This Wednesday (29 June 2016) we had the pleasure of hosting a school visit of 28 children from St. Lukes CoE Primary School in Lambeth. As our London Diamond Way Buddhist centre is located in a historic Ragged School, the setting was perfectly suited for the meeting.
The children learned about Victorian times, when the Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling, apart from his famous Jungle Book (1894), wrote an adventure story entitled Kim (1901) about a Victorian boy who became a student of a Tibetan lama, thus introducing Far Eastern spirituality into English children’s literature. This was also a time of many misunderstandings as to what Buddhism actually is, which we discussed on a short lesson in the meditation hall (gompa in Tibetan).
The children were surprised to learn that Buddhists don’t necessarily have to shave their heads every day or beg for food, that Buddha was an athletic prince not a fat God, and that there is nothing wrong with having money (certainly not!). They learned Buddha’s life story, which shows that the only timeless value in life is understanding the inner wealth that every sentient being is endowed with. They also saw the diversity of Buddhism both in geographical and philosophical terms, trying different meditations practised in various Buddhist traditions.
Unable to solve the conundrum of whether the chicken or egg was first, we decided that nothing appears out of the blue, thus reincarnation might have some sense. This was verified in group work, where they matched positive, negative and mixed examples of lifestyles possibly leading to favourable, unfavourable or mixed rebirths. Now upon returning home, as the old Buddhist joke goes, they might tell their grandpa “When I was your age, I also didn’t believe in reincarnation”.
If you would like to arrange a visit from your school, please contact us.
