Jai to our beloved Gurudeva!

Last night, during the chitra nakshatra, we observed our monthly pada puja to Gurudeva. Sadhaka Mayuranatha and Natyam Nandinatha performed the silent, contemplative puja which permeated the temple with Gurudeva's infinite and loving presence.

Click To Play Gurudeva's Audio Talk

Today we received some recent photos from Jiva Rajasankar, the manager of the Iraivan carving site in Bengaluru, India. They are working on the Nandi Mandapam with great energy. Most recently the silpis have finished five of the eight small stone chains, and the first of four elaborate ceiling lotuses (you can see these in the slideshow).

From Sadasivanathaswami's and Senthilnathaswami's recent travels:

On our final night in Canada, we were invited to the Sivathondan Nilayam for a long and delightful satsang with the devotees of Paramaguru Yogaswami. After a traditional greeting at the door, we entered the hall where some 80 good souls had congregated. Gurudeva would have been so proud to see them all dressed traditionally and singing so beautifully. After prostrating to Yogaswami's statue, we took our seats and told stories. I brought two young ones forward, a boy and girl, in their early teens, and told them we would have a quiz on one of the stories (the one about the mango farmer and the harvard MBA). They were so attentive, and answered my question about the moral of the story with great maturity. Only later were we told they are brother and sister!

My talk was fully translated and after a Q & A session we had a few moments with each and every one present as they came forward for vibuthi. A final arati was followed by a light dinner. Our first iddiappam and sodhi in a long time!

We drove the hour back to our room enlivened by our days in the Great White North, as Canada is known. Up before dawn for our flights to Arizona.

Currently the focus for the media studio is to complete everything that is required for drywall installation. Today the backdoor is being installed, which will reuse the previous door. The monks spent several days refurbishing the door and building the frame and blocking in which it will hang. The insulation began to go in today as well.

There is a water-loving palm tree that is growing quickly, in fact a pair of them. At the base is an amazing cluster of red roots that are reaching out and diving into the moist soil.

This is Raphia ruffia, a palm famous as having the longest fronds or leaves in the plant kingdom, fully 60 feet long when they are mature.

They are also called Vegetable Ivory Palm, since the seeds are so hard and pur white they are used by carvers to make things normally made from real (and highly illegal) ivory.

Enjoy one of Siva's marvels.

The Monastic garden is quite abundant this time of year, filled with kale, okra, eggplant, lettuce, cabbage, ginger, bush beans, peppers, green onions, sweet potatoes, basil and much, much more. As always the SK does a wonderful job of maintaining the garden beds, which happen to hold some of the richest soil on our clay-covered island. Recently the garden team has been working with small amounts of plastic mulch for the new plantings which reside outside the main garden. Without good protection these small plants would be encroached upon by the surrounding jungle and tenacious grasses.

The monks uncrated a pair of Ganesha's today, bronzes sculpted by Natalie Cederquist. They are so delightful we wanted to share some images. Somehow she captured a subtle mix of adult and baby Ganesha. The bronzes are about 22 inches tall and seem to like the tropical humidity after living in the desert.

From our monks recent travels:

On our return from Toronto and Arizona, we stopped for a day in Los Angeles. We had been invited by Raj and Rama Narayanan, and Rama made a delightful South Indian dinner for the homeless sadhus. Plus we got to play with their one-year-old son, who soon tired out all four adults in the room.

Raj took us to his sound studio where every night, from 11pm to about 2am, he records The Guru Chronicles. His studio doubles as the family puja room. It is small but equiped with the best tools in the business. Raj reported that this is "a very dense work," and he is on about page 600 of the 814 pages of the book.

Raj produced and acted in a film that recently showed at the Cannes Film Festival in France. He is quite a talent, and you can look for him on TV shows and movies.

On Friday, September 27, the monastery hosted nearly three dozen Hawaii State Legislators, staff and community representatives at the monastery. The State House of Representative Finance Committee and the State Senate Ways and Means Committee were on Kauai visiting various State-funded projects, including the extensive Kapaa area irrigation system that the monastery helped preserve. The two committees comprise nearly a third of the Hawaii State Legislature, which has a total of 74 representatives and senators.
After a visit to a harbor project, they stopped at Upper Kapahi Reservoir to inspect renovation work and then Wailua Reservoir next to the monastery where a three-year upgrade has just been completed and is slated to start refill (a month-long process) on the 30th. The reservoir supplies water to the monastery through one of the old plantation ditches. We will welcome its return!
The group gathered first in the Banyan Mandapam where Senator Ron Kouchi introduced the monastery. He worked with Gurudeva on the Kauai Aloha Endowment and various other community projects, an interaction which had a profound impact on his life. He called Gurudeva "the most important influence of my adult life" and the monks "some of the smartest people on Kauai" always willing to help the community, most recently for an anti-bullying campaign in the schools. Jerry Ornalles, president of the East Kauai Water Users Cooperative spoke next about the needs of the Coop for the coming years. Acharya Arumuganathaswami then introduced the monastery and Iraivan temple. The talks were kept short because the entire group was very anxious to see the temple project! Kulapati Deva Seyon led everyone out to Iraivan, explaining the project as he went. 
All in all it was a grand success, with a number of the guests commenting on how serene the place was and how hard it was to leave.

During their trek across North America, Senthilnathaswami and Sadasivanathaswami visited the hilltop home of Suriyakumar and Rushika in Diablo, California. This family from Sri Lanka has been instrumental in moving Gurudeva's mission forward, and the day with them was full of puja, conversation, sharing of progress at the Aadheenam and more.

One of their loves of late is growing grapes, and their hilltop home is almost surrounded by vines, almost 3,000 of them. They are young (last year was the first harvest), but they are prolific, with clusters dangling every foot or so. They took the swamis into the vineyard, and each of the six varietals was clipped so they could taste the grapes and see the subtle differences in them.

Two years back, Senthilnathaswami and Sadasivanathaswami planted the only two white grapes in the vineyard, a Sauvignon blanc, and were thrilled to see how sweet they are.

A few days after the swamis left for Toronto the entire hill was harvested, yielding some 6 tones of grapes.