All-stone Hindu temple rises in Kauai

In a clearing within Kauai Aadheenam's lush gardens, the ping, ping, pinging of metal chipping at stone can be heard as a half-dozen artisans from India put the finishing flourishes on the Hindu monastery's legacy for the ages.
Hand-carved in granite and shipped in pieces to the island from India, the Iraivan Temple is faithful to the precise design formulas defined by South Indian temple builders a thousand years ago.The $8 million temple to the god Shiva is the first all-stone Hindu temple outside of India, according to the Kauai monks. The project is a rarity even in India.The ranks of skilled carvers from India have dwindled in recent centuries, as stone has yielded to concrete and steel. Design modifications in new temples outside India have become a necessity to make worship at the traditionally open-air spaces bearable during the winters in Canada or New York City.Lush, tropical Kauai, known as Hawaii's Garden Isle, doesn't have that problem.
"Actually it's the first all-stone temple made anywhere in quite a while. I think our architect in India said he's made two in 50 years," said Sannyasin Arumugaswami, a generously bearded monk enveloped in an orange cotton robe.Construction began in 1990 and could take another 10 years to finish because of the mass of the structure and the skill needed to build it. The temple has already incorporated 80 shipping containers worth of stone and is surmounted by a gold-gilt cupola carved over three years by just four men.The building still awaits part of its roof and its lava rock base that will be an homage to the design of sacred Hawaiian heiaus, ancient stone platforms used for worship in the islands. And the 700-pound crystal lingam - a symbol of the god Shiva - now housed in the monastery's Kadavul Temple has yet to be installed in the new temple's inner sanctum.But the building began to spiritually "wake up" during a ceremony held last year."The way that we look at a temple in Hinduism is that the temple itself is a form of God. And so it is divine. It's not just a building. That's why we go through so much trouble to build it," Arumugaswami said....
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PS:Wouldn't surprise me at all to see Hawaii suffering a major catastrophe in the near future.How low we have fallen that we have to spend that many million dollars to erect a temple to worship the "god of destruction"?????Lord have mercy!!!!!!!!
As in the days of Noah...