Today in class, we first discussed the three ways to reach spiritual success. The first way was practicing Bhakti. This means you devotedly worship God. The second way is Karma Yoga. To do this, you have to practice selfless actions and can’t harm anyone. Finally, Jnana is the third way to reach spiritual success - when you have true knowledge and self realization.
Dharma Chara means to do your duties. We categorized Dharma into the duties based on different stages in life. Among the duties of a child, there are specific duties we need to do for home, society, nature, yourself, animals and our country. For home, our duties include things like cleaning after ourselves, our room, helping parents and also respecting them. Duties for society include doing selfless acts like volunteering to help better our communities. For nature, we should do things like save energy, recycle, not wasting food or anything from nature, and making sure not to pollute. Duties for ourselves include going to school, learning, and studying. Animals should be treated nicely and we should be good citizens by doing our civic duty of voting and ect. We also talked about treating our body like a temple, being clean and not harming our bodies. The best way to complete these duties is to make a change in our lives to do them.
Cheating was a topic the class debated on for a long time. We first established that most of the time success in school means you will have success in life. However, many argued that famous businessmen like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were all dropouts from school and they ended up being some of the most successful people today. But there was also the other side that only less than 2% of the people who drop out actually came close to their position. Then, this led to the topic of Satyam Vada and after a lot of debate, we all agreed that cheating and lying are bad things to do.
This brings us to today’s main topic which was Ahimsa. Ahimsa means non-violence. When we think of Ahimsa, the first person that comes to our mind is Mahatma Gandhi. His non violence movement led India to its independence. Violence can be caused through our speech, thoughts and actions. A doctor may be doing surgical actions that can be considered violent in ways but when we look at his intentions or thoughts, he does not want to harm a person - as his duty is to help and save people. After this, we ended class with prayers.
-Manasa Dornala
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