Hari Om, everyone!
Happy New Year 2020. We wanted to start off the year by giving a quick recap of the lessons done so far.
This year, our curriculum is "Yato DharmaH Tato JayaH" - simply meaning: "Where there is dharma, there is victory". The lessons for each week consist of a background story of the Mahabharata which we understand and then discuss/analyze.
Some weeks include 'yaksha praShNa'. These are the questions posed by a yaksha (Yama in disguise) to YudhiShThira. Once, during their exile, the pANDavas were exhausted and thirsty. When YudhiShThira sends his youngest brother sahadeva to fetch water from a pond, a yakSha stops him and says, "You cannot drink the water without answering my question!" But he ignores the yakSha and takes a sip anyway and falls dead. Similarly, all the other brothers (Nakula, Arjuna and BhIma) ignore the words and die at the bank of the pond. YudhiShThira comes in the end to find all his fallen brothers. He too, hears the yakSha and obliges to his words. The yakSha poses many questions one after the other and YudhiShThira answers them all very thoughtfully and analytically. He applies his knowledge of dharma at every juncture.
We learn about these questions and YudhiShThira's answers. We first take some educated guesses and then learn/analyse the answers given by Yudhishtira. Through these questions, we are able to assimilate simple morals and values into our lifestyles and discuss how we can apply those morals in our lives.
So far, we have covered the basic points of the Mahabharata story. Starting off with the story of Shantanu and Ganga, we learnt about the curse of the 8 Vasus. Shantanu cannot bear to lose another child and so saves his eighth child from Ganga's 'wrath'. This child is Devavrata, who eventually comes to be known as 'Bhishma'. Through that story we also learnt about the Great Vow that Devavrata had to take in order for his father, Shantanu, to marry Satyavati, the fisherman's daughter. From these 3 characters, we were able to start building our Mahabharata family tree. We learnt how the Pandavas and Kauravas came into existence (ex- pandu's sons are called the pANDavas) and explored their relationship with each other. We identified that there were problems between the two groups mainly due to the Kauravas' greed and attachment to worldly things. With this introduction, we discussed some small stories of how the Kauravas tried to kill the Pandavas numerous times. We talked about how the intensity of the killing attempts did not matter because the Pandavas were able to come out unscathed every time. The class agreed that the pANDavas were unharmed by the attempts because they were on the path of dharma while the Kauravas were on the path of adharma. We connected the stories learnt in class to the main topic of this year - yato dharmaH, tato jayaH.
In every story, the one who adheres to dharma is the one that comes out victorious. After these short stories, we went into detail about the game of dice and analyzed each character's actions in the event. We were able to learn a lot about the effects of greed, desire, flaws, and wrong judgement.
Following the chain of events, we learnt about the years the Pandavas were exiled and how they remained incognito for their 13th year in the kingdom of Virata. After the Pandavas aid the king in defeating the Kauravas, they return to Hastinapura only to find that Duryodhana will not return the throne to the Pandavas. We discuss the events that inevitably lead to the Kurukshetra War and understand why Arjuna was so emotional over fighting in the war.
In addition to learning about the Mahabharata and yakSha praShNa, we chant the gita dhyAnam and verses from chapter 1 of the bhagavad gita. Each class we progress in our chanting and continue to learn more shlokas. This is a perfect leeway into learning why Krishna gives Arjuna the Gita at the time of his grief and why it is such an influential piece of scripture.
We then finished off the main points of the Mahabharata with Bhishma on the bed of arrows and Yudhisthira being crowned the king of Hastinapura. After reaching this point of the epic, we spent a class revising this whole event line.
Some other key points discussed are - laws of karma; meaning of dharma; sins of the body, mind and speech.
The class understood that an action always comes with a result, whoever does the action gets the result, results can come in a short or long time, and that results always come at the right time. By learning these pointers, the class was able to grasp the concept of karma.
Thinking about their lives, the class gave the answer that part of their dharma was doing good to others. Apart from this, they learnt that should also be good people themselves. This is achieved by being aware of the sins of the body, mind and speech and working towards being devoid of them.
The sins of the body are to kill, to steal, etc. Sins of the mind are to hurt someone emotionally. Sins of speech are gossiping, lying, bullying, cursing, and teasing. We discussed each of these sins and its impact on our lives. Through discussion, the class came to the conclusion that these sins of speech are done because of reactions such as anger, frustrations, or unfulfilled desires.
Therefore, we agreed that working towards giving up desires was the best way to limit our sins.
These are the yakSha praShNa (and answers) discussed in class so far :
Looking forward to more learning in the New year! See you next week.
Regards,
Nikhita and Vasudha.
