March 25th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  20 shlokas (full)

Story time

·    hiraNyakashipu

·      prahlaada

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

Our numbers are soaring high!  What are we talking about - gItaa chanting registrations!!  More that 75 present of the children in today's class are registered for the competition!!!  We are oh so proud of them!!  They have all been practicing and getting more and more comfortable every week!  Continue the good work everyone.  Those who have not registered, please make sure you do so at the earliest.

In the story segment, our discussions are getting intense!  Sometimes, we wish we had more time to continue the conversations, but have to wrap up invariably.  We revised the story of hiraNyaakSha, varaaha avataara, jaya & vijaya.  This was to set the stage for today's story of hiraNyakashipu and prahlaada.  When hiraNyaakSha was killed, although hiraNyakashipu spoke words of wisdom about the soul being different from the body, he developed an intense hatred towards Lord viShNu.  He did very rigorous penance for many years, upon which brahma had to give him the boon he asked for.  He wished to be not killed by a god or a man, a boy or a girl, in the house or outside the house, during the day or in the night.... The list went on.  Effectively, hiraNyakashipu had made himself invincible.  This made him extremely arrogant.  He insisted that he be worshiped by all as god himself!  Everyone did so, but were fed up of the tyranny.  Lord viShNu promised to take care of the problem.  hiraNyakashipu had 4 sons, youngest of them was prahlaada.  For his father's agony, he was an ardent devotee of Lord viShNu.  No matter how his father tried to convince him, prahlaada would not stop being engrossed in thoughts of viShNu.  Losing all options, the father tried to get rid of him by throwing his own son off of a cliff, pushing him in fire, leaving him with poisonous snakes, getting him trampled by rut elephants, even poisoning his food!  But nothing would affect the little devotee of the Lord.  Really annoyed by this, the father got into an argument with the son as to why he worships viShNu.  When the son replies that He is omnipresent everywhere, hiraNyakashipu breaks open a pillar, asking his son if viShNu was in that pillar.  Sure enough, the Lord jumped out of the pillar in the form of 'narasimha' (half man, half lion) and slit open hiraNyakashipu with his bare claws, on the threshold.  (We discussed the work-arounds for the boon hiraNyakashipu was given :).  Then to pacify narasimha, prahlaada sang his glories.  He did not want anything by to be with naraayaNa.  But the Lord blessed him and said, may you lead a successful life of leading others till the end of your time and at the end of it, you shall attain Me.

With this story, we understood that age or size are of no importance.  What matters is the shraddha, the faith we have in what we believe in!  We had interesting discussions.  Please talk to your children more about it.

See you all next week.
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

March 18th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  20 shlokas

Story time

·    indra and vRutraasura

·         chitraketu

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

All of our chantings are coming along very well!  We finished learning the words to all the 20 verses of the 12th chapter!  We still have a whole month to practice before the competition.  The children have promised to practice regularly and by April 1st class, they will chant in class, without looking at the script.  Good luck everyone.  Practice well!

Today we heard the story of indra and vRutraasura, as well as chitraketu.  Once when indra got proud and arrogant, he ignored his teacher bRuhaspati.  So, the teacher abandoned the devas and went away.  So the devas got a 'substitute' ;) teacher vishwaroopa (son of tvaShTa).  He was part deva and part asura.  So he was teaching the asuras on the side.  On learning this, indra was angry and killed vishwaroopa.  In turn, his father tvaShTa performed a yagna and created a very powerful asura called vRutra.  vRutraasura's task was to fight the devas.  He was destroying the devas very easily.  On shiva's advise, indra made a weapon (vajra-aayudha) with the bones of a dadIchi (a great devotee of Lord viShNu).  Although vRutra was a demon, when he saw the weapon made of the bones of viShNu's devotee, he was willing to be killed with it.  So he swallowed indra and the weapon, so indra had to rip him open to come out.

It does seem strange why vRutraasura was being so honorable.  That brings us to the background story, that of chitraketu.  He was a very good man.  But one day, when he was travelling around mount kailash, he saw Lord shiva and paarvati sitting together and made a rude comment.  At this, Lord shiva did not respond, but mother paarvati cursed him that he will be born as an asura, for having not had a hold on his tongue.  Hence, he was born as vRutraasura.  With this, we learnt that our tongue can be our very best friend as well as our worst enemy, depending on how we use it!

Along with these stories, we also discussed about our last week's story of ajaamiLa and the thoughts we were talking about.  Please talk to your children more about their thoughts in this regard.

Happy ugaadi/gudi paaDwa to you all.
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

Here is the blog for March 17th 2012

 

We started today's class with 5 minutes meditation followed by chanting Guru stotram. The children are learning the Dasavtar stotram.

We revised the story we did in last class - the story of king Bharata who gets attached to a small deer and think of the deer at the last moment of his life, because of which he takes next birth of a deer. The children learnt that what person thinks at the last moment of his life the same desires he carries to his next birth.

Through the story of Ajamila we leaned how the bad company can change the person and makes the person get in to the trouble. Also how the person thinks of the lord a t the last moment of his life and gets the blessing of the lord.

The children learned the story of Indra's pride and Chitraketu taking birth as Vrtasura.

We chanted chapter 12th of Geeta upto 15th shloka.

 

Wish you all a happy new year on the celebration of yugadi and Gudhi padva on March 23rd

See you next Sunday March 25th, 2012.

 

Regards

Alka Aunty and Prasad uncle.

March 11th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  17 shlokas

Story time

·    priyavrata ajaamiLa

·       ajaamiLa

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati - in the auditorium

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare - in the auditorium

      ·        pledge - in the auditorium

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

Today's class began with quite a few kids in a sleepy mode :), thanks to the spring forward time.  But very quickly, the mood changed!  We did the beginning routines as well as any day!  The gItaa chanting is going on in full swing.  We are up to the 17th shloka.  The children are very excited about the competition.  But not all of them are registered.  Parents, please be reminded to register them :).

During story time, we heard the story of priyavrata, one of manu's sons.  He was a very keen learner and because of his goodness, he got to learn from maharShI naarada himself.  When they were in an in depth discussion about brahman, Lord viShNu himself appeared and gave him knowledge.  He surrendered to the Lord and accepted everything as God's will.  To understand that, we heard the story of the king who went with his minister, who said 'all that happens is for good and it is God's will'.  The king understands with life experiences that the minister was right!

We also heard the story of ajaamiLa.  He was an honest man, who was an ardent devotee, who prayed and did his yagnas, etc.  But he fell in bad company and forgot all about his prior practices.  He became the exact opposite.  He was very sick and was about to die.  Lord yama's men came to take his life.  At that last minute, he being very fond of his youngest son, naaraayaNa, calls out for him.  On hearing the name of the Lord, shrIman naaraayaNa's men come to protect him!  An argument ensues between the men of yama and naaraayaNa.  Having no choice, yama's men leave.  ajaamiLa realizes his mistake and becomes pious again!  On hearing this story, the children had a hoard of questions!!  Mainly, how come he was protected by viShNu, even though he was being bad!  For that, we spoke about a few examples regarding bad company.  Just the way one rotten apple spoils the whole basket, bad company spoils even the best of us! We heard how Vinobha bhaave's father brought him two books of raamaayaNa and mahaabhaarata and told him that they would be his best companions!  Given the time, our discussions would have continued for another half hour, but we had to finish with the ending prayers to go to the auditorium.  But there is always next class to continue :).
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: