Swan Song - Sandeep Dutt

#JoyOfLearning #MyGoodSchool #HappyTeachers #SchoolsCanChange #WherePassionMeetsEducation #DilJeeto #BrewingKnowledge and all the hashtags of my life!

Appreciation - Kiran Vehniwal

Picture Courtesy- https://picpedia.org/handwriting/a/appreciation.html

Appreciation is a simple word that means 'to tell others that you are thankful for their efforts towards you'. Just a 12-letter word that can brighten up someone's day or make someone feel good about themselves.

We, being humans, tend to show appreciation only when someone does something for us.

Have you ever paused and thought about how people make a difference in our life just by being a part of it? Even if they are doing nothing extra to add value to our life?

I assume the answer will be no.

At points, we try our best to do better to make someone proud because that one person matters to us. That someone may not be doing anything in particular, but their existence drives us to achieve more.

Don't they deserve the most appreciation for giving us a motive in life. Definitely, they do.

Let's not only be appreciative just for showing a gesture in return for something but appreciate every living soul we come across, as they will definitely leave an impact on you to make your life better. 

Kiran Vehniwal 

Prita Lee Lesson School, Kapurthala 

Being Human - Tenzin Jambey

Having a good brain, two hands, two legs, two eyes, and a good outlook doesn't make you a human. Being human means being kind to humans and other living beings like animals, birds and insects. Being human means having a kind, gentle heart and personality with a  positive attitude toward everything. Some people have no mercy and love for people, and they do kidnappings and murders. People are killing people than just thinking about the way of treatment given to animals; these people are no less than a monster who has no mercy and love for anything except themselves. A good human has a kind and open heart that accepts other living beings as their own family, and they give love and care; they have mercy upon all living beings, even microorganisms.

I remember the saying of a great monk who once said that he feels sad and pitied to take steps because it kills microorganisms which can not be seen. 

We can not be called human until we feel humanity, humanism and tenderness upon living and non-living. We all should have mercy and love upon everything. At least let's be human with a kind and soft heart with gentle behaviour rather than being a monster with no compassion and love. 

Tenzin Jambey
Pestalozzi Children's Village India

On the Divine Force of Love

We are celebrating the value of Love this August.

Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself, and its movement is free and independent of the objects in which it manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation, wherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening. What you call love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity to receive and manifest this universal force. But because it is universal, it is not an unconscious force; it is a supremely conscious Power. Consciously it seeks for its manifestation and realisation upon the earth; consciously, it chooses its instruments, awakens to its vibrations those who are capable of an answer, endeavours to realise in them that which is its eternal aim, and when the instrument is not fit, drops it and turns to look for others. Men think that they have fallen in love; they see their love come and grow, and then it fades—or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are more specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of a personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the everlasting sea of universal love.

Love is universal and eternal; it is always manifesting and identical in its essence. And it is a Divine Force; for the distortions, we see in its apparent workings belong to its instruments. Love does not manifest in human beings alone; it is everywhere. Its movement is there in plants, perhaps in the very stones; in animals, it is easy to detect its presence. All the deformations of this great and divine Power come from the obscurity, ignorance, and selfishness of the limited instrument. Love, the eternal force, has no clinging, no desire, no hunger for possession, no self-regarding attachment; it is, in its pure movement, the seeking for the union of the self with the Divine, a seeking absolute and regardless of all other things. Love divine gives itself and asks for nothing. We do not need to say what human beings have made of it; they have turned it into an ugly and repulsive thing. And yet even in human beings, the first contact of love does bring down something of its purer substance; they become capable of forgetting themselves; for a moment, its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards, human Nature comes to the surface, full of its impure demands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring for its own inferior satisfaction, distorting and soiling what was divine. 

The Mother

CWM, Vol-3, Pg. 69-70

 

The force of love in the world is trying to find consciousnesses capable of receiving this divine movement in its purity and expressing it. This race of all beings towards love, this irresistible push and seeking out in the world’s heart and all hearts, is the impulse given by a Divine love behind the human longing and seeking. It touches millions of instruments, always trying, always failing. Still, this constant touch prepares these instruments, and suddenly, one day, there will awake in them the capacity of self-giving, the capacity of loving.

 

The movement of love is not limited to human beings and is perhaps less distorted in other worlds than in humans. Look at the flowers and trees. When the sun sets, and all becomes silent, sit down for a moment and put yourself into communion with Nature: you will feel rising from the earth, from below the roots of the trees and mounting upward and coursing through their fibres up to the highest outstretching branches, the aspiration of intense love and longing,—a longing for something that brings light and gives happiness, for the light that is gone and they wish to have back again. There is a yearning so pure and intense that if you can feel the movement in the trees, your own being will go up in an ardent prayer for the peace, light, and love that are unmanifested here. Once you have come in contact with this large, pure and true Divine love, if you have felt it even for a short time and in its smallest form, you will realise what an abject thing human desire has made of it. It has become in human Nature something low, brutal, selfish, violent, ugly, or else it is something weak and sentimental, made up of the pettiest feeling, brittle, superficial, and exacting. And this baseness and brutality or this self-regarding weakness they call love!

The Mother

CWM, Vol-3, Pg. 71-72

M.S. SRINIVASAN

24th Aug 2022, shared via the email newsletter

Living for Giving - Reveda Bhatt

 In the words of Pablo Picasso quote, "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."

Life is for giving; maybe you'll agree or won't, but you'll have to sooner or later when the reality hits you.

First, let's consider that nothing in this world is really ours and that living is giving.

We are born here on this planet to serve a purpose, a purpose for the betterment of humanity. During the process of living, we obtain many things that we just don't wish to give away, don't want to give away maybe because they are really near and dear to us. What we give, ultimately, comes back to us in the form of blessings. Listen up, my friend, in this world, nothing is permanent, nothing is ours, then why does human greed still pertain? But, here's what, the cycle of life picks and drops many things till it reaches its destination, with you pedalling on it. In life, we are in a give-and-take relationship, but in life, we are here to take and give.

So, if you have a ruby, pass it on to others so that even they can see its shine!

Reveda Bhatt
Grade 9
The Aryan School

Going To School - Rishona Chopra

Do we ever graduate from the school of learning?

Not really; we might graduate from school but never from the learning society.

Learning is a process and not an event. It's an experience that can never end... It is the change we go through in our life. Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. 

Learning is the biggest giver of joy and freedom. The school is not a building but an ecosystem that says that life is the school for a living.

Rishona Chopra
Grade VI
Gyanshree School