Sri Gurubhyo namaha! Sri Maatre namaha!
Dear all,
We are very pleased that the work we have all been involved in this summer, teaching the Devi Mahatmyam to hundreds of students all over the globe within an incredibly short period of 2 months, has been very successful. The outpouring of gratitude from students is testimony to this. This success is to a large degree due to our teachers and volunteers' hard work, their devotion to the Gurus and to the core values of Bhaskara Prakasha Ashram.
We took on the job of teaching the students in a thorough, painstaking manner, but without unstinting support from the teachers and volunteers, these newly inducted students could not have received the sustained guidance that they needed to reinforce lessons newly learned.
Over the last nearly two and a half months, the teachers plunged with enthusiasm into this cause. They all came together to host support sessions to help students practice their chanting, they patiently listened to them and gently but firmly guided them to become better chanters. Though the sessions were only scheduled for an hour, the teachers were unmindful of the clock. They spent hours coaching them one on one. They were there to help each student attain a level of comfort which comes only after months, sometimes years of chanting. We are very much grateful to the volunteers as well who helped the teachers conduct support sessions seamlessly. They saw to it that the support sessions for 60 to 100 students on an average were held smoothly.
Special thanks to Smt. Meera Kannan and Sri Shankar Srinivasan from BPA Chicago, for all the back end support. Smt. Meera took the entire responsibility of coordinating wth the teachers and has been resolving any concerns that came up patiently. Sri Shankar Srinivasan created an extraordinary IT system to manage the audio files with ease. We have received more than a thousand audio files so far from the students. The teachers listened and responded to each one of these audio files with keen ears and a patient heart. They offered themselves to a cause that was noble and to see them do that, gave us so much hope and we are filled with gratitude for the hard work each one of them has put into this.
When we started, we had no idea of the road before us. Now when we look back, we see that Devi was with us every step of the way guiding us. While the world may remember the summer of 2020 as challenging times, we, all of us from BPA, will remember this as a time when we all came together united and devoted to the highest ideals of human birth: kindness and generosity of spirit.
Since the classes ended we have been having every weekend Devi Mahatmyam live chanting sessions and It is very heartening to see every disciple eager to contribute his/her part to pray to the Divine power. Many devotees have been writing to us expressing their willingness to participate in the global healing of this pandemic by invoking the divine power of Chandi.
Inspired by the enthusiasm shown by the devotees, BPA and S3 Goshala Foundation, Memphis, TN have taken a sankalpa together to conduct a Laksha Chandi Maha Yagna to seek Chandika Mahalakshmi’s blessings. This is a great opportunity for all of us to get together and put in our best efforts to heal the ailing planet. Let us all support each other as a family and remember that all successes are never individual but collective.