Books recommended in the SRE workshop

I found a number of really interesting books in the last workshop organized by the NSW Buddhist council. I have not used them in class yet, but they seemed excellent.

•  The Centering Book, awareness activities for children, parents and teachers by Gay Hendricks and Russel Wills
  
• Zen Shorts by John Muth Recommended for year 1, 2 and 3.
  
• The Three Questions by John Muth
  
• Stone Soup by John Muth (I loved this one)
  
• The Prince Who Ran Away: The Story Of Gautama Buddha by Anne Rockwell (Author), Fahimeh Amiri (Illustrator)
  
• Her Father's Garden by James Vollbracht
  

books on teaching emotional intelligence

In a recent training workshop(for SRE teachers) at the Buddhist Council, its president made a point about how Buddhist Scripture is teaching in many way 'life skills' (in the lay sense. Dealing with emotions (our own and those off others), is an essential part of this training. Although these books are not Buddhist at all, I have bought a copy and now have them in the ever growing pile o things to read. If any Buddhist teachers has experience with any of these, I would appreciate your feedback.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Strategies and Activities for Helping Students Make Effective Choices. by Adina Bloom Lewkowicz. 2006

Fostering Emotional Intelligence in K-8 Students: Simple Strategies and Ready-To-Use Activities. by Gwen Doty. 2001

Emotional Intelligence . by Daniel Goleman. This is the book that probably coined the term and started the trend. Goleman is very well know researcher in the field of emotions.


Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman.

Teaching Meditation to Children - new book

Teaching Meditation to Children: The Practical Guide to the Use and Benefits of Meditation Techniquesby David Fontana (Author), Ingrid Slack is a fantastic book written by experienced teachers of mediation. Not a Buddhist book but very insightful about techniques and particularly issues that appear while teaching meditation to children.
It is the type of book where I feel the urge to use a highlighter is stronger than the guilt of scratching a book (I feel this guilt, even when the book is mine).

Some of the things I highlighted:

• "Working with children in meditation lifts our spirits as well as theirs."
• "A fifth-century Buddhist monk, Buddhghosa, spoke of meditation as a training of attention"
• Preparatory rules:.. 1. Don't expect too much. 2. Never show disappointment or impatience 3. Make it clear that children are not competing with each other 4. Keep all instructions simple 5. Keep explanations simple and 6. Use appropriate tone of voice.

Dalai Lama meets scripture students

The NSW Buddhist Council organizes great events. "On Saturday 14th June 2008 some children along with their parents were invited to meet His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at Homebush. Here are some pictures to share with you http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelwu2218"

I was not one of the lucky ones ;-)

But Michael photos are fantastic.
I still haven't figured out how to embed a single photo, so I borrowed one:

Mathieu Ricard in Aloka

The ABM Youth group organized a fantastic event around Ricard's visit. 

We had a musical show, and then a very interesting Dhama by Ricard. 

The following Q& A section with Ven Mahinda was enlightening. It showed how different monks have different opinions on things, but then at the bottom, it is the same.

The icing on the cake was the slide show that Ricard gave to the youth group. His sensitivity and analytical skills are reflected on all he does.

Al proceeds from the event went to Ricard's charities. If you can help support orphans in Tibet and Nepal, please visit his website: http://www.karuna-asia.org

Meditation And The Neuroscience Of Consciousness

It feels very strange to comment on two readings as distant as "Peaceful piggy meditation" and  the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness on almost the same day... but well, that is what I have been reading. 

 

Actually, of the latter I only read "Meditation And The Neuroscience Of Consciousness: An Introduction" by Antoine Lutz, John D. Dunne, And Richard J. Davidson.

This chapter reviews defines meditation by analyzing some of the techniques common to all Buddhist traditions, then it explores where Buddhism and Neuroscience intersect, describing how Buddhism as an exploratory field of study can contribute to the neuroscience of emotions and mind-body interactions. The chapter  concludes with a section discussing the neuroimaging and neuroelectric research that reviews some of the correlates between both. With 120 pages the chapter goes pretty deep.

The authors, from the University of Wisconsin, are working with a number of very experienced meditators, monks from the Tibetan tradition, including Matthieu Ricard.  

  

 

Peaceful Piggy Meditation

On week two of this term I tried to reproduce the successful results I had on week one. We read Peaceful Piggy Meditation a short story about family life in today's fast world. 

The basic premise is that since "Sometimes the world can be such a busy, noisy place" then "it's good to meditate."

According to Amazon, the author is a certified  meditation teacher for children.

The books is very nice, both the writing and the illustrations. For teaching in a large class in fact that images are somewhat realistic makes reading it more difficult: all kids want to see them!

For the older kids I think the story was less interesting than the "Hermit and the Well" I read last week.

Mind Science - a news report

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. (Albert Einstein)

A number of scientists have started looking at Buddhism as a source of information on how the brain works. This is a news report of the research produced at the Lab for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, led by Prof Richard Davidson.

The Dan Rather news report starts with a section on the impact of meditation on well-being, with interviews to the Dalai Lama and a number of scientists. Then there is a discussion of medical research on how the increased understanding of neuroplasticity is helping people suffering the consequences of stroke. I found the interview to Eric Kandel, nobel prize winner, particularly entretaining.

The Hermit and the Well

For the first lesson of this term I picked The Hermit and the Well a short story by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh is a fantastic writer. The book tells, in first person, the story of a boy who goes on a school trip to a mountain to find a hermit. They do not find him, but the boy finds something much more important while sitting next to a well.

The story raises a number of issues that can trigger discussion. The kids were interested in knowing if the story was true, or if it could even be true. It also can be used to discuss how when we hurry we do not see the beauty of what lays on the path, or how we sometimes find what we are looking for, in something that looks completely different.

I was actually feeling pretty awful before the class. I had read the terrible story of child abuse and was feeling very sad. But somehow the kids were the quietest they have ever been. The class was fantastic. I had decided to read the story while we 'played' freeze and the distractors, and offer to give candy to those who won. At the end I gave a candy to each of them, because they had all been so good (I actually ran out of them half way).

With the older ones, I used the remaining time to discuss the story. It always amazes me how people can have so different interpretations of a text.
Note: Before starting the reading I asked what a Hermit was. Very few knew the meaning, so one of the kids explained it.

End of term

For the last 3 weeks, Monica, a Volunteer came to the class to help with the teaching. She was really nice and I was hoping she would be able to teach Kindy and year 1 that currently have no teacher. On the second week she made the case that it would be better to teach in a school that has no teacher whatsoever. She was probably right.

The kids behaved pretty bad the first two of these weeks. The third one I started sending the restless ones out, to their normal class.  I will have to keep strict on the discipline or we will have the same problem I had last year.

The classes have not been as structured as they used to be. We worked on a historic topic on alternate weeks. 

When we discussed the four sights, I showed a snippet off the BBC video.

Siddharta was very sensitive to what happened around him so the King was very concerned about the type of things he saw and heard. But Siddharta wants to see the world.

The story tells how Siddharta leaves the palace with his friend/servant  Channa. On each excursion he sees an important sign, and on each occasion Channa explains how that could happen to anyone: A sick man, is the first one, then an old, and a dead man. With these first three sights he faces for the first time the suffering of the cycle of life. On the four one he sees a monk, begging for food. And Channa explains that he is a wise man looking for answers to the problems of life.

On the last class the kids wrote on small cards, made by the Buddhist council, their name, year and an act of kindness they did recently. We then read and discuss them (without saying aloud who wrote what). The Council will collect them all for the Vesak celebrations.

   

  

Interesting books

I am trying to learn about what Neuroscience has to say with respect to emotions, a very hot field of scientific research. I just ordered three books that seemed promising. They are not Buddhist at all, but I hope to find they have something interesting to say:

Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion - Richard D. Lane;

The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind - Marvin Minsky

Affective Computing - Rosalind W. Picard

circles of metta - loving kindness

Every once in a while I get bits of inspiration out of nowhere. By serendipity I end up making up an activity that engages students much more than other activities. Last week it one of these.

With the older ones (about 12 this year) we did almost 15 minutes of meditation. Most of them where sitting pretty quietly by the time I finished the session. We stretched, talked a bit and then I thought another 5minutes of sitting would be nice.

I asked them to sit in groups of 3-4. I ended up with 2 groups of 3, a group of 4 and two groups of 2. They had to sit in circles. The exercise was to send loving kindness 'energy' to the person on the left. This way the person on the right was sending 'metta' to myself and I was sending metta to the person on the left. Metta circulated clockwise in each group. I asked them to feel the energy coming in through one arm and leaving through the other. It seemed that liked the activity.

We then discussed what they felt when they meditated. They mostly said 'calm'. 

Surprisingly they could not come with examples of other situations where they felt the same way. I said that I felt somewhat like that when I sat in the beach, listening to the waves and feeling the breeze. They did not seem to click on the simile, so I think they enjoy the beach in a different way :-)

SRE workshop - a success

I have been with a flu and classes just started at Uni, so I had not able to report on the funtastic workshop organized by the NSW Buddhist Council.

We followed the program for the day quite closely:
10:00 - 10:10 Welcome and meditation
10:10 - 10:50 Daniel Yeo “how best to use the Come & See CDs” gave us a great show, with music, dancing and a lot of ideas on how to make our classes more fun.  The CDs of D-Kidz, his group, can be acquired in the website.  You can listen to samples in his site or from Buddhanet here. The songs tell the story of Buddha and as such they can be very useful. Note, some of the lyrics have religious connotations common in asian countries, but that not all teachers might want to bring to their classes in Australia (or other western countries). As I told Daniel, I wish I could sing and entertain like that!, but as he replied 'if you can't sing, use the CD!' 

10:50 - 11:10 DET Representative on their protocols. A discussion of mostly administrative issues, but the lady who presented provided some useful materials.
11:10 - 11:30 Michelle Corby “meditation with children”. Michelle told us about her experiences and a discussion followed.
11:30 - 11:40 Break
11:40 - 12:00 TC Lim “the Dhammapada”. TC Lim, a long term benefactor of different Buddhist organizations told the personal story of editing a version of the Dhammapada, and suggested looking into it as a source for children stories.
12:00 - 12:30 Ven Jin Rou "Teaching Ecology through Buddhist Stories" read some of the stories she has written.
12:30 - 12:50 Group discussions

We then went for a delicious lunch at a restaurant in Crows Nest.

Thank you to Roselin and Brian for organizing this

online learning?

Since we have so little time during the class (30 min) I have been thinking how I could extend it to the time they spend at home.

Several of the kids mentioned that they practice with their parents at home.

Maybe sharing their experiences online would help having them think more about meditation during the week?

The first real question is, would online activities help at all?

If so, what type of activities would be best? Some ideas

• I found ePals website, recently featured at New York Times, that helps teachers link with groups of students elsewhere. How about getting students talk about Buddhism with kids in Vietnam or Thailand? 
  
• Discussion amongst themselves about their personal experiences
• Pick a topic for the year (e.g. 'happiness') and discuss it, bringing the buddhist perspective in classes. 

Ricard coming to Sydney

One of the best news I got in the Council's meeting a few weeks ago was that Matthiew Ricard was coming to Sydney.  He will nowhere less than Aloka! on the 4th of May. They have set up a website with a name around the theme of his visit: 'Towards a simple and peaceful life'

I also found another excellent talk by Matthiew Ricard at google video.

Sunnataram Forest Monastery

Last weekend we went to the Sunnataram Forest Monastery, a Thai temple about 120Km south of Sydney. The temple is a few kilometers from Bundanoon (see map below), and I strongly recommend a visit. Check the temple's website for events.

We forgot to bring a camera, but in Flickr I found fantastic photos of the temple, the monks and the flora and fauna surrounding the place. I insterted them below as a slideshow, so people can get an idea of the beauty of the place. To see who took the photo, just click on the one you like.

The food, as temple food always is, was fantastic. The baby got tired early so we where not able to hear a Dhamma talk, but I hope that we will next time.




View Larger Map

Getting ready for the first class in 2008

The School's scripture  coordinator called me yesterday to inform me that classes would start on 28 February. Scripture classes start a few weeks after the beginning of the first term, to give parents time to decide which classes they will enroll in.

Her estimate is that the number of students enrolling in Buddhism would increase even further this year! It is really amazing. Parents must really feel that Buddhist teachings will benefit their kids.  We had more than 50 students last year, lets see how many we have in 2008. To give you an idea of the context, this is a relatively small school located in Leichhradt, serving an area of Sydney with less than 3% Buddhists.

 

If I have to summarize my plans for this year's teaching preparation, I would do it in one word 'sit'. If I wanted to summarize the learning outcomes for this year, 'metta' (living kindness) is the best I can think of.

preparing for the new year

A couple of days ago I got an email from Roselin the SRE coordinator for the NSW Buddhist council. The Council's president has organized a taxation office recognized charity, so they can take tax-deductible donations. The council plans to use part of this money to pay for teacher's expenses. Luckily I do not need mine  to be paid, but I am sure it will help a number of people out there who do a lot of teaching or have a lot of traveling expenses.

After the email my mind somehow spinned off (as they do) thinking about what I would do if I earned the Lotto (not that I ever play). I added 'create scholarship for non-English speaking monk or nun' to the list. There are so many wise and compassionate Sangha members that could help teaching to a wider audience, if 1) they were here in Australia 2) had good English communication skills. It is now written in stone (well on a digital one)...

Roselin also mentioned that she will be organizing a meeting with all the teachers at the end of March. I look forward to it. Regrettably I was overseas for the one at the end of last year.

Learning from hatred

I have felt the impact of being hated for the first time in my life, and I am trying to learn from this. Although this started over a year ago, this week I realized how far this person's delusion has gone, and it may me think about the issue again. I still have to learn to live with these situations better.

So far, I could say that I have been very lucky. I was born white, straight, ... so I did not have to suffer any hatred from people who did not even know me. While meditating, one of the visualizations we use is to send loving kindness to people who with had disagreements with. I always interpreted that as wishing well to those who have wronged us. But what I am writing about is different, it is about someone who decided to hate us, so I am thinking how to extend (for personal use) this exercise.

 

It seems that at some point this should happen, and according to the 'Sunday Dhamma school' book, these things make us stronger.

By keeping a compassionate life we are less likely to get into trouble. I think people notice that we only wish them well and this way we are able to keep good relationships. At least in my personal life this has worked well. We will always have the ocasional person who might not like what we do, but so far I never had someone who I would say 'hated' me.

When our jobs give us positions that affect other people's lives, this affects their views about us, and this views can be very strong. They may perceive that we have ulterior motives, hidden agendas... they attribute things that happen to their fantasy characters, and everything we do only feeds their delusions.

I believe that in these jobs we have a responsability to do our best . I have always made my best effort, and in general I think I have done well. Of course we make mistakes, and when this happens we might be making people unhappy. The responsability is to then learn from the experience, so we can do better next time, and ask for forgiveness when necessary.

It also happens that some people have stronger seeds of delusion and hatred. They have not been touched by the Dhamma, and they do not even see those seeds.

When that hatred is directed to us (at least in my case), it produces confusion, doubts in ourselves. I first tried to understand what had triggered it. I asked this person what I had done, but only small meaningless things came up. I even apologized for any suffering I might have caused. Nothing helped.  I have wished him well (from within and explicitly). Recently when through his web page I learned that he was moving on, I was happy. Then, through his web page I also learned that his hatred was still there. It had actually become so irrational that some people told me to be careful, because the person could be dangerous (I don't think so).

This is an opportunity to learn. Family and friends have told me that I should just let it go. Ricard's book says that when this happens we should meditate and send them metta -loving kindness-, and I am trying this. It really helps, but the pain still languishes inside. I am not wise enough yet.

Matthieu Ricard talks about happiness

I recently started reading Matthiew Ricard's new book: "Happiness: A guide to developing life's most important skill".

The book is fantastic, as this scientist, who became a Buddist monk.
Riccard has been working with scientists in uncovering the meaning of happiness from the neurophysiological point of view.

This short video is an interesting lecture that summarizes the book's first chapters.

Great experience - although not many parents

Regrettably not many families were able to come to the temple. I think part of the reason was me getting wrong the dates the temple could receive visitors. My first letter was incorrect, and only when I was in Europe I learned that I had to change it. Although I faxed the School they were not able to tell all parents about the new date... I sent a new letter again when I came back, on the last week, but by then the mistake had been made...
I apologize for the inconvenience this caused.
I also had to apologize to the monks and nuns, since I prepared a nice curry but forgot to *not* use onions or garlic. My mom and the guest liked it though.

Venerable Rong gave a very nice lecture in the main hall. She combined the type of factual information that is interesting for adults with that interesting for kids. We did not get to sit, but this is probably to short a visit for that.

Photo Exhibition about buddhist temples in NSW

Through the Buddhist Council of NSW website I found Michael Wu's very nice photo exhibition.