May 20th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 

Story time

·    King ambarIsha

·         King rantideva

Chanting/Songs

·        raama hare kRuShNa hare - 5 verses

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

We started with our beginning prayers and continued into guru stotram and gItaa chanting.  During story time, we recapped our previous lessons.

We heard the story of king ambarIsha who was an ardent devotee of Lord viShNu.  He was very dear to the Lord himself.  Once when he was doing the dvaadashI vratam, sage dUrvaasa visited him.  The king offered the sage to have the meal with him.  The sage went to take a bath and took a long time.  It was time for the king to break his fast.  But it would be disrespectful to the sage to eat without waiting for him.  As a compromise to satisfy both the situations, he took a sip of water.  But that angered the sage and wanted to hurt him.  But the king was protected by the sudarshana chakra itself!  The chakra started chasing the sage.  He had no respite.  He could not hide in any corner of the 3 worlds, nor could the trinity of Gods help him.  Lord viShNu told the sage that even He was a servant of his devotees and only ambarIsha could save him.  Finally, the sage fell at ambarIsha's feet and asked for forgiveness.  But the king had no grudge against him.  All was well and they happily shared a meal together.

We moved on to the story of rantideva.  He was a very good king for his subjects and trusted the Lord completely!  He found happiness in feeling other's pain.  He enjoyed taking away the pain of others.  Once, when his land was afflicted by famine, he shared every last morsel of food and drop of water that he had.  With that, the Lord was pleased with him and blessed his kingdom with prosperity.

We learnt that trusting the Lord and being his devotee is the best way to eternal happiness.

We then chanted the first 5 verses of the dashaavataara stotram and the ending prayers, before going to the auditorium for aarati and pledge.

See you all in June.  Have a nice long weekend everyone!
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

May 6th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram

Gitaa chanting

·       bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  20 shlokas

Story time

·    Wisdom of the wise

·       RuShi chyavana

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

Our recap of the vaamana avataara was wonderful.  We jumbled  the words of 'vaamana' to 'maanava' meaning 'human'.  We came up with our own values that make us human, for each of the alphabet of the word 'human'.  We promised to consciously follow those values and walk back into class in 2 weeks, bettering ourselves!  We also learnt that the wisdom of the wise is in 'knowing that too much is too bad'.  We learnt a saying in Sanskrit for that, which is, 'ati sarvatra varjayEt'!  

Then we moved on to the story of RuShi chyavana.  He was an old sage who lived in a forest, in his ashram.  Once king shrayaati came with his daughter sukanyaa and he people.  While they were there, the young princess wandered around.  She saw two shiny objects gleaming through a mound of earth.  She got too curious.  Without thinking it through, she took a stick and poked at the shiny things.  Suddenly blood started oozing out.  She was terrified and immediately ran to her father.  Although she was scared, she told her father the truth.  When they saw, it was the sage himself performing penance under the mound of earth!  Her father being a noble king said that he will give his daughter in marriage to the sage, so she could tend to him and take care of him.  Princess sukanyaa was a dutiful wife and took care of the sage very well.  Once when the ashvinI kumaara-s (twins) were there.  sukanyaa was asked what boon she wanted.  She selflessly asked them to revive her husband.  Being pleased with her, they granted her wish.  We spoke in detail about how the RuShi regained his youth and how he promised the soma rasa (soma juice) offering for the ashvinI deva-s in the rituals.  He kept his promise although indra tried to oppose it.  Thenceforth, the ashvinI deva-s always got a portion of the soma juice offered to them.

We ended the class with the aarati and pledge.  


See you all at the bhaagavataa saptaaha happening at our ashram at Cranbury.  Since we are all learning the bhaagavatam, please make sure all the children also attend the discourses by Swamiji.  It shall only reinforce our learning in class!  It will be a wonderful experience to one and all.

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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: