{"id":1939,"date":"2017-11-01T11:17:50","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T11:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2017-11-01T11:17:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T11:17:50","slug":"the-bhagwada-geeta-redefined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/?p=1939","title":{"rendered":"The Bhagwada Geeta redefined\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone in my family is very much aware and has a lot of knowledge about the Hindu mythology. They all used to have long discussions on Arjuna, and Krishna and Ram-Seeta, and even \u2018Ravana\u2019 where most of the times I felt out of the place. To tell you the truth, I was never too inclined to know more about unless someone talked to me into it. I used to see my cousin(who is younger to me by 14 years\u2026) talk about what happened in that era and how it is also prevalent and relevant even in the present time. She really inspired me to read books like Jaya by Devdutta Patnaik which actually left me in awe of these wonderful scriptures. Post this, I found a spark of curiosity in me and that\u2019s when I finally decided to join the Geeta classes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The questions that came to my mind were, what is Bhagwada Geeta? What does it teach? Why do we need to imbibe the learning of Geeta into our lives? Is it really helpful? The list was endless&#8230; The Geeta classes were a revelation. They were nothing that I imagined but everything I needed. It was not the mythological version that Gagan sir was about to share with us but the contemporary modern day version which we could make connections and bring about changes to our life with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Geeta classes began with an interesting story from Mahabharata about Arjuna. Guruji \u00a0narrated a fairly detailed version of the story where <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Arjuna is not ready to fight. He doesn&#8217;t understand why he has to shed his family&#8217;s blood for a kingdom that he doesn&#8217;t even necessarily want. In his eyes, killing his family is the greatest sin of all. He puts down his weapons and tells Krishna he will not fight. Krishna, then, begins the systematic process of explaining why it is Arjuna&#8217;s dharmic duty to fight and how he must fight in order to restore his karma. Here we learnt about dharma-karma, destiny, raga-dwesha, and how it all unfolded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many a times guruji would take what he would call a \u2018detour\u2019 and tell us about his life in America. He would pick out variable Sanskrit words\/verses and tell us stories about his life in America and how he came back to India to learn Sanskrit from his gurus in Southern India. He would often use american phrases like \u2018Catch 22\u2019 and elaborate what they meant by giving lovely examples. He said, \u201cHave you ever visited the T3 Delhi airport? The airport is so huge that you have to walk a lot to reach your boarding gates. Due to this they\u2019ve kept number of moving walkways to make it easier. You always see children playing at the airports. They really enjoy walking on these walkways in the opposite direction. Many a times when we find that things are not going right in our lives. It\u2019s all because our \u2018Dharma\u2019 and \u2018Karma\u2019 are both going in opposite directions just like the children on the walkway. This simply states that there are always two factors in every situation and they are both equally dependant on each other and that\u2019s what we mean by a \u2018Catch 22\u2019 situation.\u201d Phrases and stories like these made me want to hear more from guruji.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I had never got the opportunity to learn \u2018Sanskrit\u2019 in school so was not really aware how to go about it. Many a times I would try to read the old \u2018Hindola\u2019 verses at my home but to my despair I was unable to do so. Guruji shed light on how the \u2018sandhis\u2019 and the \u2018aksharas\u2019 are written in a way but they are pronounced in a very different way &amp; how we should emphasise speak up every single letter while reading sanskrit verses. Somehow, I got a sort of hang of how to chant a sanskrit verse after chanting them wrongly number of times. Embarrassing as much as it was, but somehow I overcame my errors and accepted and embraced my limitations and tried to learn from them instead of whining about it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I am just listing down my takeaways from all the sessions till now:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Geeta is a blueprint; a plan to help a person lead their life.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018Dharma\u2019 is choosing the difficult, longer and correct path instead of the easier, shorter and wrong part which is \u2018Adharma\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018Raaga\u2019 is the thing that I want out of my life and \u2018Dwesha\u2019 is something that we don\u2019t want in our lives. \u00a0We should put \u2018raaga\u2019 and \u2018dwesha\u2019 on a hold and concentrate on your dharma.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Success and failure is how we take it. We should accept it as a \u2018prasada\u2019 from \u2018eeshwara\u2019 and move ahead in life.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You should never give advice to to people. By giving advice, you suggest that the other person is not capable of handling the situation himself.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Destiny and free will both play an equally important role when it comes to \u2018karma\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You should take care of only 2 emotions, anger and fear and all the other emotions will follow.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A child is a \u2018prasada\u2019 from \u2018eeshwara\u2019, you don\u2019t create a child. You are simply a trustee.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018Dhrishta\u2019 are the things that you can see and \u2018Adhrishta\u2019 are things which are existent but are not visible.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You leave home in order to go somewhere and you reach safely, it\u2019s because there is a lot of \u2018Adhrishta\u2019 and \u2018punya\u2019 which is protecting you. If you meet up with an accident, it is when two \u2018paapa\u2019 have crossed and collided with each other.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep yourself happy to help others to be happy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I never used to enjoy meditation, but ironically it became my biggest takeaway from the Essence of Bhagwada Geeta. I look forward to learning more from guruji and hope that I can apply my learning in my life. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fingers crossed!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone in my family is very much aware and has a lot of knowledge about the Hindu mythology. They all used to have long discussions on Arjuna, and Krishna and Ram-Seeta, and even \u2018Ravana\u2019 where most of the times I felt out of the place. To tell you the truth, I was never too inclined to know more about unless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bhagwat-gita"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1980,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeclasses.fountainheadschools.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}