Om.. Om.. Om.. Three loud oms followed by Om Sahana vavathu... Our friends were quite excited about the snow from the previous day. We discussed how the snow gets created and who makes the rain, clouds, winds and the earth. The final answer for all questions is Bhagvan or God.
We then followed our usual routine and mediated for a minute with the lights off. The children are getting good at focusing their minds for a minute. We are going to extend the time in the next class.
Next we practised verses from geeta chapter 12. We have covered upto verse 9 in class. Please review these verses with our little friends. The geeta competion registration is available online. Please visit the chinmaya vrindavan site for more information. Following are verses 8 and 9.
We then sang our regular prayers starting with guru stotrams, Karagara vasathe, saraswathi namastubyam, Bhrama arpanam, shubham karothi kalyanam, kara charana kritam vaa. Some of these prayers are in your volunteer handbook, some are in previous blog posts and all these are in my prayers book.
We continued to the favourite part of the class for all of us. The Ramayana story. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana arrive in Panchavati by the river Godavari. They see a huge vulture waiting for them. At first they mistake it for a raksasa, but the bird is a friend of their father and offers to protect Sita when the brothers are out hunting.
Lakshmana deftly builds a lovely little kutiya with bamboo poles and dried branches. The lessons learned under the guidance of their Guru Vasistha help them adapt to their environment and circumstance. One day a heavily built lady demon approached the trio. She wondered who they were and why they were dressed as ascetics or monks, why they were carrying bows and why they had a women with them.
On finding out their true identity, she introduced herself as Surpanakha, daughter of Visrava muni and sister of Ravana the powerful emperor of Lanka. She was drawn to Rama and wanted to marry him and claimed to be in love with him. But Rama joking told her that he was married but that she should ask Lakshmana.
When she went to Lakshmana, he too jokingly told her that he was a slave to his brother and that she should not become a slave of a slave. He asked her to try Rama again as his brother might leave his wife. Surpanakha was enraged and tried to attack Sita but Lakshmana quickly stopped her and cut her nose and ears. She ran away to her brothers Khara and Dusana.
They sent a raksasa army to attack the trio but Rama finished all of them with his mighty weapons or astras. Ravana's brothers and many followers were destroyed at this time. This proved that Rama was born with divine purpose to destroy all evil and to establish the law of Dharma.
Ravana on the other hand stood for everything that is adharma. He had disturbed a vast number yajnas, troubled many rishis and carried away many women. Surpanaka now ran to her mighty brother. She wanted revenge and Ravana promised to avenge the great insult to the raksasa race. Aunty stopped the story here and we quietened our minds with some Likith japa and coloring.
