Kauai Aadheenam

https://www.himalayanacademy.com/planets

Aum Namah Śivaya

We’ve recently built this free Vedic astrology tool that runs in your browser. You can open the live solar system and click on any planet, sign, or lunar mansion to read about it. You can also set the time manually to see what the planets will be doing at any given time. On the solar system page you can select your rising sign (which you can calculate on the birth chart page if you’d like), so if you click on a house, nakshatra, or a planet, it will give information adjusted for your chart. There’s also a “Find Events” button which will show major celestial moments for a given year—if you click on one it will reorient the solar system to that very moment. On the Birth Chart page you can enter your birth details and receive a full chart with your planetary placements, your janma nakṣatra, your Vimshottari daśā timeline, and a long-form classical interpretation of every planet’s position written in plain English—which you can save or download as a PDF. There’s also a Saṅkalpa drawn live from Kauai Aadheenam’s pañchāṅga service for those who need it for a puja.

Please note that—while this is a rather technically advanced tool—it’s best not to rely on it for anything more than a fun and a simple education in Jyotish (as in, please don’t use it to make major life decisions). The deeper purpose to reading the stars isn’t really about prediction. You are ultimately one with Śiva and the whole Universe. Thus the planets aren’t external powers acting upon you, but rather outward reflections of motions already moving within you. The Sun above mirroring your soul’s light, the Moon your receptive mind, Rahu indicating the karma that draws you in this life, Saturn’s slow turn is the patient labor of your own discipline, Mars the spark of your boldness, and Jupiter your expanding blessings.

These planetary positions come from Swiss Ephemeris—the same engine that powers Drik Panchang, Jagannath Hora, and every serious Vedic tool—sub-arcsecond accurate, defaulting to Lahiri ayanamsa. For the full daily pañchāṅga and Saṅkalpa for your location, please use the printable Mini Mela Pañchāṅga.

Jai Gurudeva!

Today is the Chitra nakshatra, meaning today we observed our monthly padapuja to Gurudeva’s tiruvadi in Kadavul Temple. At 6am the monks and island members arrived to place flowers at Gurudeva’s shrine, chant Sri Rudram and offer milk, honey, sandalwood, incense and more. This day is always a good time to inwardly connect with Gurudeva for blessings and insights.

Aum Namah Śivaya

“Intuition travels through a purified subconscious. Before we can utilize the superconscious or intuitive realms of the mind, we must be able to resolve those past experiences which may still vibrate in our subconscious.” – Gurudeva

Jai Ganesha!

Today we have just rolled out a complete rebuild of the Spiritual Workout App for iOS!
Android users will be receiving their update next week.

So if you have an Apple device, you should be able to use it today. If you have the previous version already, it might auto-update, or you can go to your app store and search for it to download it or update it manually.

What’s New

A complete rebuild — refreshed look, smoother feel, and several new ways to deepen your daily practice.

• Custom Routines — design your own daily sequence, with the practices and durations of your choosing
• Custom Affirmations — write your own alongside the built-in ones
• Journal — capture insights and reflections after each practice
• A daily reflection from Gurudeva on the home screen
• Practice insights, a 14-day mood chart, and a quiet heatmap of your year
• Multiple color themes to suit your mood and surroundings
• Gentle daily reminders, and an optional Face ID lock for privacy

Fully offline. No ads. No tracking. A refuge to return to each day.

More info from our App Store Description:

While today nearly everyone appreciates the need for daily exercise to stay fit and healthy, many don’t realize the need to maintain a balanced spiritual life through daily practices. The Spiritual Workout is designed for Hindus — and for those who consider themselves Spiritual But Not Religious — who would like to maintain a daily spiritual practice but may not always have much time to give to spiritual well-being.

The app offers a range of practices drawn from the Saiva Hindu tradition:

— Japa: mantra repetition
— Meditation: guided sessions of several lengths, with optional voice guidance
— Affirmations: built-in affirmations to gently reprogram the subconscious mind, plus the ability to add your own
— Aum Chanting: the most fundamental of all mantras
— Pranayama: a simple but powerful breathing practice
— Hatha Yoga: gentle posture sequences
— Ganesha Puja: a complete home worship with step-by-step audio guidance
— Chanting: Learn several complex Sanskrit mantras
— Study: four important Himalayan Academy publications — Path to Siva, Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva, and Merging with Siva — available offline, with bookmarking and adjustable text size

For those new to spiritual practice — or for busier days — the 10 Minute Sadhana combines several practices into one short daily routine. You can also build your own custom sequences, combining any practices in any order, with the durations you choose.

Spiritual Workout works offline, contains no ads, and tracks nothing about you off your device. It is offered as a refuge — a place to return to each day, not a streak to maintain.

Aum Namah Sivaya

Aum Namah Sivaya

Recently Kauai has been having bright sunny days with a few clouds and perfect temperatures. It’s our spring time and the flowers have started blooming everywhere, while the birds and insects are happily enjoying the clear air. During the full moon our monks observed a three day retreat—a good time to appreciate the ocean side, and to take longer walks throughout the monastery gardens. This is the season is when we have Nēnē (our special endemic Hawaiian geese) visiting the property. A specific group (see slideshow) has chosen to make the Aadheenam a consistent stop in their migration cycle. Aum.

“I am the waves. I am the ocean. We are all waves-there is no higher wave or lower wave. The waves and the ocean are one. You have to plunge yourself in the ocean.” – Siva Yogaswami

Aum Namah Śivaya

During his training as a monastic Aspirant, Brahmachari Arinien has been having many classes with the monks, including philosophy classes with Siddhanathaswami, meditation training with Tillainathaswami, puja training with Mayilnathaswami and Sanskrit chanting with Kumarnathaswami. Over the last few weeks, Brahmachari has begun his classes with Arumuganathaswami in preparation for taking his next steps towards monastic life. This next step involves the taking the Supplicancy vows of Purity, Humility, and Obedience. Once entered, this stage is the final 6-8 month period before someone is ready to take their vows as a monastic sadhaka. One of the wonderful pieces of study in Arinien’s current material is Gurudeva’s On the Brink of the Absolute which reads as follows:

“On the brink of the absolute. The higher states of consciousness very few people are familiar with, having never experienced them. They are very pleasant to learn of, and yet out of our grasp until we have that direct experience of a higher state of expanded consciousness. The mind, in its density, keeps us from the knowledge of the Self. And then we attain a little knowledge of the existence of the Self as a result of the mind freeing itself from desires and cravings, hates and fears and the various and varied things of the mind. I say “things” because if you could see hate, you would see it as a thing that lives with one as a companion. If you could see fear, you’d see it as a thing, and as understanding comes, that thing called fear walks away down the road, never to return. ¶As you unfold spiritually, it is difficult to explain what you find that you know. At first you feel light shining within, and that light you think you have created with your mind, and yet you will find that, as you quiet your mind, you can see that light again and again, and it becomes brighter and brighter, and then you begin to wonder what is in the center of that light. “If it is the light of my True Being, why does it not quiet the mind?” ¶Then, as you live the so-called “good life,” a life that treats your conscience right, that light does get brighter and brighter, and as you contemplate it, you pierce through into the center of that light, and you begin to see the various beautiful forms, forms more beautiful than the physical world has to offer, beautiful colors, in that fourth-dimensional realm, more beautiful than this material world has to offer. And then you say to yourself, “Why forms? Why color, when the scriptures tell me that I am timeless, causeless and formless?” And you seek only for the colorless color and the formless form. But the mind in its various and varied happenings, like a perpetual cinema play, pulls you down and keeps you hidden within its ramifications. ¶In your constant striving to control that mind, your soul comes into action as a manifestation of will, and you quiet more and more of that mind and enter into a deeper state of contemplation where you see a scintillating light more radiant than the sun, and as it bursts within you, you begin to know that you are the cause of that light which you apparently see. And in that knowing, you cling to it as a drowning man clings to a stick of wood floating upon the ocean. You cling to it and the will grows stronger; the mind becomes calm through your understanding of experience and how experience has become created. As your mind releases its hold on you of its desires and cravings, you dive deeper, fearlessly, into the center of this blazing avalanche of light, losing your consciousness in That which is beyond consciousness. ¶And as you come back into the mind, you not only see the mind for what it is; you see the mind for what it isn’t. You are free, and you find men and women bound, and what you find you are not attached to, because binder and the bound are one. You become the path. You become the way. You are the light. And as you watch souls unfold, some choose the path of the spirit; some choose the path of the mind. As you watch and wonder, your wondering is in itself a contemplation of the universe, and on the brink of the Absolute you look into the mind, and one tiny atom magnifies itself greater than the entire universe, and you see, at a glance, evolution from beginning to end, inside and outside, in that one small atom. ¶Again, as you leave external form and dive into that light which you become, you realize beyond realization a knowing deeper than thinking, a knowing deeper than understanding, a knowing which is the very, very depth of your being. You realize immortality, that you are immortal—this body but a shell, when it fades; this mind but an encasement, when it fades. Even in their fading there is no reality. ¶And as you come out of that samadhi, you realize you are the spirit, you become that spirit, you actually are that spirit, consciously, if you could say spirit has a consciousness. You are that spirit in every living soul. You realize you are That which everyone, in their intelligent state or their ignorant state, everyone, is striving for—a realization of that spirit that you are. ¶And then again for brief interludes you might come into the conscious mind and relate life to a past and a future and tarry there but for a while. But in a moment of concentration, your eye resting on a single line of a scripture or anything that holds the interest of the mind, the illusion of past and future fades, and again you become that light, that life deep within every living form—timeless, causeless, spaceless. ¶Then we say, “Why, why, after having realized the Self do you hold a form, do you hold a consciousness of mind? Why?” The answer is but simple and complete: you do not; of yourself you do not. But every promise made must have its fulfillment, and promises to close devotees and the desire that they hold for realization of their true being hold this form, this mind, in a lower conscious state. Were the devotees and disciples to release their desires for realization but for one minute, their satguru would be no more. Once having realized the Self, you are free of time, cause and change.”