December 14, 2022

Notes by Ambika Mishra

This being the last class of the year, we started out by discussing what we wanted to do as our new year resolutions. Some of the ideas shared were to do Japa/meditation, be environmentally friendly, and stop procrastination. We all brainstormed a specific resolution that we could practice, and one that would be achievable, not a huge task that most people would eventually give up on. We also tried to phrase our resolutions as actions that we could do in a scheduled manner. 

For example, instead of saying to “help others more,” it could be ‘helping my siblings with their homework’ so that it would be easier to know what exactly you should do, and you would be more likely to do it. 

Story 

When the teacher of the Pandavas, Dronacharya, was young, he was friends with the son of a king, Drupada. Dronacharya was the son of a priest and led a simple life, while Drupada lived a luxurious life and eventually would become a king. Drupada and Drona were such good friends that he promised Drona half of his kingdom as a child. Time went on and they grew up. When Drupada became the king though, he completely forgot about his promise to Drona and did not give half of the kingdom to him. This made Drona furious! 

Enraged, Dronacharya told the Pandavas (his disciples) to get Drupada to see the consequences of his actions. The Pandavas fought and conquered Drupada’s kingdom. Drupada felt humiliated and wanted to get revenge on this act, so he started to look for a priest that would do a special yajna for him to get special power that would let him defeat Dronacharya. No priest would agree because they did not think it aligned with dharma. 

Eventually one of the priests he asked told him there was a different priest that would probably do the yajna for him. Drupada was curious as to why would this priest have a different response. The priest replied that the other priest would do the yajna because he had no discipline and was careless in even small things. That gives the impression of him being undisciplined in other parts of his life most likely and he would perform the yajna for that reason. Drupada then went to the priest and the priest actually agreed to do the yajna. When they did the yajna, a very powerful son emerged from the fire who would later defeat Dronacharya. 

Moral

The moral of the story focuses on the character of the priest who conducted the puja. The other priest knew that that priest would agree to do the puja because he was indisciplined in even the smallest things. If one is not disciplined in smaller aspects of life, the same indiscipline creeps into all areas of personality/ life.

If we think of making one big change in life and are not careful about the little things in life, it will be very hard. But we are careful with small things in life, it will be comparatively easy to do big and hard things in life because we will have the discipline.

We should make sure to first have resolutions that account for smaller more reachable values before moving into big things, because even the small values count more than they are credited for. 

RAW

For every gift you get during the holidays, give a gift.