Hari Om Parents,
It was very nice meeting you all after the class today. Thank you for joining us!
We started today's class with opening prayers.
To get the kids to move around a little bit we played a wheel game of exercise, and the kids did small activities like writing "Om" with their eyes, standing in tree pose, hopping in place etc.
We continued with the Gurustotram. The kids revised the first three verses that we did in the past weeks, and learnt the fourth verse today.
After a quick recap of last week's topic, we started today's story. One day, King Parikshit goes hunting. Losing track of time he goes deep into the jungle. Tired and thirsty, he comes upon Sage Samika's ashram. There he finds the sage sitting with his eyes closed. He asks the sage for water many times. The sage, who is in deep meditation is unaware of this, and does not respond. This angers the King, and he picks up a dead snake lying nearby and puts it around the sage's neck. The Sage still continues to meditate. The sage's son, who returns to the ashram sees this and is enraged. He curses King Pariksit that on the seventh day, the King will be bitten to death by a deadly snake, Takshaka. The King is unaware of this and returns to his palace. He realizes his fault and is upset with himself for having done such a bad thing. In the meantime, the sage who completed his meditation finds out about the curse, scolds his son for giving such a cruel curse, and sends the information about the curse to the King, so he is well prepared.
The King feels that he deserves the curse. He gives up his kingdom to his son, and starts living on the banks of Ganga. There many sages including Suka Deva visit him. He wants to spend the last few days of his life thinking of the Lord. SukaDeva teaches him how to meditate, and starts telling him the Bhagavatam stories.
As part of the story, we discussed how one wrong cannot be corrected by another wrong and it is important to choose the right action like the wise sage Samika. We also talked about the concept of Karma, what you give is what you get. We explained this with simple examples.
Next, we had a word search activity. It was to find the names of 14 sages who visited King Pariksit. We tried the annotation tool for this. As some kids were not able to access this tool, from next time we do such an activity, we will email you in advance, so you could print it out for the kids right before the class.
It was time for Gita chanting. We played Swamiji's video of the third and fourth shlokas of chapter 2. We asked the kids to repeat individually, after that. The link to the videos (shlokas 1-4) are below:
We concluded the class with Arthi and pledge.
Our next Balavihar session is on November 1st.
Wish you all a Happy Navaratri and Dashera !
Pranaam,
Vasudha & Neelima
