Hari Om! Parents,
With Gurudev's blessings, we commenced Bala Vihar for the year 2021-2022.
Welcoming the students with starting prayers, and a brief outline of
this year's curriculum Introduction to Hindu culture, we went into
guided meditation which will be part of every class going forward.
For this class we tried to practice abundance meditation followed by
chanting Soham along with watching our breath. The children told us
the meaning of abundance. Our exercise was to become aware of the
existence of plenty and connecting with it with a sense of gratitude
especially now where the world is in the grip of a pandemic.
The students and teachers introduced themselves, their intros
featuring their names, high school they attend, fun fact about
themselves and one fact they know/appreciate about Hinduism.
Fun facts about the students ranged from I dance, sing, love
programming, watching Netflix, love to knit and crochet, I row, cross
country, am color blind to purple yet favorite color is purple, I like
to read, play baseball, tennis, paint and draw.
Some facts about Hinduism that the students shared- celebration of
various festivals, it is the world's third largest religion, it is the
world's oldest religion, it is an outlier among religions, it is
mistaken to be polytheistic, Dharma is life( with Life of Pi
reference),it is a way of life, Rig Veda is the oldest, Vyasa
organized the Vedic knowledge into 4 streams now known as 4 Vedas,
shampoo originated in India.
We then watched a video of Gurudev addressing what Hinduism is-
https://youtu.be/pJcpEvmruOQ
The takeaway of this talk was that Hinduism is a way of life informed
by a view of life. Within the Hindu fold are so many mathas - opinions
or views, but all pointing to and pervaded by the same Infinite Truth,
which was taught by different philosophers of the period. We discussed
about the resilience and elasticity of Hinduism to accommodate all.
Class then moved to the main zoom for Arathi and pledge.
Our next class is on Sep 24th
Pranams
Uma and Nirmala