Hari Om Parents,
We started the class with opening prayers and a short session of deep breathing and eye exercises.
We continued with the Gurustotram. The kids revised the first two verses that we did last week, and learnt the third verse today.
Today's topic was about King Pariksit and Kali. After an introduction of King Pariksit, we got to the actual story. One day, King Pariksit sees a wicked looking man torturing and cutting off the legs of a bull, while a cow looks on helplessly. The King is furious and warns the man to stop immediately or will be severely punished. He realizes that the Bull is none other than Dharma, the cow is the Mother earth and the wicked man is Kali. Dharma (in the form of the bull) previously had four legs namely, purity, austerity, kindness and truthfulness, and three of them were cut off by Kali. The bull was now standing on just one leg, truthfulness. Kali begs the King for forgiveness. The King forgives him and gives him five places where he can live. They are places where there is untruth, arrogance, cruelty, running after wealth and overwhelming desire. Even in Kaliyuga, one can avoid the influence of Kali by being truthful, kind, humble and charitable.
We asked the kids what they know and what they think about Dharma and the four components. The kids gave some very good answers, We tried to simplify the concepts and explained with examples that the kids can easily understand.
Austerity is to be able to do even difficult things and being persistent and disciplined. The kids had to stand in tree pose for 30 seconds as an example, and they did it !
Purity is to keep the mind and heart clean. We showed how the minds are actually pure like clean water, but become impure with bad thoughts. We explained by showing a glass of water and how it becomes impure by adding stuff like salt, sugar and dirt.
If the kids came running to you to give you a hug during the class today, it was as an example of kindness. Kindness includes caring and saying nice things to others.
A little fun game of 2 truths and a lie followed. Each kid had to say two truths and a lie, and someone else had to guess which one was a lie.
It was just to demonstrate that although it may seem like lying is easy, it is easier to speak the truth, and in any situation, speaking the truth should be the only choice.
We discussed about Mother Earth and what we can all do to keep her clean and green.
The Kids then did some Likhita japa.
It was time for Gita chanting. We played Swamiji's video of the first two shlokas of chapter 2. We asked the kids to repeat individually, after that. The link to the video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d4EIe2V-Vc&feature=youtu.be.
We told the kids to watch this video and practice during the week.
We concluded the class with Arthi, pledge and closing prayers.
We look forward to seeing the kids next week!
Pranaam,
Pranaam,
Vasudha & Neelima
