Today at Kauai Aadheenam

Happy Sadhaka, Happy Monastery

This is where the button size wood decor will be placed. It will look better when it’s oiled and dried

One of the finished sides of the fish tank stand

Sadhaka shows us how to use one of the tools in the wood shop

Sadhaka is focused on cutting the right size

Some of the finished pieces

That’s our boy Yali cat. Always loves attention.

Jai Ganesha!

Today, July 1st, we took a walk around the Aadheenam and found Sadhaka Shankaranatha working in the wood shop. Acharya Kumaranathaswami manages the equipment in the wood shop, and since Swami is an expert in woodworking, he has gradually upgraded the shop with many useful machines and pieces of equipment. We asked Shankaranatha about the new fish aquarium stand update which he has been working on. He told us that it’s almost done and showed us the piece he’s currently working on. Right now, he’s cutting small, button-sized wooden pieces to use as decorations. He also showed us the finished sides of the stand. Aum!

SSC sishyas Erasenthiran and his son Naavalan have arrived from mainland USA for a month to serve in the Siddhidata Kulam at Kauai Aadheenam during Naavalan’s summer break from school. In today’s photos, Naavalan is picking Abiu fruit that is abundantly in season right now. He says he enjoys being out in nature, with the cooling trade wind breeze and birds chirping.

A group of Nene geese also decided to visit the nearby avocado orchard this morning.

Aum Namah Shivaya

Over the last several weeks, Sadhaka Sabanatha has been doing a wonderful job of transforming Path to Siva lessons into truncated instagram posts.

Here’s an example of a recent chapter. If you use Instagram and would like to see them, go ahead and follow /kauaishinumonastery to see more. We publish a new lesson every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Aum.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kauai's Hindu Monastery (@kauaishindumonastery)

Jai Ganesha!

In June, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and Shanmuganathaswami traveled to other side of the world to meet with members and participate in Satsang and other special events. Satguru tries to do this yearly, meeting our members who are far away from Hawaii. Providing encouragement and support for facing life’s challenges and offering ways to uplift their sadhanas. While there, Satguru gave several initiations. Above are the photos of their travels. Aum!

Words of our Master

If you want liberation in this birth make your mind a cremation-ground and burn all your desires to ashes.

-Yogaswami

Lily with dark leaves opens in the pond by Bodhinatha’s office

Giant seed cones of a cycad, fruiting for the first time after 10 years of making us wait!

Sadasivanathaswami takes a group of ten island leaders through the gardens today, including our former mayor Joanne Yukimura, Lucy Kawaihalau, Barbara Curl, Char Ravelo and Laurie Ho.

The rare False Fruit Tree gets ready to set seed.

Close up of a travelers’ palm

Today’s visitors, a flock of island geese, called Nene. They are the state bird and clearly wanted a closer look at the monastery.

Caladium leaves, hand painted so they say.

One of our frilly hybrid hibiscuses

The amazing Rangoon Creeper, from Burma, a vine out by Iraivan Temple

Now for the truly rare. This is a yellow poinciana, almost never seen in Hawaii. We got it from Puerto Rico.

Up close. Blooming for the first time.

A mountain apple tree whose limbs are actually breaking due to the heavy fruits.

Up close. Not the best fruit in the world, but among the most productive.

There is the garden, and there is today’s garden. And there will be tomorrow’s garden. It is changing every day, new fruits, unseen before flowers, ferns high up in trees that we never planted. So, here is a small sampling of today’s discoveries in Siva’s Sacred Garden.

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.

“Why would you ever want to place demands of perfection upon yourself? You now walk the path of perfection, and you must be so to walk that path. What is this perfection? First, it is a clarity of cognition. Second, it is a bursting of actinic love for your fellow man. Third, it is an openness and willingness to serve and fit in, in any capacity. Fourth, it is living a contemplative lifestyle better every day. Fifth, it is mastering all of your yoga disciplines given to you by your guru. Sixth, it is the ability to hold responsibility, maintain a continuity of your own karma yoga, yet have the mobile quality to be ever ready to do something different without losing continuity of what you have been doing in holding your responsibility. ¶If you can gear yourself to accomplish all this, you are on the path of enlightenment and you will surely prove to yourself, when you have your realization, that you are a free man in a free world, subject to nobody, to no power, even the power of karma. How could That which is formless and causeless be subject to anything?“