A Daily Chronicle of Kauai's Hindu Monastery

Satguru Siva Yogaswami
Jaffna, Sri Lanka

A Daily Chronicle of Kauai's Hindu Monastery

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Kauai's Hindu Monastery, USA

April 30, 2000 - Uttaraprostapada
Hindu Year 5102: Vikrama, the "Year of Fulfillment"

Gurudeva meets with Mr. Mahoharan and his wife, Mani. They are trustees of a very large and successful Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Title: The West's Role in Religious Resurgence
Category: Hinduism and Tradition
Duration: 2 min., 14 seconds

Gurudeva speaks to Vedic Astrologers about the spiritual value of the "bad times."

Cybertalk: We continue our series of Gurudeva's answers to questions posed by the editor of Jain Spirit magazine in England. Today Gurudeva focuses upon his views on the working together of Church and State, and the unique role that the West has to play in the ever-expanding Eastern faiths, not Hinduism alone.

For more information about listening to Gurudeva's talks online and to hear them in other formats, click here.

Do you have questions for Gurudeva?
Please continue to send your questions for Gurudeva to answer in his Cybertalks. E-mail questions@hindu.org.

Transcription of One of Gurudeva's CyberTalks
Date: April 29 2000
Title: Listen in for a colorful talk.
Category: Hinduism and Tradition
Duration: 4 minutes

Another question from the Jain community, "What role does art play in religion?"

Everyone is on a vision quest and art gives a vision of the future - what may happen, what has happened. They say,"A picture is worth a thousand words". Well, that is absolutely true. Art, accompanied by corresponding words, explaining the art and the art explaining the words is a complementary whole.

The religions that have concentrated on developing their art have survived. Those that did not, are no more today.

Another question from London. "Can you give an example of how your team on Kauai is using art to enhance the Hindu religion?"

We are endeavoring to bring the past into the present, and carried on into the future. We are endeavoring to make the complex Hinduism palatable, in the modern times. It is traditional in our religion to rewrite the stories that amplify various principles to make them palatable, as times change.

Art documents humans and their feelings and emotions, at various crucial points of time, that the religion experiences, as it goes on century after century. That is why we employ several full-time artists in Bali, Hindu country, in India and hope to have more, also working for us to develop the past blended with the present and create a marvelous, wonderful future.

Well, a beautiful project which we are creating right now, and this is for eBay, the Internet-auction program. It's called "Women at the Well", and, it's a series of 4 scenes with the same well, the same trees, but different women around the well, gossiping, talking and so forth. We hope to auction off all 4 at the same time, prints as well as the originals.

We are also having another program going. We have beautiful art collected from artists in South India and at Bali, hundreds of originals. We are putting them all on the Internet, so that, very fine, high-quality professional prints can be ordered in any size and many different sizes from Indivar.

We want to put very good photographs also, of Gurudeva and the mathavasis, various happenings of Innersearch. People can have prints made. Also, to make available to the public all the art that you see in "Merging with Siva", "Dancing with Siva", we have 3 full-time artists working this very moment, creating wonderful things. We have one of the finest artists in Bali, working for us full-time. So, all this is something we are making available to the public in the world, for their homes, shrine rooms and so forth.

Mani got copies of Gurudeva's books and had them signed.

Another couple, Mr. Shah and his wife, Rama, from Bakersfield, California.

Featuring today our "book team," Acharya Kumarswami who is responsible for the production of all the books we put to print. He works every day with Gurudeva on the editing and putting together of Gurudeva's books. He also takes the lead in the monastery for renovation of the interiors of our buildings and a lot of fine carpentry work.

Sadhaka Japendranatha is Acharya Kumarswami's assistant, helping with the books and staying in touch with the printers. He also manages our web site, Ethernet network and servers.

Gurudeva's other monastery in the island country of Mauritius
in the Indian Ocean near South Africa

On the first day of each lunar phase all residents of the monastery meet in the Panchaganapati Mandapam at 5:30 am. Here is the initial arati to Five-faced Lord Ganesha. Then all will sit for a fire ceremony, just like at Kauai's Hindu Monastery. Later, at 6:00, Gurudeva's disciples from various parts of Mauritius come to join in, some having traveled from relatively quite far. It is always good to see them arrive, bright, laden with offerings, dressed beautifully in their crisp Hindu attire. The sun rises during the ceremony, the birds chant along with us and the warm wind wafts freely through our wall-less shrine. It is quite blissful and a great way to start our phase, or lunar week. AUM shantih.

Today our Spiritual Park was graced by the visit of a group of about 12 painter artists. They had heard it was a place rich in visual, paintable opportunities, but they were delighted to find it was even more so than they imagined. Third from left is Sri Dhyaneswar Dausoa, sculptor-painter of some repute and leader of the group.

The group--or society--the Action pour la Creativite Artistique, is affiliated with the Association Internationale des Arts Plastiques, UNESCO, Paris. They stayed quite a while and moved from place to place, sitting for a while before interesting panoramas to share what they saw with each other, to sketch and paint.

Here is Sri Dev Chooramun, art teacher at the College Moderne in Flacq (where Gurudeva spoke in 1983 and again in 1991). He is a painter inspired by religious subjects.

The leader of the group, Sri Dhyaneswar Dausoa, has an international reputation, having exposed his works throughout the world. He is presently an art instructor at the prestigious Mahatma Gandhi Institute, here in Mauritius, where he trains youth of 13 to 15 years.

Here is an interpretation of the Riverside Promenade. It was interesting to see our Park afresh through their eyes.

The artist of the above painting, Sri Vinod Dausoa, painter-sculptor and teacher at the National Handicraft Agency, a semi-governmental body. He is younger brother to Dhyaneswar, above, and exposed his works with him in various parts of the world.

Here is Geeta Devi Ramparsad, recently graduated from the School of Fine Arts, South Africa, catching the special brilliance of the spot where the river meets the sea.

A fine aquarelle by Ms. Gaetree Daby. Nice! These fine people say they will be coming again soon and stay longer next time. We look forward to it. They can be contacted via Sri D. Dausoa, MGI, Mauritius.
INNERSEARCH EUROPE 2001

12 Glorious Days, 8 Enchanting Countries and One Chance in a Lifetime!

Join Gurudeva for Himalayan Academy's 17th travel-study program, the 2001 European Innersearch, themed the "Hinduism Today Adventure".

For information, please contact Sadhaka Dandapani. Space is limited and filling up fast!

Very Important: Please include your mailing address and telephone number in the body of your message. We will keep you posted as the program develops.

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