By Jonathan Landaw

How Kids Transform their Minds from Cloudy to Clear

As many of you know, a Dharma camp is held at California’s Vajrapani Institute at the end of July every year. We used to refer to the weekend-long event as “Kids Camp” and the program is designed for about twenty-one participants ages 5 through 12. A couple of years ago we changed the format slightly so that now at least one parent for each child is also expected to attend; as a result of this change the event is now officially known as “Family Camp” – though I have noticed that nearly all the children, many of the parents and even some obstinate staff members still insist on calling it “Kids Camp.” Such is the persistence of perversity.

Nearly each year the camp’s program is structured around a specific theme and a particular meditational deity and this summer we focused upon karma and purification together with solitary Vajrasattva. While there were many different and often ingenious workshop activities familiarizing the children with the teachings on karma, the figure of Vajrasattva and the practice of purification, I would like to devote this column to sharing some of the experiences we had introducing children to the notion of positive and negative karma and teaching them how to purify negativities by invoking what are traditionally referred to as the four opponent powers.

As it turned out, it was not at all difficult to convey to even the youngest campers the essential differences between positive and negative karma. Children easily comprehend how certain actions are helpful and lead to happiness while others are harmful and lead to unhappiness. This is not a mere concept for them, but something they have actually felt in their own experience. For example, they all know the difference between saying something in a kind and gentle manner in order to help someone feel better, and speaking in a mean tone of voice calculated to hurt another person’s feelings. They have all treated others, and been treated by them, in both these ways many times and they know exactly what each feels like. So the basic idea of cause and effect was not hard to convey to them, at least in terms of what they have experienced directly. Of course, the topic of karma involves a lot more than this, but by basis our explanations on the children’s immediate experiences – which is generally the most meaningful way of communicating with them about any subject – we believe we provided them with a solid foundation for a future appreciation of the more “hidden” aspects of the workings of cause and effect.

A central concern we wrestled with while planning this year’s camp was simply what name to give to the two major categories of karma. We rejected “positive/negative,” “wholesome/unwholesome” and “virtuous/non-virtuous” because these terms convey no clear meaning to most children, especially the younger ones. “Good” and “bad’ were rejected for the opposite reason: children have too many concrete associations with these words for them to be truly useful. (And despite what we read in traditional Indian and Tibetan texts, none of us ever felt comfortable with calling these actions “white” and “black.”) Finally, while “helpful” and “harmful,” as already mentioned, are extremely useful in describing an essential quality of these actions and their underlying motivation, we found they didn’t work equally well in all circumstances. We wanted to come up with something meaningful that all our staff members could use consistently; such consistency, we felt, would be very helpful to the children.

The solution we finally adopted presented itself to us rather fortuitously. One of the planned workshop projects – inspired by stories of the Kadampa geshes, conceived by Bev Gwyn (the person mainly responsible for organizing and shaping the camps’ overall program from the very beginning six years ago) and executed by our arts-and-crafts maven Victoria Clark – had the children making felt pouches in which they could carry sets of two contrasting types of stones: one helping them become more aware of their positive karma and the other for the negative. As it happened, the shop where Victoria purchased most of her supplies sold transparent stones that were exactly the right size and price for our purposes. Soaking half of these stones in an acid bath turned them opaque, providing just the contrast we required between virtuous and non-virtuous karma. There was our answer! Actions done with a positive, helpful motivation leading to happiness would henceforth be called “clear” while their opposite would be termed “cloudy.”

The more we thought about it, the better this terminology appeared to suit our purposes. The essential nature of the mind – as we ourselves had been taught and as we repeatedly remind the children – is as clear and pure as sunlight, while the illusions that motivate our negative karma are like the clouds that temporarily obscure, but cannot destroy, this innate radiance. The terms “clear” and “cloudy,” therefore, seem particularly appropriate for describing the authentic and inauthentic aspects of our nature and behavior.

The other main concern we had while preparing for this summer’s camp was now to present the four opponent powers – regret, resolve, reliance and remedy – essential to the practice of purification. We eventually came up with the following easily memorizable guidelines.

When you have done something harmful (or cloudy), you can purify it by these four steps:

1. Know it was wrong;

2. Try not to do it again;

3. Remember the buddhas, both outer and inner;

4. And wash it away!

The first line relates to the power of regret; by emphasizing that it is the action that is wrong, and not the person, we can largely avoid counter-productive feelings of guilt. The second deals the resolve or vow not to engage in such destructive actions in the future; by emphasizing that we are trying not to repeat such actions, we avoid the crippling guilt and defeatism that can arise if and when our resolution wavers. The third line is a recasting of the power of reliance; reliance on the outer buddhas is synonymous with refuge, while reliance on the inner buddha – our enlightened potential – indicates our compassionate bodhichitta motivation. Finally, the actual remedy is our recitation of the short Vajrasattva mantra together with visualization of a shower of light washing away all impurities from the essentially clear sphere of our mind.

If this account seems to emphasize the negative or cloudy aspects of our behavior, let me add that we also taught the children how to recognize, rejoice in and increase the power of their positive actions. But that is another story. (Speaking of which: how a friend of ours mistook some “karma stones” soaking in acid for a bowl of leftover blueberries, thereby earning himself an ambulance ride to the hospital, is yet another story – one which, I am happy to report, had a benign ending.)