Parent Portal 2019-20: Oct 20, 2019 - JCHYK Gr. 10-12 (Sunday AM)

Hari om everyone,

Today was another really short class. We were having fun nonetheless, celebrating House Spirit Day with all the children at Bala Vihar!

We started with learning 2 verses from Gitaa dhyaanam and the 4 verses from Bhagavadgita Ch. 1. Below are the audio files to aid practise. Please make sure to do it regularly.

Gitaa dhyaanam .wav

Gita1.beginning.1-3.wav

In the limited class time that we had, we revised and refreshed the first three chapters of bhagavadgeetaa and their relevance in our lives! We especially made a connection with the first chapter. BG is not just advice given to some Arjuna by some Krishna on some battlefield in some Dvaaparayuga. We are the Arjunas, battling our everyday scenarios constantly and the mahaabhaarta war is happening in the kurukShetra of our own minds, every single day. We saw everyday examples of how the monkey mind wants to play tricks - It convinces us to slack in doing our dharma (of studying) as students and have fun instead (be on social media, chat with friends, etc.)! The work piles up causing distress with an approaching deadline.

When a friend distracts in class, we convince ourselves that we are not the trouble makers, but we just participated and giggled along with others
We really wanted to come to class, but we got sleepy...,
So on and so forth...

We behave exactly like Arjuna in the first chapter giving a hoard of excuses to escape from doing our dharma! Hence Bhagavadgitaa is VERY relevant to us. We are dealing with multiple internal conflicts constantly as we are not entirely sure about our dharma. We learnt that Lord Krishna taught everything needed, in the second chapter itself. Then why do we have the next 16 chapters? Arjuna, just like us, did not understand the import of chapter 2 entirely. He still had many questions and hence the conversation continued. We concluded the class on the note that we will study further to know how Arjuna's (our) doubts were(will be) dispelled in the upcoming classes.

The house spirit day was fun as it taught us an important value - daanam. Giving should be done with compassion and that is exactly what we did through an activity. The 4 teams (Houses) had to wrap cutlery in napkins and pack them to donate to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK). Our class students have been sorted into different houses and they are the captains of their respective teams. They were wonderful in helping out the younger children accomplish this task with the right spirit. Three cheers to all of them!

We will see you all next week. Yes, we have Bala Vihar on deepaavaLi day as we want to celebrate the festival of lights with all our children. See you then!

Regards,
Rashmi and Kishore.