Beginning prayers
· 'om' chanting - 3 times
· 'om' chanting - 3 times
· Meditation
· sahanaavavatu
· gurustotram
Gitaa chanting
· bhagavadgItaa 12th adhyaaya
Story time
· Churning - symbolism
· vaamana avataara
Ending prayers and pledge
· pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam
· chinmaya aarati
· om jaya jagadIsha hare
· pledge
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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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:
