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Like everything in life, our point of view shapes our experience. Here at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery, we’re all familiar with the monks’ ground-level photos—bright baskets of vegetables, blossoms unfolding, quiet temple pujas, and those small daily miracles that make monastery life so rich.

But the photo above gives us something entirely different. It lifts us into the sky and turns us toward a direction we’ve never seen before. Suddenly the whole monastery reveals itself in a new light. Footpaths we walk every day connect into larger patterns. Buildings become part of a serene landscape design we didn’t know we were living inside. It’s a gentle reminder of how perspective changes everything.

As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

To help everyone orient themselves in this rare bird’s-eye view, we’ve labeled the main areas. Enjoy this fresh glimpse of our spiritual home—and may it inspire a renewed appreciation for this sacred land that holds our daily worship, work and service.

In the mystic, devotional songs to Siva, Saint Tayumanavar (1705–1742) beseeched humanity to see the one Divinity within all paths and philosophies. He sought to reconcile the religious conflicts of his day in South India—the Buddhists colliding with the Jains, the Vaishnavites quarreling with the Saivites—not unlike what we see in other parts of the world today. He had a Tamil word for it: samarasam. Samarasam literally means “same taste.” It denotes the harmony of doctrines, the inclusivity of religions, the bliss in which all dualities dissolve. It is, in essence, the high state of awareness that sees the One Divine equally in all beings. It reminds us that the thousand names of God are but echoes of one eternal Silence.

That call for religious harmony and reconciliation is a hallmark of Gurudeva’s teachings,and reaches back to Yogaswami before him. Saint Tayumanavar was deeply connected to our lineage, and sang that he followed the teachings of Tirumular, the second satguru on the Nandinatha Sampradaya.

Tayumanavar sings from within this current. His hymns revere both Vedas and Agamas, the saints and siddhars, and above all the living Guru who embodies their essence. He sees Saivism not as one creed among others but as the meeting point where outer differences are reconciled. For him mauna (silence) is not emptiness but the serene absorption that follows perfect understanding; and samarasam (harmony) is not compromise but the state in which Vedanta’s insight and Siddhanta’s devotion fuse as one path. His language of longing—sivanubhūti, anbu, jñāna, mauna—marks a heart that has passed beyond theology into direct awareness.

Today we share a sampling of his songs and art from the book we are soon to publish. 

Songs for Siva

Who was it that gave this egoity so much authority? Does this maya even exist outside of my thought? Will “sky flower’’ and “mirage water’’ ever have a practical use? Even my instructed state is thrown into confusion unless I receive Your grace to seek refuge in You. It performs a conjuring trick in my mind, establishing the illusory world as permanent. When shall I receive the secret of conquering this? Please tell me, O Jnanaguru Who expounds in Your grace the six established faiths and the philosophical unity of Vedanta and Siddhanta for all the worlds in cardinal directions to know. O Mantra Guru! O Yoga Tantra Guru! Mauna Guru who comes in the line of Tirumular!

Holding as real this body that is evanescent, like a flash of lightning, holding as real the pleasures of flashy women who intoxicate the senses with their collyrium-painted eyes, holding as heaven the stately mansion and mounting riches, holding gold as an imperishable treasure that waxes high, putting on false appearances to an excessive degree, abandoning to the winds the virtues of patience, wisdom, renunciation and charity, to be possessed of greed, miserliness and other demons, to walk about here below caught in the faith of the materialist—with a single word, in compassion, You kept me from all these that I might receive the grace of the great Vedanta-Siddhanta accord and enjoy the life eternal. O You Jnana Guru! O Mantra Guru! O Yoga Tantra Guru! Mauna Guru who comes in the line of Tirumular!