Kauai Aadheenam

Welcoming the Nartana Ritau and the New Year

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  • The sun and the new season’s flag rise together
  • The morning begins with a 5:30am Siva Homa in Kadavul Temple
  • Many written prayers to the Devas and Mahadevas were submitted. Satguru adds them to the flame.
  • Afterwards, everyone sits to listen to a talk from Satguru
  • Today Satguru focused on a passage from Gurudeva about Nirvakalpa Samadhi
  • The previous season’s flag is ready to be replaced
  • Everyone parades along the cliffs edge towards the flagpole
  • Iraivan Temple always looks nice in the morning light
  • Everything does, actually.
  • Satguru detaches the old flag
  • The new orange flag of the Nartana Ritau is raised
  • Aum Namah Śivaya

Happy New Year of Parabhava!

This samvatsara (year) is commonly associated with a theme of dissolution and transformation.
Para (परा): “away,” “beyond,” “off,” “reversed” — a prefix indicating reversal, opposition, or loss; bhava (भव): “being,” “becoming,” “existence,” “state” (from the root bhū, “to be”).
Taken together it references a “reversal of the current state of being” often stated as a “downfall which leads to its opposite.” Sounds like a good time for spiritual growth!

Today our monks began the day with our seasonal homa and a parade out to our flagpole. They raised the new dvaja for this spring season and for the new year as the Sun enters Mesha (Aries).

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.

Aum Namah Śivaya

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Monks in New York

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  • A family photo with the Nataraj Family at the Natural History Museum
  • Our monks landed in New York on a sunny spring day
  • While waiting to check into their hotel, they take a Sunday morning coffee-walk in Central Park.
  • The next Day, Gajanan leads everyone through the Natural History Museum
  • Dinosaurs!
  • The 3rd and final day was the conference
  • In the evening, some time to explore the city a bit. Times Square was only a few blocks away.
  • The next morning, our monks flew home with the sunrise in tow.

Jai Ganesha!

Last week, Sannyasin Tillainathaswami and Sadhaka Sabanatha made a quick trip to New York City and back. While there they enjoyed spending time with the Nataraj family, as well as exploring around Manhattan. Our monks were in the city for a conference that focused on AI tools in digital media creation and workflows. There were many high-level presenters and executives there, including creative leaders from LucasFilm, Paramount, Nvidia, Runway Ai, Adobe, and a variety of film companies, who are all finding the best way to implement ai into their creations, without sacrificing the heart of their work—human creativity. Many of the media producers there emphasized that they always start with human ideas, artwork, character design, story, etc. and only use ai to supplement the workflows that follow. Nvidia presented info about their new supercomputers and gave a glimpse into where video-creation ai tools are going, as far as their power and speed. Our monks are working to implement some of the ideas presented, particularly from companies that outlined their creative workflow for their short films and tv shows. Hopefully this will help reduce the friction and time in creating our educational content.

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Stormy March Weather Over Kauai

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  • Recent rains have been swelling our ponds and streams
  • High winds have kept the clouds moving over the aadheenam at a quick pace
  • We are on the north fork of the Wailua River. The rain overflowed our rain gauge, so the river is bound to rise even more that this
  • This is the overflowing bridge to our agricultural land, along the southern river fork. The river is usually 10-15ft below this.
  • Easy to find water on a lotus leaf in this weather
  • Our pathways and roads become little waterways of their own
  • “Be like the river water. Water flows freely anywhere, easily finding its way around rocks and trees. Be pliable in your life, moving in rhythm with life. Let go of everything that blocks the river of life’s energy.”
  • The Narmada Lingam receives a constant abhishekam
  • This is a 8 inch seed pod of a carnivorous flower vine
  • The Blue Jade Vines are starting to bloom
  • There are very few things in nature that produce blue pigment
  • The walking palm doesn’t have to walk very far to reach water today
  • Many of our various palm species have been vigorously flowering this month
  • San Marga is still very walkable, as long as you bring an umbrella
  • Many types of plants are blooming along it
  • The bamboo on Muruga Hill is loving the extra rain
  • Muruga’s Vel gains contrast in the weather and shines with water
  • We have many ginger plant varieties that are flowering too
  • The lava rock bell along San Marga is full of green life
  • Between bouts of rain, the sun dries Iraivan’s stonework, only for it to receive water again a few minutes later

Aum Namah Sivaya

Join us on an adventure through our gardens as we enjoy our fresh jungle rainfall! Recently a large weather system has been passing over the island. First a cooler atmosphere with torrential rains, and then warm winds with powerful gusts. At time of writing, the winds seem to have concluded and our gentle, sunny days have returned.

“We are divine souls on a wondrous journey. We came from God, live in God and are evolving into oneness with God. We are, in truth, the Truth we seek.” Gurudeva

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The First Temple

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  • “When we look at the beautiful creations of nature, we see how lovely the mind can be. ” – Gurudeva
  • “All Hindus feel they are guests on the planet with responsibilities to nature”
  • “which when fulfilled balance its responsibilities to them”
  • “The physical body was gathered from nature and returns to it”
  • “Nature is exquisitely complex and orderly”
  • “The coconut always yields a coconut tree, a lotus a lotus, a rose a rose, not another species.”
  • “How constant nature is, and yet how diverse, for in mass producing its creations, no two ever look exactly alike.”
  • “Yes, the Hindu knows himself to be a part of nature and seeks to bring his life into harmony with the universal path, the sustaining cosmic force.” – Gurudeva

Jai Ganesha!

In an oft overlooked sentence among his many teachings, Gurudeva describes nature as “the first temple.” Indeed the Aadheenam’s natural surrounding jungle lands are a testament to this idea. Even when outside of the monastery temples, you can’t help but feel that your still within one. On their walk through nature our monks regularly photograph the beauty they find.

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New Master Course Trilogy Chatbot

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Aum Namah Sivaya

After visiting the Aadheenam last year, University student Aditya Muthaiah was inspired to create an ai chatbot that can answer questions related to the Master Course trilogy. Essentially, an existing Ai model was trained on a specific set of data (the master course) and then instructed to gather it’s responses solely from that resource. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for the response to come through. You can try it below, or use it on this webpage: https://www.himalayanacademy.com/master-course-chatbot/. If it gives an error, try resubmitting the same question and it should work the second time. It doesn’t use a temporary memory, so rather than approaching it conversationally, always give full context to each question.

Master Course Trilogy Chatbot

Ask questions and get answers grounded in the Master Course Trilogy.

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