Kauai Aadheenam

Today we installed the amazing bronze murti of our founder, Gurudeva. He now greets and blesses all pilgrims and visitors in his garden shrine at the entrance to the monastery. For a few years we had a stone murti there, but it began to erode in the tropical weather. This will endure.

This 25″ tall masterpiece is the work of Holly Young who lives on the Big Island. The original was sent last year to the little temple in Sri Lanka which houses our four most recent satgurus. It was so beautiful, we got Bodhinatha’s permission to have the team in Colorado make two copies, one for the Spiritual Park (which arrived about 12 days back) and another for Kauai Aadheenam. All three are now where they belong.

Today we reached the $80,000 goal of our annual Digital Dharma Drive! It was not at all certain we would meet the goal, but in the last few hours before tonight’s transition to 2025, a few generous donors recognized our plight and gave abundantly. We are grateful for this amazing support. It means we can proceed with our highest ambitions in the year ahead, producing a third edition of Lemurian Scrolls, a new edition of Patanjali’s famed Yoga Sutras (fully illustrated by our Kerala artist), a new edition of Saint Tayumanavar’s 1,454 devotional poems to Siva, website enhancements and more. Mahalo nui loa, as the Hawaiian say.

Consider the cosmic rhythm of creation, preservation and dissolution. Much of what we do in life is by way of maintaining what was created in the past. Housekeeping, equipment maintenance, mowing the lawn, washing the clothes. Now and again we get to create something special (which will need maintenance far into the future!)

This week we created a new little forest of Rudraksha trees from Nepal. Just 15 trees, so we call it our Nepalese Rudraksha Grove. The seed for this was sown some 2-3 years ago when we did a major article on the Rudrakshas of Nepal. We flew Nikki Thapa from Kathmandu to the deep Khandari Valley that lies just 33 miles from Mount Everest. The story was fascinating, full of facts like Rudraksha sales represent 6% of Nepal’s GNP, and the rather stunning fact that the most expensive single bead every purchased on auction went for $84,000 (it had 33 faces, so one in a billion). Nikki sent us a handful of beads from that valley, and we were amazed how distinctive they were, bigger, lighter in color and even more ornately “carved” than the Indian beads.

So we flew Nikki back to the valley with the mission to acquire 18 small trees which—after nurturing them in her home for the winter—she packed and shipped to Kauai. They grew slowly at first, but when they realized where they were they took off and became lush and healthy. They were ready to get out of their pots, so we cleared a portion of our cow pasture, put up fencing to keep the cows from making them bovine salad, dug 15 holes (three did not make the journey) and planted them in our finest plant mix. They are settling in, happy to be out near their comrades, the Indian Rudrakshas. In the future pilgrims can visit two rudraksha forests from two nations, and the Mini Mela will have a new offering for pilgrims, grown on the Aadheenam grounds. So, having created a sacred space for future pilgrims, we settle in to mowing the field, fertilizing the saplings, mending the fences and so it goes. Create, maintain, dismantle. Take a breath and repeat.

This photo shows the color difference between the darker ruddy brown of the Indian bead and the lighter khaki brown of the Nepalese beads. Only usually the Nepali beads are larger than their Indian brethern.