Dear Parents,
Hari Om! Your children were taught the following material on Sunday, September 23rd.
We request you to make sure that your child is dropped off on time for their Balavihar class. Please understand that if your child is late, it is a distraction for other children and also the teachers.
Required Reading: Chapters 1 through 5 of the Mahabharatha by C. Rajagopalachari:
The Mahabharatha is considered to be a collection of stories and topics that embrace social, cultural, religious and moral issues. In the words of Veda Vyasa,“What is in the Mahabharatha is also in the world, and what is not in the Mahabharatha is not in the world.” The children are required to read the Mahabharatha and will asked to analyze the situations that the various characters in this epic face. They will inculcate morals through thought provoking questions etc.
Beginning of Class: Chanting Om three times and beginning Prayers:
Re-visited the topics taught in the last Balavihar class including definition, meaning of Dharmah, Individual and collective Dharmah. Discussed the three aspects of Karma:
a. Karma always comes with a result: Karmaphala
b. Doer alone gets the result
c. Result will definitely come. Results may be immediate or take several lifetimes to fructify.
In the Mahabharatha, when Bheeshma is on his death bed, he is asked by Yudhishthira if a human being wanted a good life on this planet what should he avoid. To which Bheeshma replies that one must give up the ten karmas: three karmas of the body, four of speech and three of the mind.
- Three karmas of the body to be avoided are:
- To kill a living being: we have to respect each and every creation of the Lord because they too are important to their family. In this connection and interesting discussion came up. Since killing is wrong, why do countries have soldiers and armies? What do we do if insects bite us and hurt us?
- To steal: does not only mean to burglarize someone’s house or rob someone of their belongings. To not steal may also mean to be respectful of the Mother Earth’s resources, to learn to lead a frugal life without generating too much waste, to not consume or use things in excess of what is needed (example: grabbing more than one paper towel, disposable spoons at a fast food restaurant, grabbing a handful of candy instead of one during Halloween etc.!)
- To have an inappropriate relationship
- The four karmas of speech to be avoided are:
- To say bad words
- To speak in a harsh manner
- To lie
- To complain
In connection with the four karmas of speech that need to be avoided, we introduced the children to the first project of the 8th grade. It is referred to as the “MY VAACHAA” project. The children have been asked to keep track of their speech. At the end of each week (when they return to their Balavihar class on Sunday) they will have an opportunity to take stock of their Vaachaa in the past week. They will monitor their speech by filling up a sheet with their name with appropriately colored dots to indicate how “colorful” their speech was in the past week. For instance, if they used bad words or spoke harshly, they would give themselves a red or green dot respectively on a Vaachaa sheet created for each of them. Similarly, if they spoke gently or kindly they give themselves a golden star. Every time they committed a wrong deed through speech, they would write a note to God asking for His forgiveness and deposit in a box labeled “Sorry”. Every time they spoke gently and kindly, they write a note thanking God for His guidance. Please encourage your child to keep track of their speech during the week and be ready to fill in their scores when they get back to Balavihar.
The more the children reflect on their VAACHA and introspect on the results of the above experiment, we expect them to make the necessary positive changes in their life.
III) The three karmas of mind to be avoided are:
a. to covet someone else’s wealth
a. to covet someone else’s wealth
b. to have ill feeling towards somebody
c. to not have faith in Karmaphala
We ran out of time and will be discussing each of the topics (related to the karmas of the mind) in detail next week.
We revisited the topic of collective dharma we originally delved into last week. We told the children about the CORD Walkathon initiative and its goal. This serves as the perfect example of collective dharma in action.
The CORD Walkathon team visited our class today. The distributed registration forms and pledge forms for the event, which is coming up on Sunday, October 28th, 2018 at Mercer county Park. Please ask your children to give you these forms and encourage them to register and raise money to empower needy and women in Rural India!
In addition, we taught the first two verses of Geeta Dhyanam and the verses 41 and 42 of Bhagavd Geeta chapter 18. We then outlined Chapter 18 which is a summary of the entire Bhagavad Geeta. Lord Krishna dispels all of Arjuna’s doubts and delusions. Arjuna surrenders to the Lord, convinced and ready to fight the battle.
Please save the dates!
CNJ Regionals: March 30, 2019
CNJ Regionals: March 30, 2019
Geetotsavam (Tri-state): May 18, 2019
For Geeta chanting event-related updates, please visit:
Pranaams,
Grade 8 Teachers
