Hari om parents,
We started with morning prayers. The theme of this class was around 2 short statements from Taittriya upanishads - "Satyam Vada, Dharmam Chara".
This is taken from Sikshavalli and it means "Speak the truth; do your duty".
We discussed what it means to speak the truth. Truth is the basis of strong relationships. It takes a lot of courage to be truthful. The basis of human relationships is truth. Countries like South africa where apartheid had divided the society, the healing happened after multiple Truth and Reconciliation committees. We also discussed caes where truth conflicts with Dharma eg. If a riotous mob chasing an innocent person or a cow asks you about the whereabouts then we are not supposed to speak the truth. Truth has a deeper meaning than just superficial verbal implications. We read a story of a Thief who decided to speak the truth after getting influenced by a holy man. This single minded decision eventually changed the thief's life.
Our eventual goal is to be happy. Now, we have to ask ourselves, is speaking falsehood helping in our objective or not? If we analyze carefully, we will realize that truth is the best path. As Mundakopanishad states - "Satyamev Jayate" that is "Truth alone triumphs" .
The next part of the discussion was around - "Dharmam Chara". We started with the shloka
धर्म एव हतो हन्ति, धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः|
तस्माद्धर्मो न हन्तव्यो, मा नो धर्मो हतोऽवधीत् ||
"Dharma destroys (those) that destroy it. Dharma also protects those that protect it. Therefore, never harm (destroy) Dharma. Know that if violated, Dharma destroys us."
- Manusmriti 8.15
Dharma protects those who protect it - is a saying we have heard many times before. This is from Manusmriti 8.15. The complete shloka is given above. This is akin to following/protecting the law so that law protects you. If every person decides to deviate from the law then the law itself is broken and when it is broken it will not be able to protect us too. So, our duty is to follow the law, in the same way we need to follow Dharma.
What is Dharma or our duty? We covered our duties in the past classes. Some of our duties are divided based on the following:
At home
To chinmaya mission
To mother nature (environment)
To the animal kingdom
To my motherland and where I live
To places of worship
To myself *
We have to follow our duties per each of the above groups. The last discussion points were around Rights based society and Duties based society. The Hindu culture is essentially based on duties based society. In many of our scriptures, the recurring theme is to follow our duty or Dharma. There is a lot of impetus nowadays on our individual rights. Sometimes, these individual rights seem to affect the interest of the larger society. The challenge for this generation is to reconcile the individual rights with our duties towards others.
We did Bhagwad Geeta chanting of shlokas ch II v61-63.
The class ended early because we had a planning meeting for the spirit day next week Feb 13, 2022.
Other Sunday AM, Grade 9 2021-22 class summaries in https://cmnjparentportal21-22.blogspot.com/search/label/Gr%209%20-%20Sunday%20AM
Regards,
Rukmani & Partha