Hari Om
The class volunteer blogger for this week was Shreyas.
Here is his perspective/summary of the class:
Today we started our class with meditation after our opening prayers. We
closed our eyes and took deep breaths while saying a silent "Om". After
our meditation, most of us were sleepy! Today's topic in class was
faith. We did an activity where two kids stood one behind the other. The
first person was to fall backward without bending their knees. The
second person was to catch them. Many kids fell behind but kept their
knees bent. This activity showed that many of the kids did not have
faith in the person behind them. We talked about faith during a puja. To
God, we offer fruits, but he also really wants devotion from the
devotees. This led to an off-topic controversial discussion on people
who believe in God and people who don't. This also led to another
controversial discussion on vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Our
concluding point was that faith is the most important thing to God, not
the fruits and the flowers. After our discussion, we chanted the
Siva-Manasa Puja to a tune. We will be chanting this in front of Swamiji
later in February. After that, we chanted the Mantra Pushpam. We ended
class with closing prayers.
Teachers Comments:
We have completed the chapter on Puja both the physical and "manasa" (spiritual / mental) aspects. key take aways from this chapter was that Puja is a way of communicating to the Divinity (within us) and the puja vidhi ritual is a way of conditioning the body, as the body is the tool and the mind is the doer for this.
Puja is only meaningful if it is done with devotion and pure mindedness. In the actual act of puja the offerings like flowers are essentially only a tool for delivering the the real offering - our devotion (without any ulterior or selfish motives). Also we should incorporate this attitude in our daily life, by treating every act we do as an offering to the Lord, thereby we would lead a virtuous life.
Dhanyavaadah
Vijayam Teachers (Aparna & Sri)
