Doctors and nurses by the nature of their work often are involved in birth, ageing, illness and death, but most of them are not interested in Buddhism which teaches the truth about life, why it is so? how should I persuade them to study the Lord Buddha’s

 
Answer
by Venerable Dhattajeevo Bhikku 

A flaw in the Thai national education plan and in the plans of other countries is that teachers and parents make children study many subjects, which are not relevant to them, from kindergarten.

People think that the more subjects, (internationals, inter-cosmos and the universe) the child can learn, the more intelligence the child has.

As it goes the more the child learns, the less he knows about his own life.

Studying Buddhism, on the contrary has the opposite effect. The more they learn, the more they understand about their own lives.

What does it mean?  It means the more they study, the more they understand the truth of life of the Lord Buddha’s Teachings that birth, aging, illness and death are suffering..

People can easily see for themselves, that aging, illness and death are suffering.

But they cannot see why birth is also a kind of suffering?

It is because at the moment of the child’s birth, the baby came out crying loud as the result of the severe pain from the delivery.  At the same time, the mother also suffered.  So birth is a kind of physical suffering.

Once the child’s father, grandfather and grandmother see the baby was delivered safely, healthy and weighty; they all are overwhelming with the joy of the child’s birth.

 
So, in spite of being a matter of suffering, birth is seen as happiness.

People have the wrong perception about birth since the first day of life onwards.  Why it is so?  Because they overlook the truth that although the child is growing, the physical body in fact is aging, but the doctor and the nurse see it as a sign of the child’s development.

Why do I say that growth is ageing?  Because the span of life is limited.  Each passing day from the day of birth means less remaining days of life.  Is that right?

One day gone means another day getting closer to death; one month passed means another month getting nearer to death.  But people are wrongly taught that each passing day, each passing month and each passing year mean the development of life.  As the matter of fact, life is stepping towards aging and death.  This picture of reality should have been made clear in people’s minds.

Unfortunately, this kind of truth is concealed from human’s wisdom.  The Lord Buddha himself, as Prince Siddhartha, was also shielded from the truth, until the age of 29.  After his discovery of the truth, he determined to enter the ascetic life.

Let alone our modest wisdom, which cannot match His.  That is the reason why the whole of mankind is deceived by the worldly educational system that gives much importance to all sort of unworthy subjects excluding the one that teaches about life. No reference is made to the existence of the mind its characteristics and its qualities.

Character traits are the measure to judge good and bad in people. Instead of giving importance to habit-forming factors both good and bad, the parents and the teachers including the spiritual mentors have missed out this important fact.

Thus, the graduate, whether the doctor or the nurse, can give the right medical verdicts about illness but the wrong analysis about aging, physical deterioration and death.

Thus, most doctors and nurses have ignored the essence of inevitable death and aging, never having time to sit around contemplating life after death.

It is because of the erroneous concepts taught from kindergarten to university where graduates enter a variety of occupations in society.

The question remains, how to make it right?  The only solution is both parents should read the Tipitaka to acquire the knowledge taught by the Lord Buddha.
Then both parents and teachers should make regular visits to the temple to listen to the sermon preached by the monks.  If they have no idea whom and where they should go to, let them come to me.  I will explain how to establish a global and national educational plan to educate children with knowledge about their own lives.