5th class - video

I tried using technology this week! just showing part of a DVD.

As I expected the kids got very excited about it. The DVD "3 Refuges and 5 Precepts" is a very nice production by "Dharma Dream Production" and the Kong Men San Phor Karkb See Monastery. The first 15 minutes are appropriate for this age group. Later it becomes a bit too technical for under 16. Regrettably the sound of the DVD was not great, and a little bit hard to understand, specially with the noise you get in a classroom.

Again the discipline was a problem.

The curly hair girl at some point told me "those kids are very distracting, you should send them out". She is probably right and wiser than me. She was so good at sitting, and when I asked them to leave walking mindfully, she actually walked out slowly and watching each step. Very impressive, I told her "please tell your parents I'm very proud of your work"

The DVD starts by alternating scenes from noisy street environments with the faces of people meditating. The peaceful faces and the sound / silence make such an impressive effect that we all watched interested. Then there images of churches and temples from different religions and then images of Buddhist temples of different traditions, with monks and people meditating.

With the younger group we talked about the different religions shown in the video. They were curious about Ganesh, the Indian elephant God, and one of the kids knew the story and told it to everyone in the group. Very good. We briefly mentioned Christian, Muslims and Jews. I only repeated what the movie said, that believing in Buddhism was based on what we learn through the practice. 'Which practice?', I asked and one of the boys said 'meditation!'.

I used the images of Boddhi Gaya to remind them of the tree that they had seen in the images they had coloured. I then used the images of people meditating, showing the right way of sitting, particularly of crossing the hands over the lap, instead of 'flying around' in fancy mudras (that they have probably seen in movies).

With the older group, we stopped in the images of people bowing and discussed the significance, and the 3 refuges:

Buddham Saranam Gachami
Dhammam Saranam Gachami
Sangham Saranam Gachami

They had fun bowing, and repeating the verses.

I found out that the boy that does not speak English just came from Sri Lanka. The video I had planned for a future class might be a nice thing for him. "Budda and the rice planters" is a video I found in the library and shows temples and images of Sri Lanka.

Next week is the last class of the term.