grass. Another is weeding Mondo on the other side. A third team is picking up trimmings around Dakshinamurti.

But the biggest team is a professional tree trimming crew that has come to remove a large banyan that fell into a pond during the historic April 11th storm that brought 14-16" of rain in less than a day. The tree was a bit aged and unhappy in the water. Once it is cleared, we can plant something special with the space.

We also give a BEFORE & AFTER slider of the temple itself.

A devotee took a number of portrait-mode clips during the two days of first anniversary festival events, and we have compiled them here. The monthly morning Krittika Homa happened to fall on the first day of the anniversary pujas, so clips of that are shown first. The first evening of the Samvatsara Puja is when Kauai faced torrential rains and floods, so that is captured in some of the clips.