Why do we teach?

We read today what Buddha did after enlightenment.
After taking a break, he started thinking if he could teach what he had learned.
The question was, who would be able to understand his teachings.
He first thought about his previous teachers, but they had died, so he decided to go back to his friends, the ascetics with whom he mediated in the forests. He met the five as ascetics in current-day Sarnath.

The little one where quite restless today, so we read this story from the textbook. When I asked them about the meaning of Dhamma (mentioned in the book) they couldn't remember, although we had just done the bowing to 3 jewels. I will have to spend more time on this.

The older ones said that since we had read and talked a lot last week we should meditate longer.
I briefly went over the story, instead of reading it. I mentioned that the reason the Buddha went around teaching was that he thought that he had learned would be useful to others. It was his ways of sharing. I explained that it was the same reason I had. This has become so much more clear to me in the last few weeks.
When I teach at Uni its always about skills, even when I get out of the 'technical' curricula is only to help them be better communicators or better team players... In some sense more skills.

Teaching Buddhism/meditation actually makes me feel good about myself.

For example, after the 20min sitting one of the kids who had been more restless during the session said that more thoughts came to his mind when he was sitting than otherwise. Other kids immediately said that they felt calmer, and it was just because he did not try hard enough.
He said that he had been thinking about computers, so I said how that happened to me all the time, even worst when I went into retreat, when there is nothing else to do.
When he explained what happened to him, I felt closer. I also felt that explaining why that happened , and giving him some tools to overcome that, would be a 'skill' that would benefit the rest of his life. Hopefully he would do much better than me!

a class on the meaning of ignorance

Year 4 had dancing classes so we had a smaller group this week. It was good because someone misplaced the key to the classroom I normally use and we had to sit in a smaller one.

I can now say without a blink of the eyes that I am enjoying the teaching... a lot.
We had a nice session with both groups, but specially with the older ones.

I had promised to start using the textbooks I got from the Buddhist Council.
I asked them to open on page 38, that has a description of the enlightenment.


The text describes how Buddha talks about how Prince Siddhata sees how the root of suffering is ignorance. So we discussed the meaning of ignorance.
In my example, I explained that if I steal something, I do it driven by selfishness, I do not care about the other person. Selfishness was not realizing the other person's suffering.

I then asked them to give me their examples where we caused suffering because of ignorance.
Some of them included

• 'When we do not help mom clean the dishes. She has been working all day, and we just want to sit there without doing anything.... We do not think about her.'
• 'When we do not help in the house...'
• 'When we eat more than our share of food and leave dad or mom without enough food'
• 'When we make noise and misbehave in class, we do not think about the teacher and how he is also a person.'

Regrettably I can not quote word by word by these where pretty much the examples they came up with. I thought they were pretty good.

We then only had 5min to sit, but everybody was so quiet that I just let them sit for an extra 5min. Again I was very 'one' with them when guiding the session.
I can see that the advantage of that is that I can relate the meditation to what we discussed in class (e.g. sending metta to mom). I am not sure if this is the best, maintaining a routine is alo very important. Although for this I have well established the bell and taking refuge three jewels.

Buddhist council and chaplancy training

The Buddhist Council under the Presidency of Brian White is doing a fantastic job.
The new premises in Crows Nest are great, with a good library and room for meetings and training.

They have organized a Chaplaincy training program .
Regrettably it runs for five weeks, on Thursdays (all day). Much more that I can allocate nowadays.


Interestingly the program is organized with the New South Wales College of Clinical Pastoral Education. They seem to normally train Christian Chaplains but they are now the first to train Buddhist as well. A fantastic interfaith collaboration.

New volunteer

I have not been able to post much recently. Life has been pretty hectic.

A few weeks ago I asked the nun in charge o the Vietnamese temple in Marrickville if she could come to our class one week. She replied that they were very buys lately trying to gather enough funds o buy the house next door so to be able to enlarge the temple (sounds familiar ... half of Sydney is in the same race). Luckily she referred me to Anna, a lovely lady that visits the temple and has been a devotee all her life.

Anna has been coming to our class for the last two weeks. It is a big effort for her, since she lives in Maroubra, so she has like an hour trip each way, to come and teach with me for only 1 hour!

She was really nice and the kids loved the wodden chanting bell, the Tibetan prayer/'spinner' and the images, all with nice explanations on what they meant.
It is interesting how they engage so much more with this practical items. Anyway, they are actually asking for meditation, so every day we have at least 10min of sitting.

Last week the CD recorder did not work so I could not play Bhante's metta CD. I improvised (I'm getting better at it) and actually guided the meditation.
I was so deeply into it, just as when I have a long and 'productive' sitting session.
I felt the same happiness, lightness and freedom/detachment that one feels when meditating. It was great.