I would like to ask Luang Por, Sir, that business these days is comprised of competing by means of pricing, trading-in, presenting a gift and offering something as a giveaway in order to beat the competitors. In doing so, is it considered exploiting the opposite sides?
Answer
by Venerable Dhattajeevo Bhikku
Dear Teacher, There are mistakes in teaching Buddhism from the past down to the present. For example:
Teachers always start teaching Buddhist lessons to students by beginning with the Lord Buddha’s biography, the subject matter, which students can hardly grasp accurately because His life contained many profound aspects in His background.
The contents of the subject tends to divert and penetrate into the high moral principles such as the Four Noble Truths, which even the teachers themselves are likely to have an insufficient understanding of.
These are the reasons why students feel that Buddhism doesn’t benefit them with any knowledge that they can apply in their daily lives and they are likely to oppose the Lord Buddha’s Teachings.
Let’s improve the teaching method regarding Buddhism. Instead of teaching them the moral principles exclusively, teachers should adopt the learning integration policy by blending the moral principles with the actual daily situations in the way that students can apply to themselves in their real lives.
For example, regarding the usage the Four Basic Requisites, such as the matter of food, Buddhism offers the know-how of eating virtuously.
Most people usually live their life with the motto that one lives in order to eat rather than one eats in order to live, therefore, they tend to be more greedy and selfish.
Besides, teachers should teach the students to realize that if they live to eat rather than eat for survival they will create selfishness and greed.
On the contrary, if teachers teach students the concept of eating as a means of the continuation and nourishment of body and for living at ease, students will be able to see for themselves how to eat properly, neither to eat playfully nor to eat for fattening oneself.
On the other hand a person who eats for survival will not eat as much. They don’t eat snacks and they know the value of each meal.
Even beyond that, teach your children that when they eat they should know the value of their food. For instance if you have a plate of food, and when you eat it you are angry. After eating the food you have energy. You will use that energy to fight with someone you don’t like. That plate of food became the plate of food that created karma.
But if you eat food from a plate with appreciation in your mind and you enjoy it, you will take that energy to create good deeds. That food plate becomes a creation of merit plate.
The way to create your mind to become a merit mind is to pray to the food before eating it. This will make your mind become happy. When you are finished eating the food, the food becomes merit food because you eat when you are happy. Teaching your children this way will enable the Lord Buddha to enter into your child’s mind.
At the same time while eating the parents could make mention of the child’s clothes. The clothes should be proper to prevent heat or coldness and should not be worn to advertise oneself or for stimulation towards the opposite sex.
With regards to these manners, if parents know how to guide the children then Buddhism will be absorbed into their minds and they will dress in an appropriate way.
And if you could only teach the children that when they get up in the morning they should make their bed, clean their room, help around the house, clean the Lord Buddha’s shrine room, and arrange the flowers for the Lord Buddha, then practicing these responsibilities each day will become their routine.
You must teach them that Buddhism can be applied to their daily life. You build up Samma-Dhitti that will then occur in their minds.
If we teach them this way then children will never ask when they learn Buddhism what benefits they can derive, because they will know about eating and drinking. They will know about the culture of Buddhism by practicing the correct usage of their clothes, taking care of the altar and also how to take care of their health in their daily lives.
If all teachers know how to teach their children, they will instruct their children this way and not bring up the 4 Noble Truths in kindergarten or elementary school. Charoenpron!
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