Hari om parents,
Apologies for sending the weekly summary late.
We started the class with the morning prayers. We then did a recap of what we covered in "Our Scriptures, Our Guide and the Vision". We started with the video by Swamini Supriyananda about God. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djEEsxSt2rY&list=PLm6DKuwwu5zp_gmpEGjVmVGiETi6pBA-r&index=92
In this video she is comparing God with the unmanifest power of electricity that gets manifested as light in a bulb. We touched on Shruti, Smriti, Itihasas and started Puranas in some more detail.
Puranas are a way of relaying absolute reality in the form of stories. Purana means ancient, timeless and eternal. It is also known as "Sambhava pramana", a means by which we come to know things not only as they are, but also the possibility of things which could exist in another place and time.There are 18 Puranas and 46 upa-puranas. Bhagvatam is one of the most well known puranas. Others are Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa and so on.
Darshanas are loosely translated as philosophies. There are 6 darshanas called Sad Darshanas. Nyaya by Gautama, Vaisesika by Kanada, Yoga by Patanjali, Mimamsaka by Jaimini, Vedanta by Veda Vyasa and Samkhya by Kapila. We spent some time here to get the class to pay attention. We were trying to instill the ability to remember 6 words when looking through the slides for a few minutes and attempt to remember them all. We intend to try this methodology in subsequent classes.
The other classification of Vedas is Siksa (Phonetics), Kalpa (Religious Rites), Vyakarana (Grammar) , Nirukta (Etymology), Chandas (Prosody) and Jyotisa (Astronomy). Complex classifications like these are only possible for mature cultures. These classifications were possible in mature cultures. Sanskrit linguists were the first to make comprehensive analysis like this. We discussed the differences between Astronomy and Astrology.
We did our regular Bhagwad Geeta shlokas.We did a recap of all that we covered in the class. A short discussion about some topics.
The class is working on a skit for presenting to the chinmaya BalVihar students and parents on December 19, 2021. We stopped the class here and gave the rest of the time to the class to prepare for the play.
regards,
Rukmani & Partha