What a lovely day on Kauai! Is this heaven or what? Blue sky, light rainbows hovering above, cool trade winds blowing through the trees. Each morning the pujari makes a little offering of cooked rice after the morning puja. This is offered as you see in the photo at the balipeedam, and it is a feeding of the many creatures, a kind of blessing from the temple out to other sentient beings, the birds and worms, the fishes and such.

Yesterday we received a package from Chennai, India, from our artist Manivel. As you know, he is working on our art for Gurudeva's Merging with Siva yoga masterpiece. Though the art in the book will initially be printed in black and white, we thought you would like to see it in its original brilliant color. This first one is his rendition of the experience of the kundalini, and of the great psychic currents, ida and pingala, as they wind up through the chakras and merge above the head in the awakened soul.

The second one is a totally wonderful depiction of Self Realization, meant for the chapter on Parasivam, and as you can see the yogi in the rock cave, meditating at night and worshipping the Sivalingam has emptied himself completely and become one with the cosmos. This follows Gurudeva's text: "Visualize above you, nothing; below you, nothing; to the left of you, nothing; to the right of you, nothing; in front of you, nothing; in back of you, nothing and dissolve yourself into that Nothingness. That would be the best way you could explain the realization of the Self."

Everyone has been telling us how special it is to hear Gurudeva's voice each day, and we encourage you to let others know this is happening, so they can have this audio darshan each morning. Today our publications team had a breakthrough in recording Gurudeva'a messages for TAKA and his recordings of Merging with Siva, which we hope you are tuning into. We were experiencing great difficulty the past three days trying to use third-party in-line microphones to the G3 powerbook we use for recording (which is very convenient). We were not getting good input and suspected (despite what is printed in the Mac literature) that the line-in mics don't work with the powerbook. The Apple mic works fine, but the quality is poor. Finally, we called Apple and they confirmed our suspicions. So, we attached a Sony Mini Disk recorder to the apple and attached a good quality mic to it. We turned on the Sony Recorder to record, then put it on pause, which then acts as simply a conduit for the signal. We are now getting great sound. Obstacle removed. Jai Ganesha!

We end today with a candid shot of Tandu Sivananda. He and his son are responsible for the wonderful care and condition of the gardens here, and many, many hours are spent each month with his weedwhacker, making the monastery look like a Japanese Garden. Nice work, Tondu!