Skip to main content

Gita Jayanti - Competitions- where everyone's a winner

February 10, 2011


I have discussed the uniqueness of the Gita Jayanti celebrations in Singapore. For last few weeks, Singapore has been buzzing with the competitions conducted by the Gita Jayanti committee. First the Gita chanting competitions where xx children aged 4 to 15 and 4 adults chanted various portions of Bhagavad Geeta chapter 5. Then several children competed in the Gita championship which required them to chant all 47 shlokas of Gita chapter 6 and 30 shlokas of Gita chapter 7. Finally, we had the Geeta essay and oratory competitions. 


Click for the names of the Gita competition winners.


It is very heartening to see the extent of interest in these competitions. Parents often make the mistake in assuming that Samskritam is difficult to learn, chanting is difficult to learn, the meaning of the Geeta is difficult to learn. Every one of these children and the adults proved it wrong. We think our children are not ready to absorb philosophical concepts. Wrong again. The best part here is that as Krishna himself says in chapter 2:



स्वल्पमप्यस्य धर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात् ||२-४०||

svalpamapyasya dharmasya traayate mahato bhayaat.h .. 2-40..
Even a little of this knowledge, even a little practice of the YOGA, protects one from the great fear.


The Geeta oratory speeches are now on Youtube - click links below to access. See for yourselves if they get it.


Category 3 Oratorical topic: "Be like a Lotus leaf in Water"
Category 1, 1st Prize, Adarsh
Category 1, 2nd Prize - Jayendra
Category 1, 3rd prize, Sharadha


Category 2 Oratorical topic (yes, it is a mouthful): "The spirit of equality and oneness alone is the boat to cross ups and downs in the ocean of life (Samsara)"
Category 2, 1st Prize Palaniappan
Category 2, 2nd Prize Prajwal


The Gita Jayanti organizers have brought out an excellent souvenir on the occasion called Gīta Vāni. The photos, the layout, everything is great. I commend the publications team for a terrific job, well done. (Disclosure - they've been kind enough to print one of my contributions!)


Hari Om and Namaskaar till the next post



Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Geeta in Literature - IF by Rudyard Kipling

September 12, 2011 I came across a nice YouTube video that is an animation of Rudyard Kipling reading his famous poem IF . The full text sourced from wikisource is below: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same: If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And los...
Post a Comment
Read more

Geeta Dhyānaṁ 2 - Vyāsā's Vast Intellect

January 7, 2013 Previously on Geeta Jayanti, I had posted on the eternal debt of gratitude to Mother Geeta that is the basis of Geeta Dhyānaṁ. I love Param Pujya Gurudev 's commentary on the Geeta Dhyānaṁ. Pujya Gurudev's commentary is after the introduction to the Bhagavad Geeta in the commentary on Chapters 1 & 2 published by the the Chinmaya Mission. I personally believe it should be a book by itself. After invoking Mother Geeta, we now pay tribute to the wise Vyāsa Rishi - the Guru whose Jayanti marks Guru Pūrnima every year. Pujya Gurudev starts His tribute to Veda Vyāsā in his commentary on the 1st verse of the Dhyānaṁ. Vyāsa, the father of the Vedās, who, first collected, edited and published the Veda texts and who thereafter, gave us the dialectics of Vedānta in his Brahma Sūtra, himself a great man of realization, was indeed well fitted for the job. The ancient seer had both the mastery of the theoretical science of religion - Hinduism and also the practical expe...
Post a Comment
Read more

यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठः yadyadAcharati shreShThaH - Role Models

December 25, 2010 I was driving with my 3 year old son in his child seat in the back of the car. When another car cut into my lane with very little warning, I yelled, "gadha" (ass (the animal, not the body part) in Hindi). I continued riving. In less than a minute, I heard a voice in the back seat say, "Gadha". Impossibly cute, my son was practicing this new-found word. Suddenly, it occured to me, like it or not, I am a role model every day for my son. I recalled a shloka from chapter 3, that my Gurudev, Swami Chinmayanandaji loved यद्यदाचरति श्रेष्ठस्तत्तदेवेतरो जनः | स यत्प्रमाणं कुरुते लोकस्तदनुवर्तते ||३-२१|| yadyadAcharati shreShThastattadevetaro janaH . sa yatpramANaM kurute lokastadanuvartate .. 3-21.. "Whatever a great man does, that alone other men also do; whatever he sets up as the standard, that the world (people) follows." In every Chinmaya Mission Gnana Yagna on chapter 3, he insisted that the audience memorize this shloka and chant it loudly...
4 comments
Read more