KAUAI, HAWAII, December 7, 2016 (Flux Hawaii by Jon Letman): The monks of Kauai’s Hindu Monastery [home of Hinduism Today and HPI] live a quiet life of prayer, meditation, and asceticism in pursuit of divine consciousness, begins this article that recently appeared in Flux Hawaii as part of their “Good Life” series. In 1969, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami set foot on the Garden Isle of Kaua’i. Widely respected in the Hindu world, Subramuniyaswami trained in Sri Lanka under Jnanaguru Yogaswami, a famed mystic. But it was the lush forests of Kaua’i that so captivated Subramuniyaswami, who would, one year later, found Kauai Aadheenam, a 382-acre Hindu monastery on the banks of the Wailua River.
This monastery, which began as a cloistered retreat, has become well-known internationally over the last 15 years. (Despite its remote location, the monks maintain a popular quarterly print magazine, Hinduism Today, which was founded in 1979 by Subramuniyaswami and reaches Hindus around the globe with its online version.) Here, beneath the shadow of Mount Wai’ale’ale, 21 monks from six nations–India, Malaysia, Canada, Singapore, France, and the United States–lead a spartan but fulfilled life, adhering closely to the Tamil culture, traditions, and theology of South India and Sri Lanka, and remaining true to the ideals of simplicity, austerity, and goodness, as defined by Subramuniyaswami
“Perfection isn’t measured by intellect or emotion,” says Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami, a monk with a long gray beard, whose saffron-colored robes indicate his elder rank. “The perfection is our soul.” A monk’s purpose, Palaniswami says, is to find perfection and to learn to abide there constantly. “Only then can you really share that with others,” he says.
For the full article as well as photos, see “source” above.