Hari Om!
With Pujya Gurudev's Grace and our Swamiji's blessings, we enter another Bala Vihar year! Here is our update on class happenings so far:
Stotram: sahanA vavatu and Gita Dhyanam (learnt up to verse 2)
We will continue with Gita Dhyanam in every class.
Yudhishtira's question to Bhishma: At the end of the Mahabharata war, Yudhishtira went to Bhishma, who was lying on the bed of arrows, to get his blessings and sage advice. He asked Bhishma, "If one wants to have a good life, what should one do? What should one avoid?" Bhishma then enumerated the various actions that can be committed physically, through speech, and through thoughts that detract from having a good life.
The three sins committed by the body are: to kill someone, to steal, and to have illicit relations.
The four sins committed by speech are: to say bad words/curse, to say harsh words to someone, to lie, and to spread rumors
The three sins committed by thought are - greed/ jealousy, ill-feeling for anyone, doubt or lack of faith
We used the discussion on these concepts to lead on to a discussion on Karma.
Concept of Karma: Karma is an action performed by a doer, which could be a physical action, an action by speech, or by thoughts. There is always a result that accrues to the doer for this action, but the timing varies. We all do karma all the time, just simply breathing even, so it seems an inescapable cycle of accruing good/bad karma and then living it out throughout one's many lives! Is there a way out of the incessant cycle? We just have to wait to find out in the next class!
Bhagavad Gita: We started with Chapter 15, verses 1 and 2. Please bookmark the playlist:
The kids played a game based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_stones. We used beach buckets instead of stones. The two teams took some time to figure out the rules. However, they soon started enjoying it. The weather was wonderful. Hopefully, the short class with good Karma concepts and a good game would have made it refreshing for them. Short videos of them playing the game were shared in the WhatsApp parents' group.
Regards,
Partha Turaga
Abhirami Shrinivas
