Happy New Year of Krodhi!

Recently we bagen our new season and paraded out to our flagpole to raise the dvaja. This season also mark the beginning of the new year.

Here follows the passage from Saiva Dharma Shatras about how we should approach this new season:

Nartana Ritau, the season of Dancing with Siva, begins on Hindu New Year. This is the period of creation, the warm season, from mid-April through mid-August. The key word of this season is planning. The colors are orange, yellow-gold and all shades of green--orange for renunciation, yellow-gold for action, and green for regeneration. High above, the main Hindu flag flies the color orange, heralding the Nartana Ritau throughout this season, symbolizing sadhana and self-control. The other colors adorn smaller flags. This is the season of giving special attention to those in the grihastha ashrama. It is a time of awakening, renewal, review. The emphasis is on seeing ahead, planning for future years. It is a time of planning retreats and other activities for youths and adults for the entire year. During this time of looking forward, the Church's six-year plan is updated by the Guru Mahasannidhanam and stewards and another year added. The Saiva Dharma Shastras are studied; and any needed additions in supplementary manuals, representing new growth, are made.

The practical focus is completion of unfinished projects. Secular holidays to observe among the families include Mothers Day in May, Fathers Day in June and Grandparents Day in August. In the monastery intensive cleaning of buildings and grounds takes place. New clothing is issued and old garments mended.

This season of harvest and new growth is also the time to review and reestablish picking and planting routines for the gardens. It is a time for ordering seeds and plants for the year, of planting trees, fragrant vines and the annual crop. Review is made for scheduling the care of all realms of the Aadheenam. Kadavul temple and the Guru Temple are cleaned and renewed during this season, and the adjacent grounds receive special, abundant attention.

The daily sadhana is the Sivachaitanya Panchatantra: experiencing nada, jyoti, prana, shakti and darshana. In Sanskrit, it is a time of learning new shlokas and mantras. Shrine rooms are renewed and redecorated for the year, and the clothing of all is renewed in the Hindu style of the current fashion. It is a time of doing things for others, religious outreach. In the missions, Nartana Ritau is the time of bringing in new students and Church members. It is a time of hatha yoga and philosophical teaching.

The main festival of Nartana Ritau is Guru Purnima. The mathavasis hold special conclave on Vaikasi Vishakham, the full moon day of May.

Several teams of workers are busy at the monastery, laying water lines, tiling the temple pool, trimming giant palm trees, tending the gardens, moving mountains of soil, and more. So today we offer a buffet of images to give you an idea of what's happening.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.

"The next time the same experiential pattern appears, we approach it from a mountaintop consciousness, because we have conquered those instinctive elements. Our intellect has been trained by family and friends, schoolteachers and business acquaintances. We have to build a new intellect, an intellect from the soul out into the intellectual mind, rather than from the instinctive area of the mind into the intellect, to be successful on the path of enlightenment."

Aum Namah Sivaya

Here are some more photos of our recent Samvatsara Puja for Iraivan Temple. This two-day annual event is performed for the temple each year that follows its consecration. Photos by Rajkumar Manickam

On the day of sankalpam preparations for the April 12 Samvatsara Abhishekam (one year anniversary of the opening of Iraivan Temple) Siva showed His tangible presence by offering the island His own abishekam in the form of a massive rainstorm, a tropical downpour that brought 14 inches of rain to the monastery in 12 hours! We have rain guage records back decades, and even back to 2017 and 2010 we only once in 40 years of record keeping went beyond 10 inches in a day. So this was memorable. Then, showing the soft side of His grace, Siva flooded the island with sunshine on the following day, allowing for parades, pradakshina, marvelous dance and more in summer sun. There was, as you will see, some garden damage, but considering the scale of the storm, not that much. Interestingly, it reminded us of the Kadavul Temple kumbabhishekam day, 1984, when another impressive storm struck.

The first annual anniversary of Iraivan Temple's consecration has arrived. Events take place on April 11th afternoon and April 12th morning. Besides footage that will be posted after the fact, we've set up a temporary album where footage will be posted live, as it happens. Feel free to regularly check the link below over these two days if you'd like a semi-live experience. (Footage from this month's Krittika Homa on April 11th morning is also posted in this album.) Iraivan Temple Samvatsara Puja 2024

Today we took a walk along the six-pointed start path that defines the Shadkonam (six points) Desert Garden at the monastery. It was built in the Northwest corner of Iraivan Temple, following vastu science (See slide #2). It is a rare creature on Kauai, where there is so much rain that most desert plants don't tolerate. But over the years we have found which ones will endure 100 inches or more of rain, and we know that of 10 we plant one will survive. But if you plant 300, then you have 30 survivors. So these are the brave ones. The resiliant ones. And many happen to be beautiful as well, as the slideshow from this morning proves. We also share a before and after slider below.

Preparations have been in full swing for Iraivan Temple's first anniversary pujas on April 11-12. From husking coconuts for kumbhas, to securing tents, to installing sitting platforms, a temporary homa kunda and hanging tombai decorations, these photos show a small portion of the details involved to get ready.

Trenching for water piping and optical fiber continued from the San Marga parking lot corner down the pasture slope and to the edge of our water ditch winding through our property and feeding the ponds. The second photo shows the ditch, and Pradip, our contractor, is going to dig a tunnel underneath the ditch to sending the piping through. Then he will continue trenching parallel to the San Marga Path.

The third photo shows a just-painted pyramid structure that will hold about 130 small kumbhas for the first annual Iraivan Temple anniversary pujas on April 11-12. More preparatory photos will come soon.

Jai Ganesha!
Today Kodiswara arrived on Kauai after many hours travel from Malaysia. He had spend a full 6 months here on our taskforce program in 2016, so he knows the monastery well. Despite the long flight, he was full of energy once at the Aadheenam again.

Kodishwara is already under the formal pledge of an aspirant and is here to pursue monastic life.

"In enjoyment, there is the fear of disease; in social position, the fear of losing face; in wealth, the fear of government; in honor, the fear of humiliation; in power, the fear of enemies; in beauty, the fear of old age; in scriptural erudition, the fear of opposing views; in virtue, the fear of temptation; in body, the fear of death. All the things of this world pertaining to man are attended with fear; renunciation alone stands for fearlessness." Vairagya Shatakam 31