January-February 2000

It’s a strong belief of Jaime and me that the world is messed up because of the lack of proper moral education of parents in general. What Buddhism has given us is the concept of respect. So this basic principle is the basis of the education we are giving to our child.

Buddhism emphasizes love and compassion, but for us ordinary beings, before feeling real, non-personal, universal love, we must work on a level of respect as the means to reach the goal of compassion. So that’s what we emphasize in ourselves and in what emphasize with our small kid.

Most negative acts of a child are about lack of respect for others. So we always try to give our kid broad explanations on how his negative behavior affects others, and how disrespectful it is; it’s important for us that he sees how the other person or animal or plant may feel bad due to his actions.

On top of this we also explain to him the law of karma in words that he might understand, to make him aware that even if we don’t punish a bad action of his, he will experience sooner or later the consequences.

So in everyday experience there’s always a teaching for him, and it is for us too, since by showing him how bad actions have consequences, how to respect others and not to use bad words, to always tell the truth, and trying to be a living example ourselves of what we say to him, all this also helps ourselves to be much more mindful of our own actions, and maintain a correct lifestyle in our daily life.

Rafael is now four years old, and we thought it would be difficult for us to teach him Dharma in the middle of the samsaric beliefs of all the people around us.

The first interesting thing with Rafael is that he understood around the age of three that with his mind he can control his fears, control his anger and bad moods, and he understood that it’s in his hands to maintain a happy state. Also thanks to the film The Little Buddha, which was his favorite when he was two, he understood the concept of the Buddha mind, and whenever he watches adults being angry or acting negatively he says, “He’s doing that because he doesn’t have Buddha mind,” or, “Don’t get angry, Mom, use your Buddha mind.”

So even though we still have ordinary minds and our child is aware of that, at least we can show him what is the goal for a perfect mind, and the child understands it. We usually explain to him that all the things he likes and wants are good but that the most important thing is to feel happy inside, either with toys, comforts and things outside or even better keeping a happy state even without these things.

Another thing that we have found helpful is when we see that he hurts someone, we tell him that the mission of our family is to make others feel well, or feel better, not to harm or hurt anyone – that’s the reason why Mom and Dad studied to be doctors, to help others.

Here in Serlingpa we have contact with farmers and country people and it’s absolutely normal for them to kill the farm animals for eating; and for the children to kill birds or lizards is a daily and ordinary game. Rafael has understood so clearly the concept of respecting the life of the animals that whenever his friends are making a killing game, he runs to us so we can explain to the other kids that it is not correct, and we can see he really feels pity when he sees a dying animal or insect.

Since he understands the concept of the mind, we have explained to him that watching the TV can be amusing but some programs or advertisements pollute the mind. He understands that viruses and bacteria can make his body sick, and that some TV programs are like mental bacteria that could make his mind to be sick. So he easily accepts that we choose videos that can have some good message or at least are proper for children, since there’s too much violence in TV cartoons nowadays.

We have taught Rafael to control his bad moods through meditation. We ask him to close his eyes, concentrate on the bad feeing (anger, sadness, etc.) and then imagine he either puts in inside of a balloon and lets it fly up high into the sky and it disappears or the big hand of a holy being takes it out of his body, leaving peace and happiness instead in the form of a golden light that fills up his entire body. This exercise is always very short, he participates very well, and when we finish he is really happy. We do this same exercise telling him that all the bad things you’ve been through in the past, all the suffering, all that has made you feel sad or angry or upset, you visualize it in dark color in your body and it’s taken out, leaving this golden light instead. We have been doing this exercise for many years with our patients, and now we are doing it with Rafael, and we can see that all the bad behavior he used to have has decreased about 70 to 80 percent.

Jaime and I talk about Rafael all the time, sometimes even in front of the kid so he can witness how both parents are very carefully taking into consideration all the details of his education, and every action is analyzed. Sometimes we have different points of view so we put the situation according to Dharma and it becomes clearer for us what’s best for him.