Hari om Parents,
Today we started our class with opening prayers.
We recapped last week story with following questions (you can ask your kids these questions and they are very passionate to answer, you would be surprised as to how much they know):
-Who resides at Vaikuntha and describe Vaikuntha (Ask about Adisesha and Milky ocean)
-Who are the gate keepers of Vaikuntha
-Who is Sanat kumaras
-What happened to Jaya and Vijaya and why did they choose to be Bhagavan's enemy for 3 births
Then we jumped into this week's story.
We started with story of Sage Kashyapa and Diti.
Sage Kashyapa was a great sage and Diti adored and respected her husband.
One day when sage Kashyapa was performing his evening duties, Diti committed some wrong actions. Even though Kashyapa warned her, without heeding into his warnings, she went on performing the bad action.
What you sow so will you reap. All actions have consequences. If you do good actions, it comes back to you, similarly when a bad action is performed, you have to face the fruit.
Although immediately Diti realized the bad action, mistake had been committed and it cannot be repaired.
Result of these actions were birth of 2 Asuras: Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu. They were a terror to the entire universe.
Devas and sages prayed to Bhagavan to protect them from these Asuras.
Bhagavan takes Avatara to "end evil and protect righteousness".
And hence First Avatara of Lord Vishnu was to end evil (Hiranyaksha).
Sri Vishnu's wild boar avatar VARAHA AVATAR.
We played a circle game to explain that there is no beginning and end to a circle and so is the same for all prevailing Bhagavan. The birth and life cycle continues and ends and restarts again.
Some time ago the pralaya (total creative destruction) happened and the world was submerged in the waters of pralaya.
Lord Brahma was born with four faces from the belly button of the Lord.
He created the first man and woman namely Manu and Satarupa and ordered them to develop the creation.
But earth was still under the pralaya waters. Everyone prayed to the Lord to come to their rescue.
To protect good and righteousness, lord takes Avatara. He can come in any form (As animal, human etc.: this shows that all of us are equal in the eyes of Bhagavan)
Lord came out of the right nostril of Brahma as a wild boar VARAHA, and deep dived into the ocean to bring earth up. At that time Hiranyaksha challenged him to a fight. There ensued a fight between the Lord and the demon in which the Lord killed the demon and brought the earth up to the surface. The devas showered flowers on the Lord and praised him.
Few questions to keep them interested and engaged in the subject:
-What does Brahma's 4 face represent? (4 Directions and 4 Vedas: Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharvan)
-How did Varaha kill Hiranyaksha? (Horn/tusk)
-3 gods and their responsibilities (Creator, Protector and Creative destroyer)
We summarized the class and kids got to answer 1 question each for a small goody.
Now Hiranyaksha was the younger brother to Hiranyakashipu and the Lord had killed him. What will Hiranyakashipu do now? We will see in the next class.
On account of Diwali, next week we will not have classes. Our next class is on 10th November.
With Guru's Blessings
Malathi and Saratha
