Dear Parents, Harih Om!
The following was discussed in our Balavihar class on Feb 12, 2023:
1. After initial prayers we chanted all verses of the Bhagavad Gita Dhyana sloka teaching. Children were very enthusiastic and wanted to chant the verses from the Dhyana shloka. The video of the children chanting Gita Dhyanam sloka was shared in our WhatsApp parents' group.
2. We did a quick recap of the topics – Svadharma, Paradharma and Paramdharma that we had covered and discussed in our last Balavihar session.
3. In our class we introduced the topic of "Sanatana Dharma".
Dharma must be lived, not just learned. To understand this concept, we told the children the story of the fowls who got caught in the nets of a hunter despite being forewarned of the hunter and the danger many times. The young anchorite knew that the hunter who visits the forest every day, scatters the grains and spreads the net. The birds would get tempted by the grains, come to peck the grains, and then get caught in the net. He wanted to make sure that the birds do not get trapped the next time, and repeatedly asked the birds to beware of the hunter, and that he was their enemy. He thought that the birds had understood what he had said to them. However, when the hunter came the next time, the foolish birds kept singing the song as if it was a nursery rhyme in chorus, "beware of the hunter! Beware of the hunter!", and still went and pecked the grains and got trapped in the hunter's nets. We too are like the foolish birds. We may repeat what we have heard from masters, and what we have read from scriptures, but we do not live or practice the wisdom of the masters or the scriptures and become miserable in life!
Good conduct comes first - Acarah prathamo dharma. We should do our duties before asking questions. Good behavior is not only of foremost importance in spiritual life, but for success and happiness even in material world.
Manu smriti gives us ten values of life that characterize dharma and should be followed by all. They are the eternal values or the "Sanatana" Dharma. They explain our duties and how we should behave. These ten values are – dhriti (fortitude); ksama (forgiveness); dama (control over organs of action/control over mind); asteya (non -stealing); sauca (purity); indriya nigraha (mastery over organs of perception); dhi (discrimination); vidya (knowledge); satya (truthfulness); and akrodha (absence of anger).
Dhriti – fortitude or forbearance – capacity to hold on to something. Dhriti is said to be of three kinds – sattvika, rajasika and tamasika. Tamasika dhriti is to hold onto a wrong notion or wrong course of action. For example, excessive sleep, food. Rajasika dhriti – is holding on to money, power, and pleasure. Sattvika dhriti is the ability to rise above all obstacles, difficulties, doubts while pursuing a noble goal in life. A person with such dhriti may be physically or mentally tired but will remind himself again and again and hold on to his goal. We need to cultivate sattvika dhriti.
We had a short Balavihar session today. We had to go to the main temple hall to watch the 6th graders and 9th graders perform today.
We reminded the children of our grade's performance on Mar 26th and asked the children who volunteered to collaborate and work on the script via the Google Docs platform, and to come up with a draft by our next Balavihar session. We will start assigning roles, and plan rehearsals, etc.
Thank you!
Inchara, Rekha, and Mekhala (Grade 8 Sunday AM Balavihar teachers)
