the six perfections

Kids never stop surprising me. We so underestimate their abilities!

One of the activities I led late in the year was to discuss the six perfections (technically called the Paramitas), a different take on the path, with similarities to the eightfold path.

I wanted to leave them some 'homework', something to think about in their holidays, and we had already discussed the eightfold path, so I thought this could be a good alternative, but I had my reservations due to its complexity.

But, they always can surprise us with their ingenuity and focus.

I thought that activity was very successful. The kids meditated on these perfections and seemed happy and motivated when we finished. 

Dana (generosity), reminds us on what the real meaning of the Christmas season should be (most of the kids are from christian families). We practice giving without expecting anything back. 

Sila: (virtue), can be developed by remembering that giving should be accompanied by virtue. 

This means that we can only give what is ours, and that choices should be mindful of waste, cost,...

  
Kshanti (patience, acceptance), can be developed when we have expectations, desires, etc, all of which cannot be met.

Virya (diligence) that I brought up, asking them to make an effort to meditate a few minutes everyday, while they were on holidays.

Dhyana: (concentration) that they would develop while they meditate

Prajna: (wisdom) that they would also develop while thy meditate.

I wish I had written the details on the session's pros and cons immediately after school. Now, a month later, I only remember the gist of it, and that I was extremely happy about the outcomes.

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.

   

  

Playing 'Freeze and the Distractors'

I had to travel overseas for business so I was not able to teach (or post here).

Somehow the week before leaving I made an unexpected discovery, maybe even an invention :-)

The kids were a bit more restless than normal on the weeks leading to my trip. Somehow I think it is related with my own personal state of mind. They can pick up every detail on how we feel. And on those days I was very restless, working 70hrs a week and still trying to keep up with my own baby.

So here it is. The game is very simple, and they love it:
'1,2,3 Freeze' and they all have to stop moving, stay in the position they are until disqualified or until we finish. Of course, a number of kids are too restless to do this, so they become self made 'distractors' that go around ... distracting people, trying to break their concentration, trying to make them move. In some sense they act like the nimphs sent to distract the Buddha when he was under the tree.

While they are mostly still I get a chance to talk and be listened. In fact, although it has a competitive aspect that help make it more interesting for them, I can discuss about the important of sitting or being n a comfortable position, on focusing on something like the breath, on not paying attention to those who (for their own weaknesses) can not stop bothering others.

They liked the game so much that now they ask for it every time.
I did not play it with the older ones, but on the last week of the term they also wanted to play it....
I guess that next year I will have to keep learning on the balance between play and work on the Buddhist scripture class.

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.

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.

Manipulation or fatherly love?

A few weeks ago I used another popular story out of Buddha's live: 'the four sights'.
The story starts when Prince Siddharta wants to see the world outside the Palace. Until marriage, he had been kept inside the Palace and not allowed to go out. In most books I have read, the interpretation is that the King wanted Siddharta to be the next King, and was afraid (based on something an Oracle had said) that Siddharta might want to be a Sage, a wandering wise man, so he kept him inside.
In fact, even while Siddharta was in the Palace, the King had given orders to anything that might cause a negative impression on him should be removed. If someone was injured or dying, he was not allowed in the princely quarters. Only people looking happy were allowed to wander around.

Despite all the entertainment the King organized within the walls of the Palace: music, banquets, teachers, etc. Siddharta wanted to see the outside world. So after getting married, the King had to agree. Of course, before doing he ordered the city to be cleaned, and the street where he would walk had to be 'cleansed' of any unsightly views.

For anyone who has walked in the north of India, it would be obvious that this is not possible. Poverty and disease are in every street, even nowadays.

The story goes on, so I told the kids how he went around and saw four things that changed his life (actually we managed to read 3, before the fourth the bell rang and they ran outside)

The first one was an old man, who could hardly walk. When Siddharta saw he him, he asked his companion what was wrong with him. 'He is old, we all get old'


The second one one was a sick man. When Siddharta saw he him, he asked his companion what was wrong with him. 'He is sick, we all get sick'

Then he sighted a body being carried by two men on a wooden frame. When Siddharta saw this, he asked his companion what was happening. 'The person is dead, we all die'. 'Even the King, even I will die?' asked Siddharta. 'yes, I believe so'.

Finally Siddharta sighted a man wearing robes, carrying a bowl.

I didn't get to this last point, so I will tell people what happens when I do.
Meanwhile, something really interesting happened when I was explaining these ones to the kids. I normally try to relate the story to things that happen nowadays, and most likely in their lives, but I was having trouble contextualising this one.

I explained (my view) that the father loved Siddharta, and the King was probably doing what was best for Siddharta, and for the Kingdom.

Sometimes parents do not want their kids to see things that might affect them negatively.

One of the kids said something that opened my eyes: 'oh like what happens when they don't want us to see a TV show.' Exactly' I replied, 'thank you, your example is great'.
So there it is, another example of how kids teach us about Buddhism.

The question about the King's real intentions may still be open. But the girls example puts puts the issues closer to our modern heart. When we censor content from the web or the TV we are trying to help our kids, we are probably trying to show them a safer world than it really is. Not that the TV shows like CSI describe an everyday reality, but we may be trying to filter some of the suffering. On the other hand, at the appropriate age they should be able to cope with the perversity (at least the one of the the TV channels), because they will have to live in a world with TVs.

Buddha: the horse wisperer

I am increasingly using the images of 'A pictorial Biography of Sakyamuni Buddha' (the author is written in Chinese characters) and shorter version in 'Buddhist studies for primary students' by Danuse Murty, Buddhist Council of New South Wales, 2003.

The original texts and illustrations are by Gunapayuta et.al, and are very popular, used in many Buddhist books. Similar books can be downloaded from BuddhaNet.

In recent weeks I have tried to take 2-3 'frames' of Buddha's life and make a little short story, trying to relate his life to things that children understand.

Th first is the popular story of the Horse taming contest.

When the Buddha was about to marry, the King organized a contest. In the horse riding activity the Buddha had his white horse Kanthaka, the fastest horse in town. All competitors said that with that horse he would always win, in fact anyone with that horse would win. The King then decided that instead of their horses, everyone should try to mount a fierce black horse that threw everyone in the ground. Prince Anirudha tried first, being one of the best riders in the country, he mounted the horse without effort, then he wiped it hard to force him to run around the yard. When he did this the horse went wild and threw him off to the ground. Helpers had to rush in to help and save the prince's life.

Next was Prince Siddharta. He approached the horse from the front, and instead of immediately jumping on it, he started petting him in the cheek, and then on the neck. He whispered some words with a soft voice. Before riding the horse he explained what he needed to do and asked the horse for permission.

Everybody was then surprised that the fierce black horse had calmed down, and let the Prince ride gently, moving forward and backwards in front of all the country's audience.

When I finished telling the story we discussed why asking for permission might have worked better. Do we behave better when we are asked nicely or when we are forced to do things?

Fantastic day

Yes, I had the best day so far.

Even the little ones did well. I read the Muchalinda (giant Cobra) story that Dorian wrote and they liked it a lot. They were quiet for most of the time. The reason: the Kindergarten kids did not come. There were still about 20, but the little-little ones make a whole lot of difference.

With the older ones, we did Bhante's guided meditation on metta. Fantastic. I think that Bhante voice has the same effect on them as he does on me. I did some new things that seemed to have helped:

1. I sat in the office, before leaving to the school, and then again in the classroom, before the kids came in. This gave me a lot of energy and focused my mind. I followed Bhante's talk, the same I would use with the students.
   
2. Asked the two most 'active' boys to lie down in the floor instead of sitting.
   
3. Told the rest to be in the position they felt most comfortable with. Have sat, have lied down.
4. I kept my own voice to a minimum. I tried to leave it to Bhante and just sit for most of the time. I followed the guided meditation myself.
5. When the kids moved, I looked at them or pointed to them, looking straight to the eyes. Since the other are were with the eyes closed or quiet, when I looked at them, they were more 'alone' with me. It was the most one to one I can get in this large class.
6. When H, one of the two that are two active had relaxed I asked him to sit, and I sat close to him and send him metta. He did great! yes I was so impressed that I praised him at the end of the class. I think he was impressed himself, even though it was only about 2 minutes that he kept still.
   

At the end of the day I went to see the principal and asked her what had happened with the Kindergarten kids. She had forgotten to take them to the class! Well, I said 'it was the best day so far, so I am grateful to you'.

PD: I saw some school statistics. They have about 290 students in the whole school. 40-50 each year. This means that 15-20% of parents want their kids to learn about Buddhism. It is very impressive considering that the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates the Buddhist population in Australia at about 4%.

2nd term starts

Having renewed my energy with the holiday and the retreat, I was back to scripture classes today.

During the retreat I asked Bhante to make a CD for kids with a guided Metta meditation. I hope he does it. Meanwhile I thought I could use the one he made for adults.
This morning I sat with his CD and realized that it was not going to work out for the little ones.
I'm happy I took that decision.

With the little ones we read the story of Sigala. One of the kids, of Sri Lankan background already new it. The story is about a boy (Sigala) who the Buddha finds throwing seeds in the four directions. When the Buddha asks him why he is doing it, he says its because his father asked him to before dying. The Buddha then explains him the meaning, basically that it is a symbol of sending loving kindness to all sentient beings.

Sometimes you’ll hear Buddhists refer to all ‘sentient beings’ in their blessings and prayers. This is a way to say ‘everyone in the whole wide world who can sense and feel’, including all creatures from the tiniest little bug to the biggest whale, all humans and animals and insects and even the beings we can’t see, like happy spirits waiting to be reborn. When you say a blessing for all sentient beings you’re making sure not to leave anyone out!

I went on to read a definition of sentient beings that my wife had written and a blessing:

May all sentient beings be well and happy,
May all sentient beings be free from suffering,
May they live in equanimity, free of prejudice, craving and anger.
May they never be separated from the happiness that is free from suffering.

I asked to repeat after me, and emphasized the first two.

We the older group we did the metta guided meditation. It was excellent. All the kids sat for the first 10 minutes of session (15 minutes long). They were mostly quiet, and they were still for most of the time. I was very grateful.

Last term I told the principal about the problems with discipline and she suggested I get some extra help from the council. With so mny students in one group is not easy to do it alone. When I told her today that the kids had been pretty good, she was happy and said '"we all have a bad day"

I gave a CD to the two that seemed more concentrated. I asked them to share it and use it at home... lets see if it works.

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.

4th class - coloring the story

This 4th week was more 'average' than the previous one, or at least more of what I am begining to expect.

The younger group was not as bad as last week, but the discipline was still an issue. I wish I had fewer students, it would be much easier. I talked with the teacher in charge of scriptures, and who takes care of discipline. She gave me some tips that I tried this week. Lets hope it works. I think she left two of the kids I sent to speak with her without the lunch break with friends. I hope it works. We spent most of the time coloring the book. I asked thm to focus on doing it well, making sure that they only color between the lines, and more importantly that they think about the image they are coloring. I walked around and asked a few of them what the image meant. Mixed responses. Some were not paying atention, but some did very well. We probably did about 5min seating. The truth is that I felt somewhat sad for not doing a bit better.
Note: there is a boy that seems to have serious problems with the English (tall and asian). I need to check on him next week.

The older group did not do as well as last time, probably because all teh class was there. But it was fine. Most of them wrote the story next to each image, and at least half had good recollection of what it meant. I still have to go through the notebooks to get a better feeling, than the approximation of walking around during class.
We discussed again the hindrances that we face when seating: discomfort, boredoom, sloth. And I gave examples with the different kids behaviours.
The girl with the curly hair did great again, she said she had been practising meditation while doing other things besides seating. I should congratulate the parents (if I knew how).

I will ned to photocopy, cut and glue the next lesson. We should be discussing the 2nd step: Right thoughts.

3rd class

Today was an interesting day. The school had a swimming pool day, so many of the kids did not came to class, particularly in the older group.

The meditation was metta (loving kindness). We focused on the breath during the whole session. Sending love when we breath in, and then feeling the air coming out through the nostrils when we breath out. When breathing in, we think about someone we love, trying to visualize the person. When we breath out we just focus on the breath coming out through the nostrils.

The younger k-2 kids were terrible. It was partially my fault. I did not hand out their notebooks at the beginning of the class, when I was passing role, and then it was too late. We did about 10 minutes of sitting, but too many were too distracted. Then I tried to spend some time reviewing Buddhas life, but by then it was hard to get the attention of half of the class....
What I've learned: The little ones need to be more busy. Being busy keeps the discipline under control. The 30 minutes is actually all they can handle for this type of activity (or inactivity I should say).
Despite the problems some kids must have done better than I thought. One of the girls seemed sad when we finished the class, and one of her friends was hugging her. I asked her what was wrong and she said she had not been able to see her grandfather. The grandfather had died recently, and I now think she meant during the visualization exercise... This means he tried hard, and it teaches me I should mention that this might happen and its alright.

All the bad luck of the work in the first group, was compensated with the great results in the older kids group. There were about 10 kids. Two of them kept making noise in the first 5 min of the sitting, moving around, etc. So I send them to the office. It was very obvious that the other ones were very ready to sit and do it properly, so it would have been unfair to leave them there. Everything was perfect afterwards.

One of the girls actually sat for most of the 30 min. Poor things, I could tell she was in pain. First her legs (she was in full lotus!), then everything.. her teeth grinding, but she kept going.
I asked those that felt in pain to change positions if they needed to, but she wanted to keep still!

2nd class

Yesterday was my second class already, and I'm still surviving!

I have 30 students in the first group. They go from Kindergarten to year 2.
The second group has 20 kids, years 3-6.

The second group was much easier. The 10 fewer students make a lot of difference.

On week one, the first class logistics utterly failed me.
I wanted the kids in the first group to colour a set of drawing from the life of Buddha.
I started handing them out when I realized that it would take too long, so I had the great idea of asking 3 students to help distributed the 3 pages that everybody should have worked on. I asked each of them to distribute 1 page, of course what happened was that all students ended with just one, at random.... When the time came to color, everybody was saying 'but I do not have this one...' or 'I do not have that other'.
At the end of the 30 minutes I had not achieved any of the things in my list for the day.

For the second -older- group, on week one, I already did a bit better. The were not so many logistic problems and we read the story and many even wrote the things I aked them to...

On week two, I strated by 'refreshing' the story of Prince Siddharta, up t the point were we have finished last week. This was a drawing where he is sitting under a tree, just before enlightement.
I then went over the life of Buddha as a teacher. Starting when he gets enlightened, going over the growing Sangha and responsabilities and ending in his death (I did not explain Nirvana).
The message was the first step: 'Right Understanding". Right understanding as seeing that things change. We can not be happy forever and we can not be sad forever. Things appear and dissapear. The same with our lives. Even the Buddha dies, just like anyone else. And with death comes sadness. I did not mention Nirvana, but we talked a bit about deaht and some of the kids mentioned how they felt sad when a family member died, or they pet died.

We then sat, probably fpr like 10 minutes, with several interruptions.
But this week we started seating, and that is what matters.
Out of the 30, 10 did really well, 15 where OK but around 5 were terrible. and I mean terrible.
When we got to the seating in the second group I had about the same proportions.
Of course 20 is much easier to manage.

Interestingly, many did really well. They sat for the 10 min and could have easily done it longer.

We discussed briefly about how they practice at home. About a third actually sit periodically with their parents. Normally in the evenings. One of the girls in the second group was really cute about it and asked if were going to sit next week. When I asked 'would you like me to?' she said 'oh yes, please' in such a sincere way that made me very happy. In fact when someone asked how often did I practice, I was a bit embarassed saying that I tried to do it everyday, but it was not always possible and sometimes I just did walking meditation. I should be able to teach with my example.