Hari Om parents of 9th graders,
Hope all are doing well and looking forward to the upcoming Navratri Celebrations. This Sunday the topic was Karma : The law of cause and effect. We kicked off with Guru Stotram explanations III & IV and delved directly into what is Karma?. Karma comes from Sanskrit word "Krtm" where both the act and the actions are both called the same. After brainstorming and getting some participation from kids, we went on to give a few examples of Karma classification. More than how we perceive the karmas to be, it's imperative to understand how Karmas come into play to begin with. We discussed several relatable examples from real life day to day happenings, to our epic Mahabharata story on how Lord Krishna saved Draupadi during her Vrastraharan to a few fictional fables.
We then moved on to compare it to Newton's third law which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. How? Why? What? Essentially, we started to slowly connect how cause and effects are related to each other and how they fructify in certain span of lifetime/s and how reincarnation which is another topic is closely connected. Sky's the limit when it comes to explaining this concept as one can do deeper and deeper almost to Bhagavad-Gita chapter 3 on Karma Yoga but we have to condense it making it easily comprehensible to 9th graders. Finally given the timing, we explained the 12 laws of Karma which opened up a very curious and introspective angle to contemplate on this topic. Please speak to your kids and discuss how their understanding on this topic is coming along and let us know if we can incorporate any specific activity or syllabus to make it more solid since this will keep coming up in the future in almost all texts.
Please do let us know if you/your kids have any questions or need any further clarifications. Would sincerely request for our students to actively engage in conversations and dialogues so please encourage your kids to participate and contribute.
Hari Om,
9th grade Teachers