June 17, 2020

Notes by Shakthi Ananthanarayanan

Review

Virtue is ACCEPTANCE — when we feel negative emotion of Anger — Work on developing this virtue.

Acceptance — ability to be ok with whatever happens in our lives.

Practice — Flip a coin — No matter what the coin decides accept it and move forward.

Lesson

Negative emotion for that virtue is BEING DISTRACTED
which is one of the most important thing to talk about.

# What is distracted mean? It means our mind and thoughts are pulling us in different directions- we are forced to think about it.

# Toys,TV, Games — pulling our minds from what we are supposed to do.

# Virtue we need to focus on is FOCUS — the opposite of BEING DISTRACTED.

# Most important virtue to work on is FOCUS — The ability to think on only one thing for a long amount of time. It’s like sit down — read a book — without any distractions- not thinking about what’s for dinner or what your siblings are doing or any kind- thinking only one thing at that moment

Story for the virtue FOCUS is from The Mahabharatha book.

# In this story, Dhronacharya who is the teacher of Prince Arjuna who is an amazing student — he is learning Archery from his teacher.

# Arjuna is learning to shoot Bow and Arrow (Archery). He is there with other students and learning how to do Archery.

# Dronacharya goes near the tree stump and puts the wooden crow there and tells the 2 students and Prince Arjuna. Today you are going to shoot into the eye of the wooden crow.

# Dronacharya asked the first student — what do you see? I see the tree branches, stump, sky and the crow.

# The first student tried to shoot the stump and he missed.

# Dronacharya asked the second student — what do you see? This student said he sees crow’s legs, stump,

# Dronacharya gave the bow to the second student and the arrow went in to the stump below the crow. He also missed.

# Now finally asked Prince Arjuna, What do you see?
Arjuna said he sees crows eye so then he took the bow and arrow and shot it went right into the crow’s eye

What this story is saying is that? Our ability to think only one thing — it’s the only thing where we can better at anything — totally thinking about only one thing at that time.

# How do we get better at being FOCUSSED? — MOst important thing to think about which is very difficult-

# Most important thing to be focussed is whenever we do any tasks-First you need to remove all the distractions from our space (tablet, No tv)

# Think of FOCUS as another muscle — the ability we can develop — by practicing that task regularly.- Make an effort to practice Focusing.

# Easiest and the best way to practice is by reading — Read a chapter — focus on the words. Keep on trying on getting better focused.

Practice for the week — RAW

# Try this for one week -Whenever we take a bite of food chew slowly for atleast 10 times- then swallow