We opened up our
class with the breathing exercise, Chanting OM 3 times followed by
Sahaanavavatu,daily
prayers ...Karaagre Vasate Lakshmi, Saraswati namastubhyam,
Bramaarpanam, Shubham karoti, Kara-charana, Ganesh bhajan, Gurustotram, and 2 verses of Dashavatara-Stotram.
We then displayed our new and colorful name tags on our desks.
As we just celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi we had an
interesting discussion about Ganesha. The
teachers talked about how we drop the Ganesha
idol in water to symbolize that we are sending away the idol…..name and form....,
but keeping the ideals we learned. Our teachers also briefly reviewed the
symbolism of Ganesha. For example, the trunk stands for our intellect
which must be discriminative
enough to pick the right knowledge
from all that we understand. The trunk comes down between two tusks which represent the opposites of life-heat and cold, joy and sorrow, victory
and defeat. With our discriminative capacity we can overcome our
likes and dislikes-opposites in life, and the pot-belly symbolizes digesting all the experiences of life happily.
We moved on to explore the topic of the day. 'Why we study
Epics?', before we dived into the first lesson of Mahabharata.
|
|
We talked about the
characters from Ramayana and
Mahabharata, and the values we can learn from them. For example, we can learn to be a good son from Rama, to be an ideal brother from Bharata, and from Dharmaraja
we can learn how to follow Dharma,
even when it is very difficult. Epics also
bind all Indians together. Reading
epics is as interesting as reading modern fiction, like Harry Potter or Hunger Games. 'We learn how to live and conduct ourselves in various
situations. We follow our intellect
by drawing a clear distinction between good
and evil.'
Our next topic was
about Mahabharata. The Mahabharata
is like one big mirror that
reflects the community and country
during ancient Indian times. We reflect the qualities of all the characters even today in modern times. For example, when we concentrate on scoring a
soccer goal, we are reflecting the
Arjuna in us. When we fight about
petty things with our siblings, we are showing the Duryodhana in us. In this way, we can
relate everything back to Mahabharata.
If a Company had Duryodhana as its CEO, Sakuni as its Advisor, and Dhritarashtra as its President, we can easily imagine the fall of that Company.
We learned that Parashara and Satyavati's son,
Sage Veda Vyasa was the writer of
the Mahabharata and Lord Ganesha was his scribe. Then
we started listening to the very beginning of the story of Mahabharata. We discussed the story of Shantanu, the king of Hastinapur, and his intense love for
Goddess Ganga, and how he betrayed
his promise after losing seven babies. Thus the eighth baby, Gangadatta also known as Bheeshma, was saved.
After the story
ended, we spent the last few minutes drawing a Ganesh Rangoli in honor of Ganesha,
who was the scribe of Vedavyasa,
to write Mahabharata.
We had a great, interesting class and we all can't wait for our next class!
Brinda Suresh
|
