The key tenets of Aloha as imparted by Native Hawaiian wisdom-holders of the 20th century.
“ALOHA is the word my kupunas attributed to the Universe. ALOHA is the Universe.” – Pilahi Pakī
“One ALOHA. One Spirit. One People.” – Pilahi Pakī
“ALOHA is something that is there. We can feel it but cannot touch it. ALOHA is a way of life because it takes your heart. The five ways to bring ALOHA out are: your eyes, your spoken words, your hands, your hearing and your breath.” – Pilahi Pakī
“ALOHA – the Spirit – is now hidden from us by a filmy veil of Eternity as revered Personalities. For ALOHA, as translated and interpreted by my ancestors, was an element of life. It was an element, vital and important to their daily habits in life. ALOHA for them was the spiritual essence endowed to man in his and her beginning. ALOHA was that tiny glow to or spark in life, which enabled man to imply his thoughts, and apply his heart, to the imagination and emotion of his and her Soul.” – Pilahi Pakī
“When I asked [my grandmother] why she fed [the stranger], she got angry and said, ‘ʻAʻole au i hānai aku nei i ka ke kanaka; akā hānai aku nei au i ka ʻuhane a ke Akua i loko ona – I was not feeding the man; I was entertaining the spirit of Aloha, within him.’ The practice of honoring the other was so much a part of [our] culture that it needed no name. Today, we call it the ‘ALOHA spirit,’ but to the Hawaiians of old, it was inherent and natural. They lived it. To feed a stranger passing by – that is pure aloha. Today, we have to be taught it because we are so far removed from the Hawaiian culture. And we have given it a name.” – Nana Veary
“Silence [in meditation is] a conscious acknowledgment of ALOHA’s allness. In silence, one is beyond words and thoughts. The deeper the silence, the more powerful the meditation. Silence was the secret of the power of the Hawaiians. Through silence, they communicated with nature. The language of silence salutes the divinity in all living things.” – Nana Veary
“All nature awaits our recognition, acceptance, and cooperation with it. All that [ALOHA] is, is around us and within us and eternally asking us to recognize it. Those who live without spiritual vision and understanding are forever trying to solve problems by manipulating their human minds and exerting their human wills. This does not work in the end because all problems begin and end in the individual’s own [mind]. As we realize that [ALOHA] is the basis of our individual consciousness, we begin to solve our problems at their point of origin, which is within ourselves.” – Nana Veary
“We enter silence through meditation. The highest form of meditation is inner stillness. In meditation, let your mind and heart release…let your body and all that surrounds it be still…let the earth and sea and air and heaven itself be still. Think of [ALOHA] streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining into you, through you, and out from you in all directions while you sit quietly. Life is lived from inside out. You are a dynamic center in the creative flow that is [ALOHA].” – Nana Veary
“Separation from [ALOHA] leads to deterioration. Anything or anyone separated from [ALOHA] begins to deteriorate mentally and physically and dies spiritually. Yet we stumble around in the dark. We create confusion and label it evil or call it demon. Neither exists in reality. We create our own evil and demons. We have separated from ALOHA and mistakenly invested confused thoughts with a power they do not have.
We need to repair the broken communication within ourselves. We must be honest with ourselves, forgive ourselves, get back in touch with [our] source, and all will be well. We can do it all by ourselves. In silence, we can.” – Nana Veary
“The consciousness of ALOHA, in being human is the essence, the sum and substance of all religion. It is the essence of the teachings of all the seers and mystics in the world’s history. To live ALOHA is the first essential of every satisfactory life. The second is to go out thinking, speak, writing, loving, living from this center to serve [that consciousness] in others.” – Nana Veary
“Western man has gone to the extremes with his intellectualism; it divides and keeps people separate. Man then becomes a destroyer because he manages and copes, rather than letting the perpetuating force of Divinity – ALOHA – through him for right action.” – Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona
“ALOHA is to learn what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, and to know the unknowable.” – Queen Liliʻuokalani
In 1970 at the Hawaiʻi Governorʻs conference on the year 2000, Kumu Pilahi Pakī gave the first public transmission of ALOHA:
A – Akahai – Hawaiʻi meaning Kindness to be expressed with a feeling of tenderness
L – Lōkahi – Hawaiʻi meaning Unity to be expressed with a feeling of harmony
O – ʻOluʻolu – Hawaiʻi meaning Agreeable to be expressed with a feeling of pleasantness
H – Haʻahaʻa – Hawaiʻi meaning Humility to be expressed with a feeling of modesty
A – Ahonui – Hawaiʻi meaning Patience to be applied with perseverance
