Noni Harvest with Nagarajan and Divyesh Pillai

This past retreat, father and son duo Nagarajan and Divyesh Pillai joined some of our monks on a noni harvest. Acharya Arumuganathaswami along with Natyams Nandinatha, Rajanatha, and Jayanatha made up a full group of six and managed to pick just over 1,800 pounds (820 kg) of the magical medicinal fruit. This fruit will eventually become noni juice and serve as the highly beneficial organic elixir sold by the monastery.

Divyesh inspects a broken noni fruit. Acidic and atypical, he proclaims, \"I like it!\" as he takes a bite.

After spending the morning harvesting the fruit, it needs to be washed thoroughly before putting into these large blue barrels for fermentation. You can see Divyesh washing one out before the transfer.

Each person picking the fruit uses these white plastic buckets to gather his harvest. Picked semi-ripe, these curious little creations manage to rapidly partially ripen in the buckets on the way back to the cleaning station.

Nagarajan, Divyesh\

s father (left) also participated in the morning\'s labors. First the blue barrels and washing tables are washed and sterilized before the fruits even touch them. Afterwards, about 4-5 buckets are added to the table at a time, washed, then transfered into the fermentation barrels.'

Divyesh proved himself to be both enthusiastic and incredibly helpful, always ready to perform the next needed task oftentimes without needing to be asked.

Hippocrates timelessly implored, \"Let food be your medicine and let medicine be your food.\" Our physical body is known in Sanskrit as annamaya kosha, literally, \"food-made sheath.\" Our Gurudeva says, \"...the object of nutrition for meditation is to eat clean, fresh, organically grown food and to avoid eating dead, chemically grown, dirty food." We hear you, Gurudeva. And this noni definitely qualifies!

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