Hawaii

Photos: An all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple in Hawaii

Published

6 months ago

November 23, 2023

Photos: An all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple in Hawaii

It is the only all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple in the West built without power tools or electricity, and it is nestled on one of the smaller islands in Hawaii surrounded by lush gardens and forests.

On the island of Kauai, the presence of the Iraivan Temple – a white granite edifice with gold-leafed domes, modelled after millennia-old temples in southern India – is unexpected and stunning. Less than 1 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents are Hindus and on Kauai, the number of Hindus may not even exceed 50, according to some estimates.

But that has not deterred the two dozen monks living at the Kauai Aadheenam campus from being good neighbours and stewards of their faith, drawing pilgrims and seekers from around the globe. In this all-male temple-monastery complex, the monks study and practise Shaivism, a major tradition within Hinduism, which holds Lord Shiva as the supreme being.

One of the order’s monks, who has spent decades supervising the temple’s construction and tending to its gardens, is Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami, who came to the Kauai community of Kapaa in 1968 with his teacher and the centre’s founder, the late Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.

He says the Iraivan Temple was inspired by the founder’s mystical vision of Lord Shiva seated on a large boulder on these grounds. Its construction began in 1990 and continued after the founder’s death in 2001. The word “Iraivan” means “he who is worshipped” in Tamil, a language spoken about 13,000km (8,000) miles away in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state.

The monks created an entire village in India for the artisans who hand-built the temple over the last 33 years, said Palaniswami.

“Our guru believed that electricity brings a magnetic force field and a psychic impact,” he said. “It’s like when the power goes out during a storm, something different happens when there is no electricity. There is a certain quiet, a calmness.”

Illuminated only by oil lamps, Iraivan has no fans or air-conditioning. Its architectural style is inspired by the Chola Dynasty, which ruled parts of India and Sri Lanka for about 1,500 years, starting in 300 BC.

The main deity is the 318kg (700-pound) quartz crystal shivalingam, an abstract representation of Shiva. The campus also houses Kadavul Temple dedicated to Shiva in the cosmic dancer form, or Nataraja.

Priest Pravinkumar Vasudeva arrived in March, when the temple – a formation of 3,600 stones, pillars and beams made with roughly 3.2 million pounds of granite – was consecrated. He is still amazed it stands on this tiny island.

“In India, you could possibly build something like this, but it hasn’t been done,” he said. “Here, it is nearly impossible, but it has been done.”

Monks say the order began in 1948 with founder Subramuniyaswami, a former San Francisco ballet dancer who sought out a spiritual teacher. In northern Sri Lanka, Guru Yogaswami initiated him into Shaivism and instructed him to build “a bridge between the East and the West”, said Palaniswami, the garden-tending monk.

Based in San Francisco in 1969, the founder “felt the sacred pull” of the Kauai property while on a retreat there, the monk said. It was a rundown Tropical Inn resort at the time.

To native Hawaiians, the plot of land was known as Pihanakalani, or “the fullness of heaven”. Cognizant of that connection, Subramuniyaswami wanted to make sure the new temple aligned with native Hawaiian spirits.

So, 35 years ago, he reached out to Lynn Muramoto, a local Buddhist leader who had navigated a similar situation. She is the president of the Lawai International Center on Kauai, which is home to 88 Shingon Buddhist shrines on an ancient sacred site where Hawaiians once came for healing.

She visited the temple site with the late Abraham Kawai’i, a revered Hawaiian spiritual practitioner, or kahu, and witnessed the “deeply moving” moment when Kawai’i called the location “perfect”.

Sabra Kauka, a native Hawaiian cultural practitioner on Kauai, said she was “a little aghast” in the beginning, but then consulted Aunty Momi Mo’okini Lum, her calabash aunt who is descended from Moikeha, the chief from Tahiti who built Pihanakalani some 1,000 years ago.

Lum told her the monks had the means to take care of the land in perpetuity. “And so I laid down my concerns,” she said.

Kauka praised the monks’ landscaping, from plant choices to controlling invasive species.

“The very fact that we have people on this island who care for our historic places, realise the value of them and are taking care of them in an exquisite way is remarkable,” Kauka said.

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Hawaii

Cast of Cancelled NCIS: Hawai’i Gathers at Sunset to Celebrate Ohana

Published

1 hour ago

May 11, 2024

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Cast of Cancelled ‘NCIS: Hawaii’ Gathers at Sunset to Celebrate Ohana

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Hawaii

Hawaii baseball team makes it 10 straight with rout of UC Riverside

Published

8 hours ago

May 11, 2024

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Hawaii baseball team makes it 10 straight with rout of UC Riverside

Quality starts continue to provide the Hawaii baseball team with its longest stretch of quality play in some time.

The Rainbow Warriors attained their NCAA-leading 10^th straight win with an 8-2 victory over UC Riverside at Les Murakami Stadium on Friday night, thanks in large part to Randy Abshier’s second straight scoreless start.

A night after reaching the 30-win plateau for the first time since 2012, UH (31-15, 14-9 Big West) achieved a double-digit win streak for only the second time since 2000. The Rainbow Warriors claimed their fourth straight series since getting swept at conference leader UC Santa Barbara in mid-April.

Morale is high, though a postseason berth is still unlikely with seven games remaining in the regular season and no winning teams left to face to boost UH’s resume.

“It happens when you’re on this streak. The vibe in the dugout is awesome,” coach Rich Hill told the Spectrum Sports crew postgame. “People are comfortable with their roles. And we have a good time, anyway. I just believe in that. Baseball’s supposed to be fun. We have a real good synergy going right now.”

Abshier (4-4) went 6 1/3 innings with just four hits and no walks allowed while striking out five. The left-hander from San Diego has 13 1/3 straight scoreless innings going back to last weekend’s start against Cal State Northridge.

“He’s great. This time of the season that slider is really working for him,” Hill said. “He has a lot of confidence in that changeup. Playing with that 90 mph fastball, it’s tough on opposing hitters.”

When UCR got consecutive one-out singles on Abshier in the seventh, Itsuki Takemoto came out of the bullpen and elicited a strikeout and a lineout.

UH took a shutout into the ninth inning but the Highlanders (15-30, 5-18) got on the board against Takemoto with two walks and a double.

Dallas Duarte got a night off from catching as he swapped roles with usual designated hitter Austin Machado, who went 3-for-5 with a pair of doubles and drove in three runs.

Kyson Donahue reached the 100-RBI mark for his UH career with a single to left in the sixth. Jordan Donahue and Elijah Ickes registered multi-hit games – for Ickes it was his fourth straight.

Center fielder Matthew Miura made a highlight diving grab of Cole Koniarsky as the first out in the top of the ninth, and Jared Quandt made a similar play to Rudy Rodriguez IV in right to end the game.

The teams have the day off Saturday for UH Manoa graduation and are scheduled to finish the series at 1:05 p.m. Sunday.

Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.

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Hawaii

This Hawaii track star is a natural, but she’s not afraid to ‘put in that work’ to excel

Published

15 hours ago

May 11, 2024

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This Hawaii track star is a natural, but she’s not afraid to ‘put in that work’ to excel

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Most every high school class has that one natural athlete where everything seemingly comes so easy.

At Mid-Pacific Institute, Destiny Look fits that description and this weekend, she’s closing in on a state championship in the 300-meter hurdles — a sport she only started two years ago on the fly.

“We kind of did it as a joke at first and then I was like, I kind of want to do this in a meet,” Look said. “I guess it kind of came natural. I did gymnastics as a kid, too, and I have these boards in my house I kind of walk over, so it was kind of just hurdle form already — walk over, bring your leg over, so I already had it in my brain.”

The problem is at that time MPI didn’t have a full-time hurdling coach or program, but longtime track coach Rick Hendrix trained himself up and could see right away, Look had it down.

“In the 100 hurdles, you three step in between every hurdle,” Hendrix said. “By the first week, she was doing it and just three-stepping. Most girls it’s either four or five step, but to be really good at it, you three step.”

Since then, Look has bolted off the blocks winning multiple ILH championships in the 300m and 100 hurdles, the long jump, and a school record in high jump.

“She has the speed and she has the endurance of a long-distance runner, which is a great combination,” Hendrix said. “You don’t see that too much.”

And track isn’t her only love as she’s excelled in soccer, cross country and basketball.

This past season, she tried out for the Owls varsity volleyball team, made the cut, and in her first year in the sport, won a state championship.

“I didn’t start, I wouldn’t play as much,” Look said. “I put in that work at practice and I showed them, I can play. Then I started building up, play a little more, help the team, it was just a fun experience overall.”

This weekend’s state tournament is only one event on a packed calendar..

Next month, she heads to Oregon for the prestigious Nike outdoor national tournament and then it’s off to Texas for the USA Track and Field Junior Olympics.

Her hope is to eventually land at a division 1 university with the goal of competing at the Olympics in the heptathlon.

“I usually just think I gotta go full out and it’s just me against the clock,” Look said. “Just always trying to cut down on those times and get a good time for a PR or something.’’

Given her knack for multi-tasking, she’ll be just fine.

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