April 22nd Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 

Story time

·    Churning - symbolism

·       vaamana avataara

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

Congratulations class!!  We are so extremely proud of you!  It was nice to see all the kids wearing their medals to class today  :).  In yesterday's gItaa chanting competition, turn out from our class was the highest!  We have won an ice-cream party :).  But more importantly, by learning and participating in the gItaa chanting, we are all winners!!

After we celebrated for some time, we went back to our class schedule.  We did our beginning prayers and gurustotram.  As always, we did the gItaa chanting as well!  We did not learn it for the purpose of the competition alone, to leave it after the event!  We will be doing it as part of our schedule through out.  We are all such champs now, we do not need the script in front of us anymore.  The competition sure expedited the memorization :).

Even before we started the story time, we had a nice discussion about humility and righteousness.  Because we were on the topic, we listened to the story of arjuna and duryodhana's visit to shrI kRuShNa, before the mahaabhaarata war.  They both were seeking the Lord's favor, but only, one was arrogant and one was humble.  We discussed the outcomes of humility and our actions being righteous.  That lead to our story about the symbolism or churning.  The churning of the ocean is very symbolic of the churning of thoughts in our mind.  The good and bad thoughts we have are like the devas and asuras respectively. When we churn through them properly, with the aid of the Lord (like he did in kuurmaavataara), we are sure to attain the divine nectar!  For this we heard the story of the two frogs who fell in a huge jar of milk.  One gave up and drowned itself, where as the other didn't stop fighting.  Because of its constant paddling of its legs, it formed a lump of butter!  Due to that, it came out of the jar!

We then listened to the story of vaamaanaavataara.  bali, the grandson of prahlaada, was the king of asura-s.  He was a wonderful king and a good soul.  He was performing many a ashwamedha yagna-s which deterred indra's mother aditi.  She prayed to Lord viShNu.  He was born as her son, as a little dwarf.  They named him vaamana.  The little vaamana went to the yagna that bali was performing.  There bali was giving away gifts to all those present.  He asked vaamana what he wanted.  The Lord, in the form of vaamana, asked for 3 foot measure of land.  Knowing all well, it was the Lord, he agreed to it.  The Lord measured out the entire earth in one step and the sky with the other.  When the Lord asked where he should put the 3rd step, bali offered his own head.  The Lord put his foot and pushed him down.  bali had attained mokSha.  We discussed about how sometimes, what happens might seem like a bad thing, but in reality, the Lord has a bigger and better plan for us!  The fact that vaamana put his foot on bali's head seemed like a bad thing, but in reality, bali was made immortal!

We ended the class with our ending prayers.  After that, we had a photo session, with all the children proudly wearing their medals :).  Then we had a surprise candy treat for our wonderful grade 3 children!! Keep it up kids!
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

April 15th Class

Beginning prayers

      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  20 shlokas

Story time

·    Churning of the milky ocean

·       deva-s and asura-s

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

First of all, we have great news!  When we asked the children that are registered for the gItaa chanting to raise their hand... we had almost every hand up!  (The couple others who still haven't done so have promised to register tonight!!)  Congratulations parents for all the encouragement you have given them and timely registration.  We are so proud of them all.  Today, they chanted without the help of the script even.  We had some tweaking-s after the 15th verse.  They are all going to be practicing rigorously during the next week and perfect it by Saturday.  Best of luck to you all for the performance next week.  You will receive your time slots via e-mail.  Please be there on time, so that there are no back logs.

We recapped the story from last class.  We moved on to the story of the churning of milky ocean.  Once sage duurvaasa was returning from vaikuNTha.  He met indra on his way.  He offered him, as prasaadam, a garland of lotuses that was given to him by Lord viShNu.  But indra was arrogant about his power and threw the garland on his elephant airaavata.  The elephant mindlessly threw the garland down and trampled on it.  This enraged the sage.  He cursed indra saying that he would lose all his power and lustre and so shall the 3 worlds.  With this, the demons became very powerful and started troubling the devas.  The devas approached brahma, who in turn directed them towards Lord viShNu himself.  Lord viShNu asked the devas to churn the milky ocean, taking the help of the demons.  He instructed them to use the 'mandara parvatam' as the stick and snake 'vaasuki' as the rope for the churning.  He told the devas to approach the demons politely for help and accept all their conditions.  More than that, He told them to - not fear the bad and not greed for the good!  That is what set the devas apart from the asuras!

When they started churning, the mountain started sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  The devas approached Lord viShNu for help.  He took the form of a turtle (kuurma-avataara) and held up the mountain from the bottom of the ocean.  The churning continued.  While churning, first a lot of poisonous fumes came out.  The demons feared it.  But the devas approached Lord shiva.  He sucked up all the fumes into his palms and was about to drink it.  He had swallowed it, but his consort paarvati held his throat, so it wouldn't reach his stomach.  That turned shiva's neck into a deep blue hue.  He hence became neelakaNTha (blue necked one).  Then, one by one, came many treasures.  We have spoken about all those precious treasures and who took them.  Finally, dhanvantri came out with a pot of amRutam (divine nectar that would make one immortal).  The demons became greedy for that.  The devas just deplored Lord viShNu.  The Lord came in the form of a beautiful maiden named mohinI.  The demons were infatuated to her and allowed her to distribute the amRutam to all.  She promptly distributed it amongst all the devas.  But raahu, a demon snuck into the line of the devas and took a sip of amRutam.  By then, the Sun and Moon spotted the deceit and told Lord viShNu.  He in a rage cut off the head of raahu.  But because he had already tasted amRutam, he had become immortal.  He became a planet.

We spoke about the lessons we learnt from this story -
1)  Be polite, even to your enemies
2)  Surrender yourself to the Lord and He shall lead
3)  Do not fear the bad
4)  Do not greed for the good

We will continue further in the next class.

Best of luck to all of you for the Saturday's competition.  Do not forget to wear your participation medals to class on Sunday!  See you all then.
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

April 1st Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  20 shlokas

Story time

·      9 modes of devotion

·       gajendra mokSha

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

April 1st and  a crisp, bright  Spring day!

In the story segment, we learnt about Nine modes of Devotion.
We revisited the story of prahlaada and discussed the Nine modes of Devotion.

1) shravaNam- Listening to the  stories  about the Lord.
2) kIrtanam – Singing the glories of the Lord
3) (vishNu) naama smaraNam –Remembering the Lord always
4) paadasevanam – Serving him
5) archanam- Worshipping him
6) vandanam – Bowing to the Lord
7) daasyam – Being a servant of the Lord.
8) sakhyam – Loving the Lord as a friend
9) aatmanivedanam – Never to complain and surrendering to the Lord.
Please talk to your children the 9 modes. Ask them how they would greet each other (vandanam); Offer flowers and fruits to the Lord (archanam); telling a story to their friend the Lord (sakhyam).
Homework for this week- Writing the Lord’s name in the ‘Likitha Japa Book’- This mode of devotion is known as naama smaraNam.

Next we continued to talk about the story of gajendra mokSha.
An elephant king once resided in a forest. One day, the elephant king, gajendra, entered the garden with his entire family. He felt dizzy and decided to enter the cool lake. Just then he was attacked by a crocodile and he struggled hard to free himself. Alas he could not and he turned his thoughts to the Lord and prayed ardently.  shrI hari heard the desperate cry of the royal elephant. gajendra was at last freed from the clutches of the crocodile.

Who was the Crocodile?
It was gandharva called huhu. One day he was bathing in a tank. Rushi devala also went to the same tank. huhu tried to  play tricks on him. huhu got cursed, saying he would turn into a crocodile and would be released from the curse by the touch of the Lord’s divine discus, upon which he would be able to regain his gandharva form.
We talked about gandharva- means a messenger between God and human; husband of an apsara.

Who was gajendra?
In the previous birth gajendra was a pandya king, indradyumna. He was a great devotee of shrI hari. He took of the vow of silence and sat in the mountain to meditate. Rushi agastya came to his aashrama however the king did not get up to receive him.
agastya cursed him – “You will be dull like an elephant”.
But because of the devotion to shrI hari, he remembered and he was absolutely desperate to get away from the clutches of crocodile.
shrI hari came to rescue gajendra from the crocodile.

Moral of the story/ stories- One rises or falls according to one’s action.
The birth of  gajendra and crocodile were the results of a curse. They were cursed because of their actions.
No effect is possible without a cause.  For example if you plant orange seeds the result or effect is an orange tree. As you sow, so shall you reap.  Please talk to your kids and they will be able to retell in detail the stories we discussed in class.

Enjoy your Spring Break!!
Don’t forget keep practicing the Gita Chanting.
See you all on April 15th

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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: