The Monk from the Nikon Monastery

He had a Nikon DSLR and was tak­ing pic­tures of the Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. I was quite per­plexed, see­ing either a tourist, dressed as a monk, or a monk, who is suf­fer­ing from short mem­ory loss, so that he has to pho­to­graph a place, he sup­pos­edly never leaves?

We hov­ered around the tem­ple in the cen­ter of the monastery. It is not sup­posed to be pho­tographed, and I wan­dered around the entrance, not sure if i am allowed to enter it or not. “Only for med­i­ta­tion and ceremonials” — the sign read. One might be the non­cha­lant tourist at times, to get the pho­to­graph, one wants, step­ping over fences, ignor­ing signs with nasty names like “pri­vate prop­erty” and sim­i­lar. But this was some­thing dif­fer­ent. A spir­i­tual place, that I intended to respect, even when the con­cept of “enlight­ment” not some­thing I lean into.

Monk with a DSL at the Hindu Monastery, Kauai, Hawaii

On our way out we came across Para­macharya Palaniswami, who seemed to have real­ized that we are the last ones of our tour on our way to the exit. I could not help but ask, if I may enter the tem­ple, even when I am nei­ther med­i­tat­ing nor a believer. “Sure, you can have a quite time there. Let’s call it meditation.” — he blinked at me.

Ok. A monk with a sense of humor. Never saw that com­ing. I ended up spik­ing him with ques­tions about the strict­ness and dis­ci­pline of a monk’s life. He has to attend a morn­ing cer­e­mony at 4:30 am EVERY day. If you are a sec­ond late, you have to do other monk’s work for that day. “It hap­pens some­times. Mostly when we for­get to put new bat­ter­ies into our alarm clocks”. Apart from that, he lives in a stone build­ing, sleep­ing on a mat­tress, with­out elec­tric­ity and plumb­ing. (Kinda like the wooden hut, build by my grand­fa­ther on the stream Kocaba in Czech Republic.)

Iraivan Temple, Kauai, Hawaii

He shared his view on the strict­ness and dis­ci­pline. A point I never heard any­one to put like that. “You see, I con­sider myself as an ath­lete. In order to become a mas­ter, in order to reach enlight­en­ment, I have to train. And it is very hard. Most peo­ple can­not go through that. Imag­ine the day of Michael Phelbs. The train­ing, rep­e­ti­tion and dis­ci­pline he has to go through, in order to be the fastest swim­ming human being on the planet. This per­ma­nent exer­cise lead him to 7 or how much gold medals he won. I hope to achieve that for myself on the path of enlight­en­ment. Becom­ing a master.”

I stood there for a while, think­ing hard, while Palaniswami thanked me for pos­ing the right question.

Palaniswami is the edi­tor in chief of the Monastery’s pub­li­ca­tions for offline and online com­mu­ni­ca­tions. So no, they are not in the 14th cen­tury quite, like one might eas­ily con­clude. Email, Face­book, Google­Books — be care­ful not to be caught a tech­no­log­i­cal idiot in front of this orange-​​robe wear­ing man, who’s blue eyes look into your soul.