April 1, 2020

Notes by Ambika Mishra

Review

Vivekji started the class by asking us a question: how were are parents feeling today? Most of us knew the answer. This is because we noticed our parents throughout the day. When you put your attention on a person then you will notice their mood and become understanding. This was our value last week — Daya — being understanding.

Story

This week’s values were Mudita (to be fun) and Amaya (to be straight)

MUDITA

Today vivekji shared a story on himself when he was in high school. In his high school there was a ski club, he did not know how to ski and thought this would be a great opportunity. He became good at skiing and did it more often. Sometimes he would ski with his older cousins. When he skied with them he noticed there was a lot of complaining and it was not very fun. So, he started skiing with his younger cousins and there was a lot less complaining. One experience to think about is when an adult falls they look around to see if anyone was watching. When a kid falls down they just get back up and keep skiing. This shows that adults think more about what other people think about them.

AMAYA

Someone who is not straight is complex. A complex person gets side tracked easily. They forget the purpose of why they are doing, what they are doing. Somebody who is straight will focus on what their supposed to do and not get tangled up in other things. For example, if you are skiing then a straight person would be focused on having fun not on being cold or showing off. Purpose of school is to learn to be a better person. If you do not have this focus, you go to school to make friends, to be better than the next person. School becomes boring and intimidated.

Lessons

1- If you laugh at yourself then the whole world will laugh with you. If you can’t laugh at yourself the whole world will laugh at you. It is important that you are able to laugh at yourself.

2- Do not be too serious about yourself and make sure you can happily laugh at yourself.

3- We all make mistakes and when you know you made a mistake, you can laugh at yourself. And other people can laugh at themselves too.

4- Be a straight and simple person and keep your focus.

Practice

To have fun, Vivekji told us some jokes. The jokes were:

1.Where would you find an elephant?

A: The same place you lost it

2. When you look for something, why is it always in the last place you look?

A: Because then you stop looking.

3.(this one is for parents) when does a joke become a dad joke?

A: when the punch line is a-pparent

Our other practice was to touch everything straight in the room we where sitting in and say Amaya. The reason we did this was because once you give something a label you will remember that label. So the next time we would enter that room we would remember what we said Amaya to and we would remember to be straight.