Hari Om! Parents,
Having arrived at the decision to go to battle last week, today we began with the scene in Kurukshetra, where Arjuna is in the center of the battlefield surveying the Kaurava army. His bravado from a minute ago has dissipated into agony and he falls. Having listened to his lament and all his logic to avoid war, Lord Krishna patiently waits for Arjuna's total and unconditional surrender. Then the Lord begins his teaching to a worthy and willing student.
Over the next few weeks, we will be going over the main concepts taught by the Lord in the first 12 chapters. We had lively discussions on each concept with situations in their lives, led by Vinayak, Kavin and Mahit. We covered:
- Why learn the Gita?
- How is the book organized?
- Essence of a Human Being
- Mind
- Vasanas and Thoughts
- Bondage of Action
- Who is a Sthithapragna? How does he act?
- Ladder of Fall
The details be found in this document - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mx5SjRSTJcQEPgU-4AbxqYniIhuA3KB1/view?usp=sharing Feel free to request your children to explain some of these concepts to you. We will continue on nature of Jeeva next week before moving on to nature of Ishwara.
We also discussed the assigned activity from last week. Mira recognized the level of increased awareness and concentration required to write just her name with her left hand. For the next week, students are going to maintain an activity journal recording something they are grateful for every night (or every other night at a minimum) We will discuss this activity (not specific entries) next week.
As we ran over time, we offered a short guided meditation practice for those who could stay on. After the session, we discussed strategies to stay focussed, and the importance of continuous practice to reduce thoughts in the seat of meditation. We also discussed the practice of mindfulness or open eyed meditation in our daily activities, gently bringing the wandering mind back to task.
In chanting, we learned 6 verses in the Dhyana shloka and first two verses in Chapter 2 of the Gita - https://youtu.be/-d4EIe2V-Vc We did call on students randomly to read the verses taught previously, and they participated without hesitation, letting go of their inhibitions. We are very proud of them.
Thank you,
Aruna and Sirisha
