Understanding Santhara - A Workshop
  On Oct 18, a workshop was organized on ‘Understanding Santhara’ under the guidance of Samani Satya Pragyaji and Samani Rohini Pragyaji at the Franklin Temple Gyanshala Rooms. Santhara is a subject that has brought all Jains together. However, this is also a subject that has generated numerous lively living room discussions in the past few months. This workshop was a great opportunity for understanding the subject under the guidance of Samanijis and more than 40 members took advantage of it. Ramesh Parmar opened the session with introducing the subject and elaborated on its legal background. Samani Rohini Pragyaji spoke about the treatment of death and dying in different faiths and cultures. Samani Satya Pragyaji spoke about Santhara and Sanlekhana in Jainism. She elaborated on the process, prerequisites, and expectations of Santhara and how it is different from suicide, mercy killing, and dying with dignity provided by living wills. A lively Q&A session followed. The workshop was very well received by all attendees. | | | The First JVBNA Youth Forum By: Arnav Sacheti 
Along with the start of the new school year, JVBNA successfully kicked off its Youth Forum with the first meeting on October 23. This forum is designed for older middle school children and high school children to meet once a month and its main purpose is to spiritually engage us and mentally help us through these stages in life. Coming into this meeting, we all had high expectations that we would learn a lot and take away something that we could use for the rest of our lives.
During the first hour, Samani Satya Pragyaji and Samani Rohini Pragyaji discussed the topic of "Physical Fitness and Discipline". This is a very important topic, as it relates not only to our physical health, but also to our mental and emotional health. Samanijis touched upon the fact that through physical fitness we can achieve discipline and that discipline is essentially focus, which can be achieved through meditation - meditation - not in a conventional but liberal sense. This is to say that one needs to be mindful while eating, walking and in other day-today aspects of life.
During the second hour, Kavita Aunty (Kavita Kothari) helped us on the mental aspect of life by discussing that to achieve success, we should set goals for ourselves. Setting goals and reaching them gives one renewed confidence and self-esteem to keep doing so, and eventually achieving success. We also discussed our likes and dislikes, which will be further dwelled upon in following sessions. Though it is only the first meeting, I have already felt that by bringing together a spiritual sense with a mental one, we are truly bettering ourselves in this youthful stage.
| | | Gyanshala Gyanshala had a wonderful start for the year 2015-16 under the guidance of Samaniji. As always, students would be nurtured with subjects like Jainism, Hindi, Yoga, and Bhaktamar. This year onward, a separate Bhaktamar class is introduced so as to make students well versed with Bhaktamar Stotra along with its meanings. Gyanshala session was memorable on Oct 25 as Dr. Samani Satya Pragyaji and Dr.Samani Rohini Pragyaji conducted a wonderful workshop for all the students. Gyan and Darshan group students attended a workshop by Samanijis about physical fitness and discipline in their daily life in co-relation to Jain facts and examples. Students were very attentive and focused as they answered all the rapid questions asked by Samanijis. They also performed practical experiments on " How to help others ". These experiments were informative, collective, and fun filled. Students thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the workshop as it got them involved from beginning to end. For Charitra Group students, Samanijis conducted a hand held workshop on "Finding clues to a problem," skills and tricks to improve concentration and three fold approach to Navkar mantra by means of Mantra, Breathing, and Yogic Posture. All Charitra group students were actively involved in the workshop and also surprised Samanijis by their creative problem solving tact. This workshop was undoubtedly one of its kind! | | | Conflict Resolution and Anekantavada Workshop A workshop on Conflict Resolution and Anekantavada was organized on Oct 31 under the guidance of Samanijis. The workshop started with manglacharan.
Dr. Samani Rohini Pragyaji introduced the theme explaining conflict in terms of incompatibility of interests, opinions, lifestyles and many other things. These differences become problems when one is not skillful enough to take advantage of the differences. Anekanta doctrine explains a way out of these problems as humans have the ability to appreciate and learn not only from different but even opposite views.
The workshop continued with group activity. We had 5 teams of 4 members each. Every team was given a problem of differences that they tried to resolve in the best way they could. This way the participants actively became the owners of conflict-resolution party through dialogue they had within their teams. The performances of all the teams were excellent. In the third part, Dr. Samani Satya Pragya ji presented her valuable thoughts on the theme in detail. She discussed that the foundation of conflicts was in fact a tussle between soul and karma. She also stressed that there will be some conflicts that will be unresolvable. She gave the keys of conflict resolution in terms of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, conflict management, and conflict transformation. The talk continued with practical tips for overcoming the situation of conflict and ended with a livley Q&A session. The workshop was very well received by all participants. | | | Regular Sessions
1. Pakshik Pratikaman - Every Pakkhi - Nov 11, Nov 25, Dec 10, Dec 25 - 7:30PM - JVBNA Center 2. Preksha Meditation - Tuesdays - 7:30PM - 8:30PM - JVBNA Center 3. Swadhyay - Thursdays - 7:30PM -8:30PM - JVBNA Center
4. Youth Forum - Third Friday of every month - Nov 20, Dec 18, 7PM - 9PM - JVBNA Center
5. Gyanshala - Two Sundays every month - 3:30PM - 6PM - Franklin Temple Classrooms | | | Upcoming Events -
Diwali Jaap - Wednesday, November 11, 10AM - 11AM - JVBNA center -
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New Year Day, AGM, EC Oath Ceremony - Friday, Jan 1, 2016 -
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