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Saiva Siddhanta Church is a spiritual institution and identifies itself with the Śaivite Hindu religion. It is based on the precepts of the Nandinatha Sampradaya, and traces its origins to a two-thousand-year-old lineage of the Kailāsa Paramparā Gurus.

The Church was founded in 1949 by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, a Saiva Hindu guru from the United States. The name of the Church is from the Sanskrit language and could be roughly rendered in English as "The Church of God Śiva's Revealed Truth."

Kauai Aadheenam, also known as Kauai's Hindu Monastery, located on the Garden Island of Kauai in Hawaii, is the headquarters of Śaiva Siddhanta Church. The Church is currently constructing the Iraivan Temple on Kauai.

The current head of the Church is Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami.

Criticism

Referring to the Iraivan Temple, New York Times reporter Michelle Kayal wrote:

Some critics question the temple's religious significance, saying Hinduism is a matter of birth and inheritance, not of spirituality. Saiva Siddhanta's founding guru and most of the monastery's monks are Westerners who adopted Hinduism. "It's sort of white people's Hinduism," said Lee Siegel, a professor of Indian religions at the University of Hawaii. "It doesn't say much about India or India and the Diaspora. It says something about people of my generation, George Harrison Hindus. Most Indians that I ask about the Hindu temple on Kauai say it's very nice. But in a real Brahminical sense, I don't think it can be taken seriously."

Notes

1. Don Baker (31 May 2010). Asian religions in British Columbia. UBC Press. pp. 26–. ISBN 978-0-7748-1662-5. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
2. Kayal, Michele (7 February 2004). "Religion Journal; For Temple, 1,600 Tons, 8,000 Miles and 1,000 Years". The New York Times. p. 5.

External links

• Śaiva Siddhanta Church's homepage

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