Diving Deep
COLLECTION OF ANALOGIES & STORIES
Lord’s dealings with Narada Muni
In his previous life, when Nārada muni was just a 5-year-old boy, his mother, his only guardian passed away due to a snakebite. He took it as causeless mercy of the Lord and started walking to the north. On the way, he saw many metropolises, villages, animal farms, and flower gardens. Nevertheless, he was not attracted by any of them. Feeling very tired and thirsty he finally reached a lakeshore, having refreshed himself by drinking water he sat down under a Banyan tree to meditate on the Supreme Lord as instructed by the Bhakti-Vedantas (sages).
He advances in his devotion very quickly to come
Lord’s Transcendental form
In our Kids Bhagavatam session today, we discussed SB 1.6.11-19. Kids traveled along with Narada to towns, metropolises, villages, flower gardens. To understand the meaning of “bhava” stage Narada muni was in, they learnt “Nine stages of Bhakti” through a short sing able/poem.
Narada though elated upon seeing the Lord’s form in the first attempt, becomes despondent when the form is lost and frustrated when he couldn’t get to see it again.
Kids learnt the following poem, which encapsulates the essence of 1.6.18-19 verses and purports.
Title: Lord’s transcendental form
So many forms, I have seen, in this world, but none of them gave me satisfaction
O my
Light of Godhead
In Jan 2015, I felt inspired to catalog stories, analogies, pastimes from our Scriptures along with their source in electronic form. I wanted to save them on a site so they are searchable and usable by other devotees as well. Krsna inspired us to name the site: lightofgodhead.com. “Light of Godhead” – an humble attempt to spread the knowledge (light) about Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Feeling these stories, analogies are very effective in communicating philosophical concepts even to a child, soon we started “Govinda Story Time” with kids in Seattle. The sessions were very well received and kids started enjoying them. We started recording these
Next Generation Kirtaniyas
One of the elements of the “Nitai Nimai Summer Camp 2019” was attending the afternoon aarthi at the temple. Seeing that no one is there to sing, Divya mtj (Vinamra’s mom) encouraged the kids to take turns and sing. Our lordships Sri Sri Radha NilaMadhava known for their merciful nature kindly allowed these 6 year olds to sing for them and accepted their devotion.
These kids are normally very shy – though they would sing at home while playing, taking bath etc., especially if we ask them to sing in front of others, they become very self-conscious and refuse to do so. I myself
Most satisfying Summer
A year after our twins took birth (2014) one of our friends in Seattle introduced us to the concept of “Home Schooling”. I was very inspired how H.G Aruddha mathaji gave her kids both academic and spiritual education, all based on Srimad Bhagavatam. By then we were already attending Bhakti-Vaibhava (Systematic study of the first six cantos of Srimad Bhagavatam). I felt so much joy that this type of Home Schooling would not only help me go deeper into Bhagavatam, but also assure kids’ Krsna consciousness. We decided to take this approach in educating our children as they grew up.
As they were going
Discussion on “Karma” with 6 year olds
After hearing about the recent incident of how a local devotee was gun shot in his convenient store, our curious 6-year-old kids started asking following questions:
Nrsimha-Krsna dasa: When Krsna’s devotee is good, why somebody killed him like that.
Father: Everybody has to face reactions to bad things they did previously, that is how material nature works. See for example, sometimes you pinch Maharathi and remember that day nobody did anything, you were playing and you hit against the pillar, got a cut on the head and it started bleeding. That is how reactions come. Everybody has to face his or her reactions. There is