Hari OM Dear Families,
Here is this week's update.
Week 3:
24th September 2023 / 9:15 AM
Opening prayers and Shlokas
Shri Krishnashtakam - We had started Shri Krishnashtakam in the previous class, and we learnt the second verse today. Shri Krishnashtakam is a Sanskrit hymn of eight verses that praises Lord Krishna. Each verse describes one quality or great act of Sri Krishna, and each one ending with the verse 'krishnam vande jagadgurum' signifying that Lord Krishna is the greatest guru of the world.
Verse -1
vasudēva sutaṃ dēvaṃ kaṃsa chāṇūra mardanam ।
dēvakī paramānandaṃ kṛṣṇaṃ vandē jagadgurum ॥
O Lord, the son of Vasudeva, who killed the Kamsa (Maternal uncle) and Chanura (Wrestler in the Kamsa's court) (for their wicked actions)
Who is the immense joy of Devaki (Krishna's Mother), O Krishna I bow to you, the guru of the world.
Verse -2
atasī puṣpa saṅkāśaṃ hāra nūpura śōbhitam ।
ratna kaṅkaṇa kēyūraṃ kṛṣṇaṃ vandē jagadgurum ॥
The one who is looks great with Aathasi flowers, who shines resplendent with the jewels like harams and anklets
Who wears a bracelet (like Kankana) made with precious gems, I bow to you Lord Krishna, the teacher of the world.
Krishna Krishna Everywhere
After a quick recap of last week's tale about the Birth of Kaliyuga, we started with the tale for today i.e., King Parikshit is Cursed.
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 continues to meditate. The sage's son, Sringi who returns to the ashram sees this and is enraged. He curses King Parikshit 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, Janamejaya and starts living on the banks of Ganga. There many sages including Suka Deva, son of Veda Vyasa visits him. He wants to spend the last few days of his life thinking of the Lord. Suka Deva teaches him how to meditate and starts telling him the Srimad Bhagavatam stories.
"My twenty-four teachers" is adopted from the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavatam.
After a recap from our last Balavihar session about the first teacher, Mother Earth who is a symbol of patience, tolerance, endurance and forgiveness. To emphasize the qualities that we can learn from Mother Earth, we had discussions and told the following tales.
Patience -
What Can't be Cured, must be Endured.
One story was about a Scientist. He did several years of research and had huge stacks of paper with all the notes written down. His maid/helper left the job, so a new person replaced her. The new helper is very enthusiastic about cleaning the house, so she throws away all the old stacks of paper in the garbage and keeps new paper in the scientist's room. The scientist sees all the years of work gone into the garbage. He calmly tells the helper not to remove any papers from his room, going forward but does not lose his patience and yells... because there was no use.
Forgiveness -
A boy loved mangoes and went every day to a mango tree, threw stones at it, and enjoyed the fruit that fell from the tree. One day as he threw a stone, it accidentally hit the King who was going that way. The King is furious and orders the guards to imprison the boy and punish him. The boy had always thrown stones at the tree, he was never punished and in fact, rewarded with delicious mangoes. Just once he hit the King, and he was not ready to forgive. We hurt Mother Earth in so many ways, and she is always forgiving. But it is so difficult for us to forgive even a small mistake others make.
For our next story, we used the 'popcorn story telling' theme, where the children took turns reading the story of The Giving tree. It's about an apple tree that loved a little boy who came to her every day and played with her leaves and branches every day. The boy grows up and doesn't return for a long time. When he returns one day, he doesn't want to play with the tree anymore, but wants money, to buy a house and to get married. The tree offers her fruit and tells him to sell them and make money. The tree keeps giving the boy her fruits, her branches and everything she possibly can, to make the boy happy, until she remains just an old stump at the end.
This story shows how humans are greedy and keep taking from nature, from the earth, but don't give anything back in return.
Be steadfast like the thumb: Once all the five fingers were side by side on the hand. One day the fingers saw a golden ring. All the fingers except for the thumb wanted to wear the ring. The thumb firmly refused as the ring did not belong to them. The other four fingers did not like this, they complained and made fun of the thumb and asked it to stay away from them.
Mountains are an extension of the Earth and symbolize steadfastness.
Sometimes we need to be steadfast like the thumb and erect like the mountain to uphold good values and principles.
Bhagavad Gita Time – Verse 1 Ch.4 BG - YouTube In our class we listened to Swami Shantananda-Ji's message to all Balavihar students, and then learned to chant the prelude and verse 1 of chapter 4 of Bhagavad-Gita Please encourage the children to practice by watching the videos.
Next class on 10/01/23 which will be the Balavihar House Inaugural day. Grade 4 is Krishna's Cowboys, and our house color is BLUE. Please make kids wear blue or shades of blue (light or dark is okay) next Sunday Balavihar session.
Please reach out with any questions or concerns you may have.
Thank you and Hari OM
Rekha Pai & Neelima Turaga
