Procedure:🔗

Encourage the children to dip a foot in the water and keep the foot print on the outdoor floor and ask each child to observe how it just disappear behind them. They can also observe the friend's footprint disappearing in no time. Ask each child to explain what they understood from this.

Inference:

Death happens everyday. Everything is unstable, everything is changeable.

Explanation:

Place the children into groups where they can discuss: "The bonds of family were rooted in his ego and to cut these bonds was to destroy himself."

Our ego is built from those around us who we identify with, our bonds of family. Our ego fears that cutting these bonds will be our destruction

tān samīkṣya sa kaunteyaḥ sarvān bandhūn avasthitān kṛpayā parayā 'viṣṭo viṣīdann idam abravī

Seeing all those relatives present there, Arjuna was overwhelmed with deep pity and spoke in sadness

To the truly compassionate person, the whole world, of both living and nonliving beings, is an extension of his own self.

'arjuna uvāca dṛṣṭvemaṃ svajanaṃ kṛṣṇa yuyutsuṃ samupasthitam sīdanti mama gātrāṇi mukhaṃ ca pariśuṣyati

Arjuna said: Kṛṣṇa, seeing my friends and relatives present before me eager to wage war, my limbs are giving way my mouth is parching

True compassion arises from a state of integrity and authenticity, the absence of ego where one's inner and outer identities are aligned, and one expresses peak of one's positivity and possibility.

vepathuś ca śarīre me romaharṣaś ca jāyate gāṇḍīvaṃ sraṃsate hastāt tvak caiva paridahyate

Arjuna said to Krishna that a shiver is running through my body my hair is standing on end

True compassion is a state of completion and bliss, one of true surrender to the Universe.

na ca śaknomyavasthātuṃ bhramatīva ca me manaḥ nimittāni ca paśyāmi viparī tāni keśava

My bow gāṇḍīva is slipping from my hands and my skin is burning all over. My mind is whirling as it were, and I am now unable to stand here any longer

The transformation that Kṛṣṇa leads him to over the eighteen chapters is the revelation of truth to Arjuna, and to all humanity.

What follows now is a bunch of fantasies that Arjuna' s mind weaves in an attempt to justify his dilemma. It is what the human mind conjures up time and again as its projection of the unconscious samskaras, trying to justify its actions. Sanjaya says that Arjuna was overwhelmed with pity. Some translate this as compassion. True compassion is nondiscriminatory. To the truly compassionate person, the whole world is an extension of his own self. Anything that hurts any object around such a person would hurt him and he too would feel the pain. However, Arjuna's emotion was discriminatory. He felt pity only because they were his kinsmen and he identified with them. This was pity born out of himsa, violence.

It is a state of bliss. It happens when the individual self merges with the universal Self. Arjuna's pity arose out of fear of losing his identity, his ego. He was mortally afraid. He claimed that his throat was parched, his hair was standing on edge and his divine bow was slipping from his sweaty hands. Arjuna' s dilemma was an existential one. What is the point of eliminating others if it results in one's own elimination? It is a dilemma. If one did not know Arjuna better, one would have considered him a coward. Arjuna was no coward. He was not concerned that he might be injured or that he might die. But he was afraid of breaking social and ethical laws. His values and beliefs, his samskaras, told him that what he was doing was wrong and unacceptable. So powerful was this feeling, that he was reeling, quivering, dazed and unable to think or function.

Why should I destroy myself? For what purpose?' These are the questions that naturally follow this line of reasoning. Arjuna was far wiser than many modern philosophers in posing this as a doubt, but without venturing any answers. Arjuna is undergoing a process of transformation. The problem was that Arjuna was a thinking man unlike Duryodhana, or even his own brother Bhima. This ability to think, to be aware, was what had got him into trouble now. Doubts assailed him. 'Am I really doing the right thing? Am I not destroying myself and all that I stand for when I wage this war against my own people.

To help the child understand what is true compassion.

• 1. Briefly describe Arjuna's main concern with fighting in the war?
• 2. Why did Arjuna feel sad and in dilemma?
• 3. What do you understand about 'true

compassion'?

MATERIALS NEEDED:

• 1. Plain sheet of paper

• 2. Sketch pen or pencil
• 3. Colored pencils or markers
• 4. Eraser