Parent Portal 2024-25: Dec 22, 2024 - JCHYK Gr. 10-12 (Sunday AM)

Hari om everyone,

Starting this email with an apology to those who had to wait longer to pick up their students this past Sunday. There was no assembly in the main hall due to Sampoorna Geeta paaraayanam. At 10:30, we were right in the middle of a cliffhanger in the story of the war, and no one wanted to stop! As a result, we ended up dismissing class closer to 11:10 am.

We began the class with meditation and chanting the Geeta. The students completed learning all the verses from Chapter 5 today, and from now until the end of the year, we will continue to practice chanting each week.

Our Quirky Question (QQ) of the day was: "It is the holiday season, and we are all receiving many packages. One man received a package that weighed exactly 2.2 lbs. He opened it and died immediately! Why?" After discussing several interesting answers and scenarios, we revealed the answer—because it was a "kill-o-gram"

We continued our review of the Mahabharata, starting from the point where all the armies had gathered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra just before the war began.

We discussed Arjuna's intense internal conflict about whether to fight in the war or not, and we explored how his struggle relates to our own lives. We drew parallels between his conflict and our own. How is it possible? He was on the battleground and we are leading simple, normal lives here!

We explored with an example and asked: If someone stole an apple from a pushcart vendor, and another person stole a phone from an Apple store, would our advice to them change depending on what they stole? The rules about honesty and integrity remain the same, regardless of the situation. Similarly, Arjuna's conflict on the battlefield is not so different from the moral challenges we face in our own lives. Hence, the solutions would be exactly the same for us too, irrespective of time and place! This makes the Bhagavadgeeta instantly relevant to each one of us!!

We asked the students whether they would prefer to continue learning the Geeta at this point or find out the outcome of the war first. Of course, they were eager to hear what happened, so we delved into the highlights of the war.

One particularly engaging moment came during the discussion of Jayadratha's death. Krishna instructed Arjuna to shoot an arrow that would cut Jayadratha's head and make it fall into his father Brihadratha's lap. This was because he had given Jayadratha a boon—the head of anyone who made his son's head fall to the ground would explode into a thousand pieces.

The students came up with some interesting alternative ideas for how Arjuna could have handled the situation! One suggested making a bed of arrows like he did for Bhishma, so Jayadratha's head wouldn't touch the ground. Another proposed having Jayadratha's head fall into Duryodhana's lap, so he would drop it and die, thereby ending the war easily.

While these were creative suggestions, none were as strategic as Krishna's plan. If one of these routes were to be taken, how would other wrongdoers be held accountable, including the father who gave such a boon to his son that made him so ruthless?! Krishna is truly the master planner!