The Stewards and Staff of Hindu Heritage Endowment met this weekend for their 2nd quarterly meeting. Sadhaka Mayuranatha, which serves in the Finance and Administrative Kulam, was invited as a guest to learn more about the inner workings of the endowment as well as a broader overview of the endowment's religious mission.

The mission of Hindu Heritage Endowment (HHE), which is strictly religious and nonpolitical, is to strengthen Hindu religious and cultural traditions throughout the world by providing Hindu institutions with a permanent and growing source of income in order to assure their financial stability and further their diverse programs.

Visit the HHE website at www.hheonline.org

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Our August 2013 news video covers events in July 2013 including: Satguru Purnima festival at Kauai's Hindu Monastery, nirvana diksha for Sadhaka Tejadevanatha, flower gardens, Media Studio building renovation progress and two swamis' meetings with fellow sannyasins in Europe.

Each year the Kauai Farm Fair is held in Lihue. The fair draws thousands of people, and is the largest annual event on the island. This year Acharya Arumuganathaswami and Sadhaka Jayanatha took our taskforcer Tirtadeva to experience the festivities. The fair included many stalls who were selling their produce and wares, carnival rides, games, food and of course the produce, flower, and bonsai tree competitions.

In our well-equipped woodshop, Paramacharya Sadasivanatha and Brahmanathaswami continue to mill mango wood for Media Studio window and vent frames. It's quite a time-consuming project but the careful work really shows in the final result. The last photo shows the beauty of the finished wood. Wow!

Over the past few days Bobby and his team have worked to complete the installation of the Media Studio's new roof. Several members of the Ganapati Kulam have been working to finish the mango window frames, which when installed, will allow for the next big step of finishing the exterior walls with stucco. The stucco will have a light adobe color which will nicely compliment the blue roof.

The next work is in the Colorado workshop. This Silpi Sharpening a chisel is the most recently (nearly) completed bronze and will soon be ready for the patina which will give it subtle tints of color.

Yesterday was tour day at the aadheenam, a rare chance for guests to see more of the monastery gardens and have a closer look at Iraivan temple. Deva Seyon lead a wonderful and informative tour, which was followed by some time in the Mini Mela where Paramacharya Sadasivanathaswami was signing books for guests.

Each year the monks take three days during the Full Moon to do nothing on our lovely little island. Over the last retreat, six of the monks headed up to the mountains for three nights at Kokee's Camp Sloggett. They hiked through the beautiful mountain forests, meditated to the silence of nature, and sat together around the camp fire to talk about deep things. The monks live busy lives of service, often filled to the brim with their seva. These few days at the rural lodge were a great chance to practice the art of being rather then doing, which Gururdeva felt was so necessary to our lives. 

This morning a homa was held in Kaduval Temple after several weeks without one, due to the recent observance of Sadhu Paksha. Yoginathaswami performed the homa while Paramacharya Sadasivanathaswami filled in for Satguru Bodhinatha who is traveling. Paramacharya burned the prayers to the devas and gave a short talk after the homa, discussing being and non-being.

"On and on through the mind we travel daily, once awareness has become detached from the limited area of mind it has been trapped in. The journey seems endless! It is. Seek on, seek on. Look in, look in. And on that solid foundation of good character, move into that place in the mind and live there, seeing no difference between the inner and the outer states of fluctuating awareness. Be that now for which you have been striving. The search is within. Go within the mind. Go in and in and in and in and make fathomable the unfathomable depth of Being. You can do it. It has been done countless times over the past several thousand years. Give yourself the great benefit of believing in yourself and flow inward, inward—to the totality of it all." -Gurudeva