Drum roll. Cue the town crier. Ring the temple bells.

Today we begin our fifth annual Digital Dharma Drive. For the next 60 days, ending at midnight on December 31, we will humbly hold our begging bowl in hand seeking everyone's help with our digital resources and outreach.

As is well known, the publishing world has been transformed by the Internet, and we have been among those working (to good effect) to make the transition from paper and press to a publishing future that is 100% digital. The big difference is that our books and magazine (which we still do print) were sold, in bookstores all over the world, and the income provided funds to print the next book and the next.

Like Wikipedia, we have chosen a free model for the digital publishing, and we follow Wikipedia in reaching out at the end of each year to those who use and love our resources. This has worked well these past five years, and we think it will continue to be a way forward as more and more around the globe access our work and our spiritual teachings on their computers and mobile devices. 

Gurudeva would love where we have come today. He would love the ease with which the books are available, at no cost, to everyone who owns a mobile device anywhere in the world. He would love the lack of massive investment costs that were traditionally required for major books to be put on the presses, tens of thousands of dollars. Then the inventory costs, the shipping, the returns. All of that has been rendered unnecessary in the age of digital publishing. In our case, we are doing both, printed editions of the magazine, for instance, and then digital editions based on the elegantly designed PDF pages. The best of both worlds. 

Gurudeva would be proud of what the monastery produced in this past year: a major Hinduism Today app for all mobile platforms; Bodhinatha's offering, "A Character Building Workbook," two more 22-minute films on Hindu history for American schools; a book for Hindu teens teaching life's tough lessons; the beginning work on an educational game for youth and adults; dozens of ePubs of our magazine Insight sections; a map that will provide the central navigation for a future digital tour of the monastery; aerial footage from our QuadCopter; more foreign-language translations of Gurudeva's books, and much more. 

He would love that we don't have to charge struggling Hindu students for the spiritual teachings, but can make them available for free. In the last decade our resource-building efforts have shifted massively toward the web, following the fast-evolving world of communications and publishing. It takes a deft team to gather and sculpt the needed tools and stories for Hinduism Today and our Web resources. Creating and sharing an articulate and graphically elegant repository of Hinduism is neither easy nor without costs. Hindu youth are learning their spiritual ABCs online, and millions of seekers are discovering Hinduism digitally. What they encounter should be thoughtful, lucid, elegant and authentic. That's what compels our annual fundraising campaign. It's a chance for you to help us to help explain and share Hinduism globally.

Yes, we could meet our costs by charging for the online books and magazine, but we are determined not to do that. We ourselves are seldom motivated to pay for online information. We like it when needed information is available without cost. But free to the world is not free to us. We have significant costs in running our websites. The needs are modest, but they are real.

Among those needs has been a work space conducive to creative thinking and collaboration. For four decades the publishing team worked in a dim space, not exactly a hovel, but not much to inspire, either. The marvelous renovation of the Media Studio has changed the team's environment dramatically, and this year's contributions will help pay for this costly transformation into a "temple of the mind" worthy to be the headquarters of Hinduism Today and Himalayan Academy Publications. 

In order to provide information without charging for downloads, without showing advertisements on our sites, without commercializing our mission, we turn to you for help.

The goal for this year is the same as last: $70,000. Between now and December 31, we hope you will be inspired to help us meet our goal (you can click the banner above to give). In the right hands, and leveraged by the unsalaried work of the monks, these funds will have a profound impact on the future of Hinduism around the world. 

With much aloha and warm greetings during the holiday season ahead,

The Editors
Kauai's Hindu Monastery
Himalayan Academy Publications