Tuesday, November 12, 2013

The concept of Maya explained by Batman and the Joker

Last week in Bal Sabha one industrious presenter used many unexpected ideas to bring home the notion of friends. He talked about the Luke and Leia being being friends and helping each other. I am pretty sure he does not even remember the Star Wars storyline, but the presenter knew one thing for sure - every kid knew the Star Wars storyline. Disney just spent $4 billion dollars to buy the rights to Star Wars, every kid is going to know about this storyline for the foreseeable future. (As a total side note if you're interested Star Wars has taken a great deal from Hinduism.) What this presenter did was leverage all this effort that other people are doing creating a message and diverting it to capturethe attention of his audience and then telling his own message. I talked with the kids a few days later and all of them remember the talk. The most important thing is that they remember the take home message of true friendship. They even remembered the stories told as the parables in the talk.

Unexpected grants us attention.
We then have the privilege of sharing the ideas in the syllabus with our audience.

If you ever want to explain the concept of maya and karma to older kids and want them to remember the prasang of Yogi Bapa telling the kathakar that maya is anything that comes between you and worshipping God. Maybe start with this short comic of Batman and Joker to get that attention first.