December 17, 2017

This class blog written by Dhruv Hemmige. 

Last week, during Balavihar, our class covered many topics and lessons. We began class as usual with the opening prayer and got settled, when a question came up: What is the point of a Bhiksha? We learned that a Bhiksha is a food offering to Monk/Sadhu. After that, we went back to the Dharma Chariot. We reviewed what we learned last class: the bow. We talked about how the bow is used to kill enemies such as Spiritual ignorance and other negative tendencies. This ignorance can be destroyed with the bow, that is the knowledge of the Self.

If we get rid of these bad qualities such as anger, greed, hatred, jealousy etc., we can become happy. Also, to be happy, we need to get rid of attachment. Otherwise, we will always be worrying about so many bad things, we won’t be able to see all the good things right in front of us. After understanding that, we moved on to new qualities in the chariot.

The two things we learned were the quiver and the arrows. A pure and steady mind is the quiver (trona). The arrows, silimukha, stands for quietude of the mind. These are connected because if you want your mind to be quiet, it needs to be pure and steady, otherwise you will always be thinking like crazy. The mind can be compared to a river. The same way that a river flows, your minds has thoughts. When the waters are clean, the river is clean. When the water is muddy, the river is the same way. That's why it is important to have clean thoughts.

A second example we used to understand this was the race between the hare and the tortoise. The hare obviously had a unsteady mind, since he was so overconfident. The tortoise, however, had a steady mind as he was focused on winning the race. To be steady, is to stick to your decision and follow the path to goal patiently. Slow and steady won the race for tortoise.

We also learnt how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly with patience.

After that, we looked at multiple pictures. We saw kids cheating on tests and doing other bad things, and instantly knew that they were thinking bad thoughts. In the other pictures, we saw kids getting along and having fun, again knowing instantly that they were having good thoughts. A phrase we learnt was Acala Amala Mana, meaning steady, pure mind. The lesson we took away from this part of class was that if you think pure thoughts, you get pure words, and then pure actions. And if you are around negative people, you will become negative.

We then moved on to the next part of class, which was our value from the Bhagavad Gita: Stairyam. Sthairyam is steadfastness, which means determination, or perseverance. Then, we were told a quote from Swami Vivekananda: “Arise! Awake! Stop not until the goal is reached!” Basically, if you fail, get up and try again. We learned two words: Shreya(path of good) and Preya(path of pleasures). Since we were on the topic of determination and perseverance, we learned about Sudha Chandran. She was a Bharatanatyam dancer who was in a car accident. After hurting her leg in the accident, it got infected and had to get amputated. After getting a prosthetic leg, she kept training and practicing, eventually dancing how she used to.

After learning about her, we moved on to Na Karmana, practicing many times so we would say it properly in front of Swamiji. Following that, we also practiced the Geeta Dhyana Sloka multiple times. We said our closing prayers and then went down to the cafeteria for the Bhiksha. After chanting our slokas, we ate lunch, and then we asked Swamiji questions.