Here is a little demonstration that can be done to help illustrate some of what goes on when we practice meditation. This can be useful to help any of us and perhaps especially children to understand meditation in a much more visual way. For those of you who relate better to visuals you may find this helpful as well. Of course it is entirely possible that this will be of no value to you at all.
This is really simple and only requires a glass of water, a spoon, some water in the glass and some dirt in the water.
Place the dirt into the glass of water and with the spoon begin to stir it up. Notice the water becomes dirty and cloudy, perhaps you may not even be able to see through the glass.
This is our mind throughout the day. We are constantly stirring our glass which is our mind and the dirt is all the many things we think about all day long. As long as we keep stirring it, it just stays dirty. Even though we think that the more we think we should be clearer in our thoughts and our life in many cases this is not so.
Our clever mind thinks that it can reason out all the solutions to life’s problems, all the while silencing the wisdom that lies deep within our lives.
In meditation we allow the glass to sit still without stirring or agitating the water. You will notice that as the water begins to still the sediment begins to settle to the bottom. As this process continues the water becomes ever more clear.
So too with our lives, the more we agitate the water with the dirt the less clean the water becomes. Yet when we quiet the water, when we quiet the mind the water of our life becomes clear also, allowing for our innate wisdom our Buddha wisdom to manifest itself.
Further when we chant the Odaimoku we further purify the water, strengthening our Buddha wisdom, much the same as if we were to put the clarified water through a strainer.
This is just one little demonstration that you can use to help young people relate to the process of meditation, perhaps you too can relate to it as well.
If anyone has any other clever ways to illustrate meditation and its benefits so that young children can relate to it better I would welcome you sharing them with me.
Enjoy!
With Gassho
_/|\_
Ryusho
