Title: Too old to be a Hindu? Category: Hinduism and Tradition Duration: 1 min., 42 seconds Date Given: November 20th, 2000 Date Posted: December_31_2000

Cybertalk: A cybercadet asks if she is too old to be a Hindu? Gurudeva says if that she believes in an all pervasive God and if she believes in the law of karma and reincarnation then she is already a Hindu. But there are some practical steps to be taken and Gurudeva explains what they are.

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We spoke with Deva Rajan who engineered getting the lumber to Kauai and he has this to say:

"There is a remarkable story behind this shipment. First you need to understand that the alternative to deconstructing a house piece by piece is to knock it down with a bulldozer. That in itself costs about eighty-thousand dollars. All the materials would have been lost and the land fills flooded with more building debris. The construction industry is responsible for 20% of the land fill. But recently in California the state mandated an effort to decrease landfill wastes by 50% by the year 2,000. An amazing goal, but we did accomplish that.

So, what you see here are the results of a new approach to what used to be "demolition." Now it is called "deconstruction." But the story doesn't end there. We have a company here, Project Team Work, that is a non-profit that receives grants from the government. Project Team Work actually goes out on the streets in the morning and picks up a dozen homeless people and employs them. They are given tools, training and supervision and a day's pay to take a building apart piece by piece by hand. Then the City of San Francisco provides grants to the demolition contracter to pay for this labour. A third party appraiser is brought in to value the materials that are being removed and donated to Churches, needy people and organizations and the owner receives a value certification of the materials donated in the form of tax write off as a charitable contribution. The lumber you received is worth well over $10,000, but the owner got a tax credit for an $80,000.00 donation because it included all the plumbing parts, concrete. . .everything.

From a carpenter's point of view this lumber is priceless. You will find old growth, extremely high caliber oak 1 1/4 X 6 inch 14 feet long absolutely clear, redwood and cedar paneling all clear, no knots. Lumber from trees this size is just not available any more.

In the City of Lafayette the municipality had a requirement on paper for a recycling plan for all deconstruction. We were the first to actually take a building down and asked them "What kind of plan do you want?" They said "We don't know. . .we've never done it before, why don't you write it up."

It was wonderful to participate in this new vision. The net effect of this collaboration: we reduce land fill; we have trained and provided and employment for homeless people, provided really good materials for free to people who can use them, the owner gets a tax credit and mother earth is spared the burden of having human consume that much more raw materials."

How is that for innovative giving and responsible resource management! Amazing. . .

An eleven acre site in Bangalore, India, where 75 Indian families live and daily carve the sacred white granite edifice of Iraivan Temple which will soon begin to be assembled on the island of Kauai

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