MeditationMeditation for BeginnersHow To Build The Habits Of The ChildrenTo Be Sincere And Clever (Mai Ngo)#3Therefore, parents should teach children to bewise both in the realistic way and in the Dhamma way.How To Train Children To Be Able To Realize The GoodTo protect children from bad situations occurring in the family, you must train the children to be good. Our grandparents always say that men should become bhikkhus (monks) for at least one rainy season before marriage to learn the Dhamma for themselves and to know how to teach it to their children. And women should learn the Dhama even more. When they marry and they become parents they will both have Dhamma and will prevent the children from becoming bad. They will only teach the children to be good, and in the correct way of the Dhamma. This way they can teach the Dhamma to their children properly in the future.When you prepare to get married and become parents of high quality, the grandparents then give permission for you to get married and to have a family. Whenever you have children they will keep teaching you that you must impart only good to the children by putting forth the rules and regulations as per the following:1) One must find superior examples (prototypes) of good behavior.2) Parents have to be good prototypes for their children because the best examples for the children to measure good or bad come from the parents.3) Parents must find good friends for their children because then in the future the children will know the difference, when they find their own friends.4) Children must be trained to observe good deeds from people around them. They shouldn’t look for other peoples’ mistakes. They will have the ability to create widespread goodness.The basis of the four subjects above is very important and is at the heart of teaching them.The first 3 rules are about “finding good examples for children’ and the last rule is “to train them to absorb good deeds from others so it will become their habits.”Our grandparents chose “The Lord Buddha” for children to observe how to be good from.Children must be trained to observe good deeds from people around them.Why did the grandparents choose the Lord Buddha to be the example?The answer to this question is one that many parents wonder about too. However, because the grandparents have pure minds, they are able to see that the Lord Buddha is the greatest person in the world. There is no-one in the world better than him. This is due to:1) His knowledge of getting rid of greed, anger, and delusion completely by himself. No one is as wise as he was.2) His pure Sila. He never did, said, or thought to hurt anyone. He never caused hurt to any body, he never used hurtful speech nor did he ever think about hurting anyone. No one is as wholesome as he was.3) When he had no had no more suffering, he didn’t forget to help others. He never stayed still. He never ignored others. He was very kind, and very strict in teaching and advising others to help them eradicate their own suffering. He taught people how to stop greed anger and delusion. No matter how hard it was, he never complained or got tired of helping others. On all the pathways that he walked he taught and he was kind. He never had a drop of blood on his pathway (no fighting). No one is as kind as he was.Grandparents are able to see this so they set down rules and regulations and they practiced all the way down the line until it became part of the Thai culture.It has become a Thai tradition that as soon as you teach children to call, “dad” and “Mom” clearly, then the very next thing you teach the children is to train them to pray, “Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhassa” to place the children immediately with the pattern of the Lord Buddha. When they finish praying they teach the children to bow on the Lord Buddha with the parents.Question: did the children understand the reason from the parents of why they should pray or not?Children might not understand why they have to pray. In fact, parents are planting habits into their children to get used to respecting the Lord Buddha, to build them up getting used to the Lord Buddha and their religion. However that is not enough. In Thai families years ago they were very strict. When the bhikkhus walked past the house or you happened to walk into the bhikkhu the mother always taught the children that if you see the bhikkhu you must always say “Dhu!” The childen don’t know what “Dhu!” means. The mother says “Dhu!” and the children must follow the mother’s words. The word “Dhu!” comes from the word “Sadhu” so the children must say, “Sadhu.”What does “Sadhu” mean? It means good and correct. Grandparents have a way to start planting this in children from the beginning. It is the way to insure that the children will follow the adults’ words. After the children pray each night before bedtime, it is to develop the base of mind of the children in one step. Then the child asks the mother, “Why do we have to pay respects to the Lord Buddha?” You as a parent must realize that this is your biggest day to plant wisdom into your children. The parents will train the children to be good or bad ON THIS DAY. Children will be able to realize if something is good or not depending on the parent’s answer.If the parent’s answer is good then they will say that today is the day to give the gold to the Buddha. If the answer is not good then it would be the day to take down the Buddha’s altar!To protect children from bad situations occurring in the family,you must train the children to be good.If the parent’s answer to the child is that this Lord Buddha is “very auspicious” and he will make you rich and help you to win lotto and win at gambling then today is the day to burn your altar. If this is what you teach the children then the parents are trying to train the children to gamble. That means that parents are teaching children to wait for luck. They will be lazy and not do anything by themselves.If the answer is that the Lord Buddha protects the house to be saved from burglary, it will be bad. That means they are using the Lord Buddha as a guard and they will not to be trained to be careful.But if the answer is that the Lord Buddha will never be harmful to anyone, never talk badly, never think badly, then the Lord Buddha will be more auspicious. That means that we are showing the purity of the Lord Buddha’s mind to children and they will be able to absorb the good lessons from his example.Then when the children are born and born as humans, if they want to be auspicious, and if they want the people in the whole nation to respect them. Then they must not act badly to anyone. This is why you must answer them in this correct manner.“Being a respectful person has to be a way of thinking, speaking and doing no harm to anyone.” This answer will promote children to good people and they’ll never make parents feel sorrow.In the future if the children ask why you have to bow and pray to the Lord Buddha then you will have another answer for them:“ My child this Lord Buddha is very clever in the world because he pays attention in school, and reads a lot of Dhamma so in the future my child when you grow up you will ordain for mommy.” This aim will ensure that the children will catch up with the benefits from the Lord Buddha’s merits.If the answer is that the Lord Buddha is intelligent because he concentrated in studying Dhamma, then the parents should recommend that children pay attention in classrooms and become bhikkhus for a period of time to learn the Dhamma when they grow up. This answer shows the wisdom of the Buddha.If the answer is that the Buddha is willing to help others in the world, this shows the generosity of the Buddha.These are basic reason why we should pay respect to the Lord Buddha. Our grandparents teach everyone to respect the Lord Buddha and to learn the Lord buddha’s Dhamma for their foundation. When children know these basics and start to ask these questions, it’s time for parents to teach them to observe their fathers’ good deeds and pay respect to their fathers before going to bed.If children have a question as to why they have to pay respect to father, the mother should prepare beneficial answers well such as.“Your father never tries to hurt you, son. He’ll beat you only when you are disobedient.” Or,“Your father is so intelligent and he has a good job and is able to take care of us well. He can do that because he follows the Lord Buddha. That is why you must pray and pay respect to the Lord Buddha every night. So you should pay attention in classrooms and not be stubborn.” After a couple of months, the child may ask again, “Why do I Have to pay respects to my father?” It’s the parent’s job to repeat clear answers to the children because the children will develop good behavior. If the parents answer incorrectly then the children will learn the wrong behavior. Now you have to say to the child,“Son/daughter you should help your dad to do whatever you can. Your dad works hard everyday in order to take care of us well. So you shouldn’t do anything to make him disappointed. Just concentrate in your studies and don’t be naughty. Always be good.”With all these answers, children will be willing to pay respect to fathers or mothers all the time. That will make parents become the Arahants of their homes, which will be the examples to measure good by observing the good, not the bad.Before both father and mother can answer children’s questions well, they have to be disciplined, responsible, clever, pure, kind and generous to each other. So parents can teach children about the good in themselves easily.If a father is a drunkard, it’ll be hard to answer children as to why they have to pay respect to him. Anyway, the mother will have a hard time to explain to the chikdren that the father is not good. The mother should not pick on the father and the children will learn from her example. We have to be careful because if children can look down on their father, they’ll be able to do that to anyone in the world. They’ll become pessimistic and harmful to others and the parents will have a hard time to correct the children because the children have already developed distrust for everyone.So the best thing that the parents should do is to set a good example to the children and the children will follow. The wisdom that the children will gain will help them to grow up properly. The education that the parents send the children to school for will help the children to do well and develop a good reputation for the family.Regarding focusing on others’ bad deeds, the grandparents said it easily causes trouble to society. These people will not focus on their duties but will keep on blaming others as to why they are bad. Then you can expect to receive a poison pen letter listing all of your bad traits. The people who don’t want to progress come from where? The grandparents answer with understanding that the parents never taught them to observe good people’s behavior. They only looked for the bad traits of others. They don’t want to work and they sit around and write poison pen letters.So if you want the people who watch other peoples’ mistakes out of this country, we have to train our children to observe the good deeds by following the four factors of life that we mentioned before.This way they can teach the Dhamma to their children properly in the future.When the grandparents advise the children more to look at the others’ good deeds, they stress the Dhamma more deeply for the children to learn. They will be able to know how to teach the teachers etc. and they will be able to report what the good traits are in all of those people who the children come into contact with regularly. Look at the world through the good deeds. See things from a broader perspective. When they have a problem in their life then they will be able to correct it. It will not be easy to become suicidal this way. When they are able to look at the world through the good deeds. See things from a broader perspective. When they have a problem in their life then they will be able to correct it. It will not be easy to become suicidal this way. When they are able to look at others’ good deeds, they should look deeper by studying the Dhamma. If children can observe the good deeds of the relatives, teachers, and friends, and talk about that to their parents everyday, they will be optimistic and be able to get through all the problems easier. However, in training the children to be good, the grandparents advise the parents that they should know how to praise and respect the good people. Also it is important for them to know, “When you do well you get good results. When you do badly you get poor results.” Children will then believe in doing well.On the other hand, if parents just ignore when children behave well and give punishment when they misbehave, children will wonder whether doing well yields good is true or not.When the children do well the parents have to recognize the good. But when they do wrong you have to explain to them what they did incorrectly and then punish them. If you do this quite often then the children develop confidence that when you do well you get good results, and when you do badly you receive bad results. It will make the childrens’ minds strong.In the opposite way if the children do well and the parents ignore it and if the children do wrongly and the parents punish them, then the children will wonder in their minds, “If you do well are you going to get good results???”If they do well, they never get recognized, and when they do wrongly then they get punished.After this story the grandparents should and must pray with the children to train the children to know and recognize the best of the Lord Buddha.Our grandparents believe that no one can be as great as the Lord Buddha. His good can be compared to sunlight, but out good is just the light from the lightening bugs.If we still can’t realize and praise the greatness of the Lord Buddha:1) Don’t be curious as to why no one ever praises and gives compliments to you when you are doing good deeds.2) Don’t be sad that your children never pay respect to you.It is because they have the same attitude, which is, when others saw them behave greatly they never received praise.Thus, parents should teach children to pay respects to their grandparents also, and then children will not have any question as to why they have to do the same thing to their parents.Our grandparents always say, “Don’t keep company with anybody who never realizes the good of their own parents because they will never appreciate you no matter how well you treat them.”Therefore, parents should teach children to be wise both in the realistic way and in the Dhamma way. They should be trained to realize the good and respect the Lord Buddha, parents, grandparents, and relatives. Moreover, parents have to be the best example for children to use as the measure to judge good and bad people. Then they’ll have the habit of observing others’ good deeds. They’ll become wiser and have a broader point of view in their lives as a result of having respect in the Lord Buddha.
How To Build The Habits Of The Children To Be Sincere And Clever (Mai Ngo)#3
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