Real Life with Ryuei

Indoctrinating my daughter

Back on December 14, 2004 I made an entry here recounting my attempts to answer my daughter's questions about death, questions prompted by a death in the family and also questions about where pets go when they die. That entry can be found here if you scroll down to the entry for the 14th:

Explaining Death

Recently in another forum, some people were discussing what to tell kids about death, and I shared that entry. Since these were American Zen Buddhists and assorted hangers on I got the predictable response that we should not indoctrinate children or preach to them. I, however, disagree. I think that whether we like it or not, our children are constantly exposed to many insidious forms of indoctrination - particularly the materialistic nihilism of scientism and also fundamentalist theism. If anything, I think we need to innoculate our children with a counter-indoctrination (shakubuku as it were) of the Buddha Dharma. Anyway, here are some further reflections on this:

For me, teaching children the Dharma is not about preaching or indoctrination. It is about presenting a worldview that I believe is credible and not as empty and horrible as some other things out there competing for my daughter's attention. I also am not afraid to present it in the standard mythic format for now, and I remember how comforting and sensible I found it when I learned it in grade school (which I more or less did).

I do not want my daughter growing up believing in the materialist notion that we are born and die for no particular reason and that when the meat cools our consciousness just evaporates. That is a belief no more or less than anything else - and I believe it is a nihilistic one, the Buddha also thought it nihilistic and not conducive to morality or the actual state of things.

I do not want my daughter growing up believing that there is a big man with a white beard and robes in the sky who will judge whether you go to hell or heaven for eternity after you die depending on some arbitray criteria such as what creed you subscribe to or what rituals you did or did not perform. I happen to agree with the Buddha here too - this is also not conducive to morality or the actual state of things.

I do find the idea of rebirth and the law of cause and effect to be credible (no more or less than anything else) and furthermore it is attested to by the Buddha who claimed it was the actual state of things based on his own direct experience. In my case, I came to this view through exposure to the Edgar Cayce materials when I was in grade school. The Edgar Cayce materials alone taught me that we are responsible for the quality of our lives through the causes we make.

In high school, or maybe it was actually college, I learned about the six worlds of rebirth - how our mental and emotional state can be hellish, or like a hungry ghost, or an animal, or a fighting demon, or a reasonable person, or a heavenly being from time to time and that Buddhism teaches that we experience these different realms after death in between bouts of being human (a rare state - and who is to say it is not rare and precious to be human?). I also learned that unlike Christianity all these states were impermanent and we are not thrown into them for eternity by some cosmic judge but put ourselves in them through our actions and attitudes, and leave them by changing our actions and attitudes. Even if this is not the literal state of things, it makes a lot of metaphorical sense. This worldview is simple enough and even my daughter understood it quickly enough as follows:

1. If you are mean and destructive that leads to a hellish state.
2. If you are greedy you become like a hungry ghost.
3. If you are thoughtless you become like an animal.
4. If you fight all the time you become like a fighting demon.
5. A human being should try to be reasonable and considerate of others.
6. If you are really kind and peaceful you can enter a heavenly state.

Then you can get even better and become aware, insightful, compassionate, and fully awake like the buddhas and bodhisattvas (she knows about them from going to the temple every Sunday and from the Jataka stories about the bodhisattvas who become animals to demonstrate right conduct and generosity).

With the addition of Buddhist refinements, I grew up learning rebirth and karma (even without the cool diagrams) and it made sense to me, gave me hope, and a sense of responsibility. Existential angst and the nihilistic materialist challenge to all this can come later - say jr. high or high school or even college. That way children will be old enough to resort to sex and drugs to get them through the awful reality that there may be no heaven for the good (and our loved ones) and no hell to punish the unjust. No justice - just us. I am content to give my daughter the traditional views before she has to deal with all that - and hopefully by then she will realize their metaphorical value if nothing else.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at August 1, 2005 10:13 AM