Oct 6, 2013 Class Happenings

Hari Om.
After our opening prayers of "Sahana vavathu" we spent a few minutes contemplating on some positive thoughts, letting pleasant thoughts enter our mind, being thankful and calming our mind.
We reviewed last weeks topic [chapter 3] of Rama charitha manas on the discussion between Lord Rama and Valmiki. Some of the key take aways from this topic were recalled namely:
- Words trigger thinking
- You become what you think of
- You become what you love.
We moved onto the current chapter [Chap 4] where Valmiki responds to Lord Rama's question on where he can reside, metaphorically "in the hearts of those devouts souls - those who eagerly wait for the lord's Darshan like the mythical Cataka bird which will wait patiently for the raindrops to quench its thirst, and rather persevere for its utmost goal rather than be satisfied by water elsewhere."
This lead to some active discussion on what a Cataka bird is and what it represents. The takeaway from this verse was that one should "persevere till they achieve their goal without compromising".
The students then took a few moments to think and note down what is their
1. Highest personal goal
2. What should be the highest personal goal be for a human being.
We then discussed Swami Chinmayananda's stance on this: "Prsevere to become perfect, persevere to explore your full potential".
We explored this concept with several stories namely,
1.The persistent salmon fish that makes the unbelievable 1000 mile journey upstream to lay its eggs, in the very place where it was born.
2. Robert Bruce and his pursuits.
We then chanted the entire Mantra Pushpam. The class is now very confident in reciting completely, a few kids can even do it without the script.
Homework:
Students: Introspect and come up with personal experiences where you persevered and persisted against odds for achieving your goal
Parents: Please ask your children to explain their highest goals and ask them to recount the salmon and Robert Bruce stories and their inferences from it.
We concluded the class with the Closing Prayer.