Oct 25 2015 – Vijayam (7th Grade) Class Updates

Balavihar Notes for 10/25/2015 => By Shivani Trivedi 

1) Your body has billions of cells and trillions of neurons.

2) The experiment with the cracker:

• nose - smell
• eyes - see
• hand - touch
• ear - sound/hear
• mouth - taste/eat it

**When you eat it, your tongue carries the taste feeling to the brain.

3) When your mind is distracted, you tend to forget the experiment.

4) Intellect tells what you do and don't like.

5)  Vasana means impression

6) 7 tools:

5 senses:

• see
• hear
• smell
• touch
• taste
• mind
• intellect

7) The 7 things above causes how happy you are.

8) You need to sharpen your senses to have a strong mind/senses.

9) What helps make a strong mind?

• yoga/physical activity
• pranayama
• chanting

Gurupadukastotram - Shloka (5)

Oct 11 2015 - Vijayam (7th Grade) Class update

Balavihar Notes for 10/11/2015 => By Varun Punnam
P.O.  Box  Mr. God-

• Those with ears like an ocean have God inside of them.
• Hanuman is a great listener who will listen to anything about Rama
• Having “ocean-like ears” means that the listener hears and takes in everything.
• Whether or not a person says “don’t think about …” or “think about…” all that matters is what comes after it. The mind listens to it and classifies it as an important thought.
• After that, the words become an image and that image becomes a thought.
• Bhakti means love. If someone keeps thinking about something they develop bhakti for it. It’s usually used in the context of God because love for God is a synonym for devotion.
• With ocean-like ears for God, one develops bhakti.
• The Cataka bird only drinks rain water. This is a lesson on persistence because the bird would rather die than drink from another water source.
• Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan had many challenges but pursued till they became famous.
• Michael Jordan in particular, didn’t qualify for his high school basketball team but continued anyways.
• Salmen can live in the sea (saltwater) and freshwater. It lives in the sea but travels to the freshwater to lay eggs so the newborns can breathe. It’s persistent because it only swims upstream but still travels anyway.
• If a house owner lets his/her lawn grow freely the weeds (bad) will start to flourish. But if that person puts in some hard work they can put in seeds and grow apples (good) from the same lawn. Just like this, bad things easily be done but it takes hard work to get good things.
• Robert Bruce was the King of Scotland when it was under British rule. He constantly fought back but continuously lost. Finally, he gave up and hid in a house where no one would find him. In the house, there was a spider who persistently kept making webs only to have them knocked down by things like humans. He was inspired by the spider and took away the British once and for all.
• The mind is like Play-Dough in the sense that it is soft. Because of this it is very easy to make impressions on the mind. Being around bad things makes the mind start to turn bad. Likewise, being around good things can make the same mind good as well.

As a activity, the class used Play-Dough and looked at the obvious fact that imprinting a picture of Ganesha was just as easy as poking the Play-Dough with a needle, a metaphoric “bad impression”.

--- Also remember to bring your yoga mats next week!!!
Shlokas - Gurupadukastotram (1-3)

Lesson Learnt: Bhagavan's Address
Raama resides in the heart of those:
Who never gets tired of listening to Raama's stories 

Raama lives in the heart of one:
Who eagerly waits for Raama darshana like how a chaataka bird waits for raindrops