Hari Om Parents,
The sequence and summary of today's class are as follows
-Opening prayers and Om chanting
-Dashavatara sthotram - We had completed Guru sthotram in the last class, and started the Dashavatara sthotram today.
-Quick recap of previous lesson
-Today's lesson
Today's main stories - King Puranjana and Priyavrata
Prachinabarhi was the grandson of King Prithu. He did many yagnas and sacrifices. He thought that these would fulfill his desires but was in a confused state of mind as he did not know the actual purpose of everything.It is important to understand what we are doing and why.
Sage Narada wanted to guide him and clear his confusions, by narrating the story of King Puranjana.
KIng Puranjana is in search of a place where he could live happily. He has a very close friend who is always following him, but Puranjana always ignores him. He finally finds a beautiful nine gated city in the Himalayas, marries the princess and starts living there. He is emotionally so attached to the princess that he gradually becomes totally dependent on her. He loses his own happiness and peace. As enemies attack, he is thrown out of the city. He passes his last days as a mad man, and is reborn as a woman. Even in the new life as a woman, she is completely dependent and attached to the husband, so when he dies suddenly, she wants to end her life as well, That's when the invisible friend stops her. The friend is none other than the supreme lord, who has always been close to Puranjana in both the births.
Sage Narada explains to Prachinabarhi that a person gets so attached to the worldly things, that he forgets and ignores the supreme lord within himself.
We pray to God -
- because someone asks us to, or because we are afraid and/or
- because we want something and/or
- because we are thankful to God and/or
- because we love God.
We don't have to be afraid of God, as he only loves us and protects us. It's also not wrong to ask God for things we desire, but we have to remember that God only gives us what is best for us.
King Puranjana is compared to a normal person, whose kingdom is nothing but his own body. Just like it's the King's responsibility to keep his kingdom clean, and protect it from the enemies, every person needs to keep his own body clean inside and out. He needs to keep guard to make sure no enemies enter the body. The enemies could be in the form of bad things a person sees or hears. Also, everyone has this invisible friend, "Avijnata"(cannot be seen or touched). He is always with us, and guides us to do the right thing. We cannot see or touch him, but can surely hear his voice from within us if we are quiet. When we want to play a video game instead of doing homework, it is his voice we hear that tells us it is wrong, but we ignore it. If we spend some time everyday thinking about him and praying to him, he will make sure we are happy all the time.
Priyavrata is the son of Manu. Although his father wants Priyavrata to be the KIng, he has no interest. He wants to renounce the world and become a sanyasi. One day Lord Brahma appears and tells him that he should take up the responsibility of ruling the kingdom. He accepts God's will and rules the kingdom for many many years, and then takes sanyasa.
To explain the concept of accepting God's will, we narrated another interesting story of a King and his minister.
The minister strongly believes that whatever happens, it is the Lord's wish. Everything that happens, happens for the best, and he keeps repeating this sentence over and over, much to the annoyance of the king. The king, who initially does not believe in this and is annoyed, over a sequence of events understands the wisdom in his minister's words, and recognizes the greatness of God.
Exercise wheel game: After the main lesson for today, we had some time for an exercise game. It was a fun way to make the kids move around a little bit. There was some super brain yoga, hopping, spinning and eye exercises among others.
-Gita Chanting : Today we practised Shlokas 17 and 18 and learnt shlokas 19 and 20. The link to today's video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oUxtRMVnbQ&feature=youtu.be.
Please encourage the kids to practice often.
- Arthi and Pledge
We look forward to seeing the kids in the class next sunday.
Pranaam,
Vasudha & Neelima
