Greetings and pranamams to all.
We welcomed a few more new students to the second class and started off with a brief session of meditation - focusing and daily prayers. We had the kids recite Gurustotram. We are very happy to note that a majority of the kids still remember the stotaram with a little help. Please continue to encourage them at home.
Sangitaji started of the session with a story about a noble king who was eager to make himself a better person and help his subjects become better too. In his quest he seeked out one and all, the answers to three seemingly simple questions - when should I start working, who is the most important person in the world, what should I do ? Having not received a very satisfactory answer from any of his counselors, ministers in his court, he sets out to a different town in disguise to seek the answers from a wise man.
Having arrived at the wise man's house, he sees him busy tending to his garden. He approaches the wise man and states the objective of his coming and repeats the questions. The wise man does not heed the king and continues to work on his garden. After a while, the king in disguise sees the wise man getting tired doing gardening, so steps up to help him in his yard work. While helping him in his work, king repeats his questions, again the wise man remains silent. At this point, the king was getting impatient with the wise man and was angry that he was being ignored, yet he retains his composure and continues to help him.
As the evening was falling, suddenly, the king and wise man see a wounded man yelling for help in the distance. The wise man and king rush to the wounded man and help him and bring him to the house. They tend to his wounds and the wise man hosts both the king and wounded man that night. The king hopes the wise man would address his questions at least now, to his dismay, he does not get any answers. Early next morning, the wise man gets up and starts tending to his garden, in the mean time the wounded man and king get up. After getting up, the wounded man starts apologizing to the king profusely. The king who was in disguise is bewildered and asks him why the person was apologizing. Hearing the commotion, the wiseman walk in to the house. The wounded man then states the reason for apologizing. On inquiring why he was apologizing to him, He informs the king that he was angry at him because he thought he was wronged due to an incorrect judgement that the king had given a while ago. He was aggrieved and wanted to hurt the king, so he followed the king and waited for him in the bushes to kill him during his return trip in the evening. The King's body guards noticing this, pounce upon him to capture him, and he escaped after having gotten hurt. The wounded man leaves the wise man and the King on and goes his way.
The wise man at this point, addresses the king and asks, oh king did you get your answers to the three questions -
When should we start working - Now - you started helping me out when you saw I was getting tired doing gardening
Who is the most important person - the person in front of you - with out even thinking and not knowing him - you rushed to help the wounded man
What should I do - help others. You helped me gardening and the wounded man in recovery.
Having gotten the answers to his questions, the king returns to the kingdom and rules his kingdom following the wise man's counsel.
The moral of the story is - there is no right time do good things and help others - the time is now and it is to help others.
We will go into more details of the 10 papas or sins we should avoid to have a good life. The 10 papas or sins are 3 each of body, 4 of vacha or speech and 4 of thought
Hariom and best regards
Shivram & Sangita
