Hari om everyone,
Here's a quick recap of our latest class:
We began with meditation and chanted Chapter 5 of the Geeta, progressing up to verse 15. It was wonderful to hear the children rediscover their voices in our classroom today! 😊
Our Quirky Question (QQ) of the Day was: There's a huge, dark, empty warehouse. You need to fill it completely in five minutes. What would you do?
The challenge? They couldn't discuss their answers until after attendance. And guess what? They nailed it—no one broke the rule! 🙌 Among a few different answers, one perfect answer emerged: "Light." Just turn on a light or light a diya!
We tied this idea to self-knowledge—understanding the Self is like flipping a switch. However, due to conditioning across many births (janma-s), we still identify with the body, mind, and intellect. This theme will continue in future Geeta discussions.
In our Mahabharata story, we picked up where we left off—at the birth of the Pandavas. We discussed how all children of the Kuru dynasty are Kauravas, but Dhritarashtra's sons coined the term "Pandavas" to alienate Pandu's sons, conveying that they were outcasts and unwelcome. (Moving forward, for simplicity, we will also use these terms, but with this understanding.)
We continued the story in a quiz and storytelling format.
We had some great conversations: Here are a couple of them -
Me: Krishna had 16,008 wives. All the names of his children from all these wives are listed in the Bhaagavatam.
Them: Hehehee... How in the world was he with so many people?! Didn't the wives feel betrayed or cheated upon?!
Me: We are speaking about Krishna. We say He is everywhere, rt! Then why do we question how he was able to be with each of the wives?! In raasa-kreeda, didn't we hear that each Gopikaa felt that Krishna was dancing with them alone? Let's take another example. We are all in this room. I breathe air, you breathe air. Do we feel that I got any less oxygen than you?! Do I feel the air that I am breathing is cheating by giving oxygen to you also? Similarly, Krishna is all-pervading. And the women he was married to were no ordinary ones. They understood his real nature.
Them: Oh... Hmm...
Then we came to the story of Pandavas in Hastinapura. We were discussing Bhima being poisoned by team Duryodhana.
The kids had some creative (and funny) ideas about how Kauravas should have killed Bhima "more efficiently"! They opined Kauravas were not smart to just roll him into the river without stabbing him first
(gosh! These kids
).
Then we came to the part where Bhima was in the Nagaloka after being bitten by a snake. It turned out that the king of Nagas was Bhima's great-grandfather. They started giggling again :).
Them: How in the world can a snake be an ancestor of a person?!
Me: Let me ask you this, do you know any Indian married to an American?
Yes!
Do you know any American married to a Chinese?
Yes!
How about a Chinese married to an African?
ya!
Well, How come you didn't laugh at interracial marriages that are happening now? Your grandfather might have laughed..., but you accept it because the society has evolved from then to now. Similarly, beings in that era were different from now. Animals could take the form of humans, they could talk and behave like humans too. For that matter, Bhima was married to a rakShashi (Hidimbaa). We will see that story later.
They: Ummm..., I guess... :)
As always, it was a very engaging class and we are proud of our students who are willing to listen and learn!
We haven't had a chance to do our Unique Statement Reviews at the end of class yet. We will start that from the next class onwards.
Until then, here's something to contemplate -
Happy Deepaavali to everyone. Stay safe and happy celebrations.
We will see you in two weeks.
Regards,
Rashmi.
