New Vratashishya
Jai Ganesha!
Jai Kailasa Parampara!
Aum Namah Sivaya!
Currently, Madan Ganesan is visiting Kauai Aadheenam from Bengaluru. He's here with his wife Sumathi and their son and daughter. For several years now Madan and his family have been very focused and devoted in furthering their association with our guru parampara. This is their first time for the whole family to be visiting here together, so it made for a very auspicious occasion. Today both Madan and Sumathi took their vratashishya vows in front of Satguru and the Kailasa Pitham.
"I believe in You, the one Supreme God, Lord Siva, and the Gods of our Saivite faith, and in the Saiva Dharma. In love and trust I recognize Your goodness in providing for my every material and spiritual need. I affirm that the twelve beliefs of our Saivite Creed, and our Affirmation of Faith, fully and unequivocally express my own beliefs, and I wholeheartedly vow to uphold and preach them as an authoritative, distilled formulation of our venerable faith. I understand the importance of beliefs, which have the power to create our attitudes, which shape our actions and reactions throughout life. I appreciate that our Saivite Creed serves to maintain the continuity and purity of the Vedas and Agamas and give strength and guidelines to individuals seeking to understand life and religion."
“In humility and gratitude, having received the blessings of Lord Siva through these spiritual vows, I promise, now and for my entire life, to be an ardent, dynamic, responsive, loving, grateful, loyal vratashishya of Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, serving as a member of his global Saiva Siddhanta Church among my kulapati’s extended family.”
Water and Fiber-optic Piping Completion
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.
Quad Copter Piloting
From Lanka to Kauai
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.
The Purpose of Life, Part Two
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
"See awareness as a lotus flower. The lotus flower goes through many, many experiences. A few weeks ago in Bangkok, on Innersearch, we drove out into the Thai countryside and we saw many, many lotus flowers growing wild. They’re just beautiful. See awareness as a lotus flower. First awareness is a seed, and it’s breaking out of the instinctive elements, the hard shell of the seed. But it’s living right within the seed. It is dynamic life at that very time, tuned in with the central source of energy. Then it breaks out and it becomes roots, and then awareness becomes a stem, becomes conscious of water all around it. Finally, the stem emerges above the water, and awareness has leaves and a bud. It’s still limited awareness, because it’s not in its fullness. But as that awareness expands, it opens up into a beautiful lotus flower, then creates more seeds for more flowers. This is the path of awareness. Become acquainted with the awareness, that one beautiful, pure element of the soul, your superconscious body, which is easily found and easily discovered by simply closing your eyes and opening them and saying “I’m aware,” not necessarily of what you are aware of. Close your eyes. Say, “I am aware.” Awareness is closely identified to the realms of sight—hearing, of course, too, but more predominantly sight. As awareness expands and as awareness contracts, we find that we have power over awareness. It merely becomes a tool. The underlying power of awareness is the blissful state of the spiritual body of man, pure consciousness, the central source of all energies, in its blissful, calm state. Meditate on awareness being like a lotus flower."
April 2024 Chitra Puja
Jai Gurudeva!
Recently we observed our monthly Chitra padapuja for Gurudeva. In the early evening, monks and local members gathered to honor Gurudeva and receive his blessings. Yogi Dayanatha and Nirvani Tejadevanatha performed the abhishekam as other monks chanted Sri Rudram. Upon completion of the Rudram, the rest of the puja continued in silence. Aum Namah Sivaya.
"Look to the satgurus, who have themselves met and overcome the challenges that still lie ahead for you. Look to them and ask them to help you to look within yourself. Much of the mysticism which is the greatest wealth of Hinduism is locked within these masters, who in our tradition are known as the satgurus, the sages and the siddhas." Gurudeva
Gurudeva’s Voice, Reborn
Siva and Shakti in Perfect Balance
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.
The Purpose of Life, Part One
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
"The superconscious mind and the body of the soul have been around a long time. This immortal body of yours has been around a long time, and it’s seen many lives come and go, many experiences pass by the windows of its eyes. Some need no explanation, because they are the playing out of vibrations. Others do need an explanation, the explanation that would come and impress you intellectually from your superconscious, would give you power maybe to face an experience that was yet to come. So, don’t analyze every nuance of a reaction or try to anticipate the next series of experiential patterns, for life is a series of experiences. They are all great experiences."
Monks Making AI Music
Aum Namah Sivaya!
Something fun for the last day of our 5-day lunar phase.
And as they say, another day, another step forward in AI, and while for most of the world this technology is evolving too fast to keep track of (us not excluded), the monks at Kauai Aadheenam are still trying to keep up with the new developments—knowing that machine learning will play a common role in all of our futures. First chat bots, then photo generation (like the one of this robot composing music) and then video and music. All digital arenas seem to be an area that ai can reach into.
Our monks recently found this tool called Suno, which allows you to create instant songs about anything in any style. Currently anyone can log in with their google account and generate a handful of songs each day. It's undeniably fun to experiment with. We've been trying to get it to generate bhajans, but that doesn't seem to work too well yet. Still here are some just-for-fun examples we created. Most are generated with simple prompts such as "Folk song about the Monks of Kauai's Hindu Monastery" and after 12 seconds it gives you this, completely generated by ai:
Or how about "dramatic orchestral about the joy found in eating pineapples and dancing with Hippos" which gives you this (the last verse cuts off from a file size limit..):
For a change of style, here's a reggae song about our cat at the monastery named Bandit:
And here's an example of if you add your own lyrics. This one was done using a short poem (lyrics below), and Suno added the music and vocals.
Poem lyrics: A simple mind, a simple life. No agitation from joy, no elation from strife. No ripples to make a splash in this lake of calm, no need to be something great or to author a psalm. Just a life, like a bending blade of windy grass, glancing over all time like looking through glass. The floor is vibrations, the walls aren’t quite real, the ceilings barely there, for the open sky, I can feel. The infinite within the mind, glowing and bounding through all, a floating feeling, a mystic call. The air is pungent, but invisible to see, the trees are laughing, or is it me? The sparkles in leaf tips, the shadows gleam light, this world’s a wonder as my soul takes to flight. An endless horizon means you’re in a circle around a sphere, break free and you soon see that you find yourself here. Right where I am, it’s the same where you are. We have the same heartbeat and the same karmic scar. We’ve lived human lives, and danced through their fable. We’ve grown and changed as much as we’re able. Now we sit together in this space, this room made of light: I ask that you lower your ego and for you too, to take into flight. Join us all in your finale within, I’ll bring the love and joy, and you bring the din. We must have both shadow and light, to know the truths and final Real. We must have everything to be nothing, and that’s the deal.
From Our Gurus' Teachings
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