Hari om everyone,
A few changes and announcements today. Please read through the email carefully.
We started to learn Aaditya hRudayam. After mastering the geetaa dhyaanam, we will be learning this new stotram. This was given by Sage Agastya to Sri Raamachandra before the war with RaavaNa. The sage asks Bhagavan to pray to Sun God with many names describing Surya. This stotram is chanted regularly praying for good health as Sun is the sustainer of our world!
We learnt 5 verses. Below are the links for the text as well as the audio for verses learnt today.
Be sure to bookmark or take a printout of the script for practice in class every week.
Samskruta Praarthanaani
We discussed how Bhagavan said: "I pervade the world, the entire universe is in me, but I am NOT in the universe!"
We continued learning Ch. 1 of the geetaa until verse 39. Below is the link for the new verses.
Brain Teaser: From now on, we will be including a small Brain Teaser at the end of our emails. We will give out the answer the following week (Try not to google your answers before :). But today, we started with the Brain Teaser and got the answer as well!
The question was, "What is it that belongs to you, but is used more by your friends and family?" We got the answer very quickly from the students! "It is your name!"
In our discussion segment, we were talking about why we should chant geetaa when we don't really know all the meanings...
Well, one little boy asked the same question to his grandfather. The grandfather was making a fire with coal. He, without answering that question, handed the empty coal basket made of woven wicker and asked the boy to fetch him some water from the river... The little boy went to the river, dipped the basket, filled it with water. But as soon as he lifted it, all the water leaked out of the holes in the wicker basket. None the less, because the grandfather asked him to, the little boy brought it up the hill to his house. The grandfather sent him back repeatedly to try bringing the water. After many futile attempts, the grandfather called the grandson and asked, "so what did you learn?" The grandson said, "the climb uphill is long and a wicker basket can't carry water!" The grandfather smiled and said, "look at the basket now. I gave you a blackened coal basket. By being dipped repeatedly in the water, now it is all clean and sparkly! Similarly, chanting geetaa will not make you understand it, but it gives you 'chitta shuddhi' meaning, clarity of mind and thoughts. When one has a clear mind, he becomes ready to understand the meanings. For that reason, it is essential to learn to chant the geetaa first, even though we don't understand it in the beginning!"
On this note, we started discussing chapter 9 of the geetaa today. It is called 'raaja-vidyaa raaja-guhya yoga', meaning it is a chapter that tells us about the 'king of all knowledge' and also it is a 'royal secret'.
It is called a secret because that knowledge was not comprehended by Arjuna at that point and was a secret to him. Another reason: vedaanta is called an 'open secret' because one can read or hear all about it, but if he doesn't comprehend it remains a secret.
Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? We understood this with the example of a spider and its web. The spider weaves the web. For any object to come about, there are 3 causes - material cause, efficient cause and the instrumental cause. In the case of the web: the material used by the spider came from its own secretions; the intelligence to make it was with the spider; it was made by the spider. There were no external factors when a potter making a clay pot. He would need: clay; knowledge to make it; and the potter's wheel.
So, the Lord is like the spider that has everything in itself. His presence pervades the web because, without the spider, any part of the web couldn't be made. But he is not trapped in the web that he weaves! The world is like the web made by the Lord with His power of maayaa.
We know these are intense concepts! We will work through these slowly and understand better every day. These are to be contemplated deeply than just heard and understood.
Announcement: Registration for Geetaa chanting competition is now open. Below is the link for the same. Please register at the earliest to get your preferred timeslots. Our best wishes to all.
Geeta Chanting Yajna | Welcome to Chinmaya Vrindavan
Today's Brain Teaser: Give me food, I shall survive... Give me water, I shall collapse... Who am I?
Look out for the answer next week. Until then, happy contemplating :)
Regards,
Rashmi and Kishore.
Rashmi and Kishore.
