Bodhinatha and Senthilnathaswami spent a day and a half in San Francisco on their way to Houston.
With a free morning, they visited beautiful Golden Gate Park to visit the Dahlia Garden, which is in glorious full bloom this time of year, to walk a few trails and find some other surprises as well.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvHN3h6YA4

The purpose of our visit to San Francisco, of course, was not just to look at flowers and take a walk in the park! If only life were so slow… Quite the contrary. A year ago Bodhinatha urged the monks in the Ganapati Kulam to offload the care of the monastery's information systems to professionals, so that we could remain focused on what we do best as monks–conceiving and creating educational content. We did just that by hiring Joe Russell (center), who was an independent Apple-certified IT consultant at the time. After telecommuting to the monastery's network for a year from his home in The City to help us with everything from server software installations to installing printer drivers on new computers, Joe is now part of a growing firm called Rocket Science Consulting. Now we don't just have an IT consultant, but an entire, professional IT department to draw upon and call our own!

Since our flight was passing through San Francisco on the way to Houston, we stopped to spend a day there to meet with our new IT staff at Rocket and discuss a restructuring of our relationship with them, some new ways in which they will be supporting us, new services they are offering us, and some of the many ways we will be working together more in the future. On the left is Aaron, our Flight Leader, who will handle the overview of our relationship with Rocket and check in with us periodically to ensure that our needs are being met. In the middle is Joe, who will now take the roll they call Mission Specialist, consulting with us on major IT innovations and projects, not just the weekly maintenance and troubleshooting tasks that need to be done. Those will now be in the hands of their team of Mission Engineers.

This is Bruce, the Help Desk Engineer, on call whenever the monks have a problem with their computer systems and need a helping hand. We're so glad to have you on our team, Bruce! And thanks to all of you at Rocket for helping take care of the monastery’s computer systems, which are such an integral part of every area of our service.

Enjoy this new video in which Paramacharya Palaniswami, our Editor-in-Chief, talks about Hinduism Today’s place in the media.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zZhgpotKms

Our managing editor, Acharya Arumugaswami, shows us how Hinduism Today got started and the history of formats leading up to the full-color international quarterly magazine that we print today.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfD_3i8fbfk

Sorry, folks! We had not correctly linked the end of Bodhinatha’s introduction video, below, to the full video of his Publisher’s Desk article on YouTube. This has been fixed. Now, when you watch the video below, you can click on the box as indicated at the end and it will take you to the full video.
This month’s monthly video: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, publisher of Hinduism Today magazine, reads his Publisher’s Desk article from the Oct/Nov/Dec 2009 issue on camera. He speaks of the three stages of faith: blind faith, informed conviction and personal realization.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHP9YzJ3lMY

Enjoy our latest video: Kauai’s Hindu Monastery news for the months of January through June 2009. Since we skipped last quarter, here we will share with you about important events over the past six months, including five festivals, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami’s travels to Australia, Mauritius, Singapore, Washington state and Canada, lots of construction progress on Iraivan Temple, and many other projects happening in the monastery. A special treat this month: we will see a portion of an interview of Gurudeva aired by the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation during his 1999 visit.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTpPhJyBeM

On the retreat, Senthilnathaswami, Sadhakas Tejadeva and Satyanatha and Brahmachari Vel Mahalingum went to the Alakai Swamp for a hike. The swamp lies near the top of Mount Waialeale, on the Waimea Canyon side. At an altitude of about 4,000 feet, the flora there is unique on the island, and the scenery spectacular. A narrow boardwalk leads through much of the trail.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8kbKDM8d2k

It is raining abundantly at the monastery, much to the surprise of our tour day visitors. Joe Russell, our monastery IT consultant who is visiting from San Francisco, took this video with his iPhone 3G S, showing the river in spate. The Nani Ka`ua waterfall has almost completely disappeared under the rushing rapids.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEyNBIMfrs8

We are happy to present to you Bodhinatha’s Publisher’s Desk editorial, in video form, from the July/August/September 2009 edition of Hinduism Today Magazine. In this video, Bodhinatha talks about three kinds of temples: the community temple, the home shrine and the temple within you.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXmzDTYeIzU

A video presentation from Bodhinatha on claiming our spiritual identity, in five exercises.
Exercise 1:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4nAiQb7-zo
Exercise 2:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjgGeRwZnPE
Exercise 3:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0vNqcMudL0
Exercise 4:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7IwwRLYiow
Exercise 5:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdUJKTZlPPA

Enjoy an updated video view of the San Marga Iraivan Temple being constructed at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3SynhO3sUw
If you have a high-bandwidth Internet connection, see the video at YouTube’s site and click the HD button in the lower-right corner for a spectacular, high-quality experience.
If you have a low bandwidth but still want to see the HD version, you might try downloading the video before watching. It is worth a try–this video is a virtual pradakshina of Iraivan Temple as we had never produced before. Download it here.