April 15th class review

Hari Om,
     Fresh from spring break. All the friends had exciting stories of holidays with family and friends. Welcome back. We started with the usual 3 loud oms. Next we said the starting Om Sahana vavutho prayer followed by 2 minutes of mediatation.

After a lively yoga break we moved on to the geeta chanting. Some of the friends came forward and recited in front of the class. Geeta competition is scheduled for this Saturday April 21st at the ashram. The individual time slots will be posted on Friday.

We continued with the Ramayana story. The North, East, Weat search parties return back to Kishkinda without any news of Sita. The South search party reaches a cave with golden trees, beautiful emerald leaves and sculpted buildings. The sanyasini at the cave welcomes them but tells it would not be possible to leave the cave. The search party plead that they are on an important mission for Rama. The sanyasini then asks them to close their eyes. When the search party open their eyes they find themselves at the shore. Some of the party are ready to give up the search but Hanuman rallies the vanaras around. While they are sitting at the shore and discussing the history of events an old featherless bird is watching them. He hears Jatayu's name and immediately calls out to the vanaras He is Jatayu's brother Sampathi. Sampathi has powerful eyes. He spots a lady setting in garden in an island across the ocean. She seems to be guarded by big raksasis.
The vanaras immediately perk up. They decide to check out the lady before giving Rama the news. But who can jump and fly? Hanuman can. Even though he is modest and humble. He is the son of Vayu. Hanuman meditates and seeks Lord Rama's blessings. He then climbs to Mahendra mountain and takes a griant leap to start his flight to Lanka. He meets a few obstacles on his way. Hanuman has the power to change size when he wants. He deals with all hurdles with caution and intelligence.

The story session ended and the children colored lesson 25 and 26. We ended the class with om pornama adah and then the chinmaya pledge.