Hari Om,
We started our class with 3 Om chantings, followed by our regular shlokas. We continued with our learning of Saints of India, with a presentation on Swami Sivananda. Swami Sivananda was born on September 8, 1887 as Kuppuswamy. He went to medical school in Tanjore, where he ran a medical journal called Ambrosia. After graduating, he left for Malaysia to work in a hospital. He stayed there for ten years and had a reputation for treating poor people for free. Once, a saint gave him a book named "Jiva Brahma Aikyam," which ignited the dormant spirituality in him. On his return to India, he went to Rishikesh to be initiated in to sannyaas and became Swami Sivananda. He continued looking after the sick, gave them medicines, begged for food on their behalf and fed them with his own hands. He started the Divine Life Society. Swami Sivananda convinced Swami Chinmayananda that Vedanta philosophy offers solutions to all human problems. Swami Sivananda gave sannyaas to our Gurudev.
We had a small quiz on Mahabharata, in which we included most topics from Adi Parva. We were pleasantly surprised to see that most of the kids got the answers right. It was very heartening to know that even in this online setting the epic has been grasped by them.
We also continued with our learning of verses 13 and 14. I have sent the link for these verses in our WhatsApp group. Please use these available resources to familiarize the kids with Geeta chanting. We also recorded chanting of verse 9-12 by 4 students. I will send the recording which will fetch our class house points. We encourage parents to also send recordings of their child . This can be sent to cnjbalaviharhouses@gmail.com. We ended our class with closing prayers and pledge.
Our next class is on January 10th. Enjoy the next 3 weeks, and happy holidays!
Regards,
Raji and Rekha
