Many at the GNEC last week said they did not understand parts of the PM4 lesson, especially the last paragraph. This is that last paragraph:
Finally, Engaged Buddhist parents must also always remember that children raised by people who enjoy what Christians call "sinning" have almost always ended up as teenagers who are on sight noticed more for their flaws than for their either knowing or being able to offer acceptance of others, for what each of us is, from a positive perspective. These are flaws that, themselves, almost always lead to more suffering than even that that one must expect from being an almost limitless being caged within a limited body that will forever want or need more than food, clothing or shelter until it dies and releases the being it houses.
So, at the end of last week's GNEC session, it was agreed that the both the participants and PM4's author, yours truly, would write their interpretations of this last paragraph. Of course, the author's interpretation would be that paragraph's real intended meaning. Two weeks later, the author and the GNEC participants would compare their interpretations.
The purpose of this exercise is to:
- Further exercise the vocabulary presented in PM1-4,
- Clarify the intended meaning of that final paragraph in PM4,
- Explore the differences between what participants understood of that paragraph and what its author intended, and
- Expand the participants English knowledge via tasks 1, 2 and 3, above.
But, first, let's repeat the original purpose of Parenting Mindfully 4 (PM4):
PM4 was written to provide a single, short text using all the vocabulary presented in Parenting Mindfully 1-3, plus some new vocabulary, in the order that the vocabulary of PM1-3 was presented. This was done to give participants more exercise in using all that vocabulary – and because the author thought it would be fun to try make a single text, as briefly as possible, that way.
[Now, he thinks, "Wrong, again..." It made much more work than expected. But the original write-up was indeed fun.]
PM4's purpose was never to provide any real lesson in Buddhism for parents. PM4 could have been written as pure nonsense, about anything. It simply turned out that PM4 appears to discuss some Buddhist ideas accurately. Very little was done to make PM4 an accurate representation of Buddhist thought. No effort was made to check whether it is accurate or not. Only Thich Minh Thanh or some other Buddhist master can judge the accuracy of the ideas PM4 contains about Buddhism.
That said, here's how the author would further explain what he wrote in the last paragraph of PM4:
Engaged Buddhist parents should always remember that if you behave badly your children will probably learn your bad behavior. Then, when your children get older and become teenagers, other people will likely see their bad behavior, first (“on sight”), and they remember it more than anything good your teens do.
What Christians call “sin” is generally just what Christians think is bad behavior, like killing, stealing, harmful sex, lying, using drugs like alcohol too much, cheating, laziness, lust, greed, etc, etc. Christians label many behaviors as “sins”.
But, according to some texts Thich Minh Thanh provided for GNEC earlier, Buddhists don't call bad behaviors “sins”. Instead, Buddhists simply say bad behaviors like these are “unwise” behaviors because they cause us to experience more suffering than we must already accept as human beings, as human minds in physical human bodies.
But back to the teenagers. As teens, your children's bad behavior will probably make it difficult for others to see your teens' better behaviors. They will probably also simply think your teenagers are just not good people, generally.
Most people think generally, not specifically. They find it easier to use one set of similar ideas about the things they experience instead of many different sets of ideas. Often different set of ideas will contradict each other and make thinking more difficult, even confusing. So people usually only think generally. Most people are lazy thinkers.
This applies to what people think about other people. So, even if your teens also behave well -- for example, positively accepting other people for what they are and still being kind to them – other people who have seen your teens' bad behavior will remember your children's bad behavior more and expect even more bad behavior from them. They might even imagine that your teens' good behaviors are just tricky performances to hide their bad behaviors.
Just as one example, when others think your teens are not good people, they will often make it more difficult for your teens to make true friends or find good lovers. Finding true friends or good lovers is already difficult for most people. So your teens will suffer more than they would normally.
But worse, as most Buddhists say, life as a physical human being almost always involves suffering. Our physical bodies forever want or need food, clothing or shelter. But we cannot get food, clothing and shelter for free. There is only a limited amount of food, clothing or shelter, anywhere. And other people or animals will want or need that food, clothing or shelter, too. So we must compete with others to get what our bodies want and keep it. This is the basis of economics: unlimited wants competing for limited supplies. And that, alone, causes suffering, for everyone.
But our bodies also drive us to want even more than just simple food, clothing and shelter. Our bodies' feelings and senses make us also want luxuries, like better food, better clothing or bigger, more beautiful shelter, or even sex and drugs and racing and many lovers, etc, etc. Our bodies are never satisfied with what we have. Our bodies always want more.
And our bodies break down. Like machines used over and over again, our bodies force us to spend our time and energy taking care of our bodies. And our bodies always break down completely after some time and die.
But, many say, our minds are different. They say our dreams and imagination and reason are almost limitless. Some even say our minds can be satisfied even while our bodies are dissatisfied. And some even say that, if our minds are trained well enough, our minds can live past the deaths of our bodies.
As the author understands these ideas, those people say that to succeed at keeping your mind satisfied while your body is dissatisfied, or, to allow our minds to survive the death of our bodies, we must train our minds to be independent of our bodies, or, to control our bodies' desires and apparent needs. This kind of training is said to involve teaching our minds to ignore our bodies' desires or view those desires like they come from something outside our true selves, our minds, or, to see those desires or needs as simply not being “real”.
At the same time, it is said that students of these techniques must learn that their minds can be more stable and powerful than their bodies and that, in reality, they live their true lives in their minds. What their bodies seem to need or want are simply illusions.
Learning these lessons completely is said to let people gain more stable, happier lives, even as their bodies' break down or their bodies' do not get what their bodies want.
When the author wrote that last paragraph of PM4, he thought that these lessons are the basic lessons of Buddhism that teach us how to minimize our suffering in this life. Then he simply applied these lessons to parenting, while using all the vocabulary GNEC participants had been taught in PM1-3 in the order it was presented. Then he edited it to make it as short as he could. Then he called it “Parenting Mindfully 4”. That's all.
Again, again, again, PM4 was not intended to teach about Buddhist philosophy or techniques. It was only intended to exercise GNEC participants' English vocabulary. That's all.
PM4's author is not a Buddhist monk nor a Buddhist scholar nor a Buddhist master of anything. If he got lucky and re-presented some Buddhist lessons accurately and GNEC participants learned something from that, then that is nothing more than luck. That's all.
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