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Bodhinatha at Maryland Murugan Temple

Satguru sends us this report:

The morning event at temple started at 9:30am. First was a purification of thirteen of the priests and next puja and nyasa with chanting of the kumbhas and finally a homa, veda parayana and the final arati. The picture shows Pichai Gurukal seated on Shanmuganathaswami's left. He was sharing a few items with us in English. Gurukal started Pillaiyar Pati Veda Agama Pathasala in 1980. He has graduated a total of 2,700 students. Many are in countries outside of India such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Singapore and they all stay in touch and share photos and news. At 6:30pm was the kuthuvilakku puja to Lakshmi. The main chanter was Bharani Gurukal who came to our Gurudeva Mahasamadhi one year as the second priest. What a great chanting voice! It was all followed by usual conclusion of a homa, Chathur Veda Parayana, Thirupuhal and final arati.  
 
Aum Namah Sivaya

Hawaiian Conservation District Visit

The Hawaiian Islands have been divided into conservation districts, each with a local board comprised of farmers, ranchers, other agriculturalists and state and federal agricultural officials.

Each year all the boards come to one island for their annual meeting and then visit some of the interesting conservation oriented projects on that island. This year the first site they visited was the Hindu Monastery Koa grove. To understand the significance of this one must understand that the Hawaiian Islands were once covered with rich forests containing large amounts of Koa, sandalwood and other hardwoods. Much of this has disappeared over to time, to be replaced with pastures and tangled jungles of imported species.

Koa, often associated with Hawaiian royalty, was especially treasured for its beautiful dense wood and was used for canoes and many other purposes. The trees served as a home to a rich variety of birds and other creatures and are close to the hearts of native Hawaiians and of many who have come to the islands. But the trees have not only been cut by man for many uses, but a virus has come to the islands which sickens and at least partially destroys about 80% of the Koa living at low elevations.

Nick Dudley, a local forester, spent many years developing virus resistant strains of Koa but was unable to find any tree farmer willing to risk the planting of medium to large scale production plantings of low altitude Koa until Jan 2015 when the Hindu Monastery planted 5 acres. It will take 10 to 15 years to find out how successfully resistant these trees are, but for the present time they are flourishing. Also, just in time for the visiting conservationists, a beautiful cover crop of annual rye grass and white flowered buckwheat was planted between the trees.

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