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.

Organizing the Temple visit

This weekend some of the kids' families and us will be visiting the Hwa Tsang Monastery in Homebush. I really look forward to meeting them outside School. I am hoping that going to a temple can help those who are graduating so they can follow up afterwards.
Scripture classes only exist in Primary School and some of them will be going to secondary school next year.

Tomorrow I going to Chinatown to get some special bean curds to make a curry.
For the kids mac and cheese :-)

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.