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21 07 2012 SATURDAY LESSON 674 FREE ONLINE  eNālāndā Research and Practice UNIVERSITY
Tipitaka network … his life, his acts, his words
               
sabbe satta bhavantu sukhi-tatta
TIPITAKA
TIPITAKA   AND   TWELVE   DIVISIONS
    Brief historical background
   Sutta Pitaka
   Vinaya Pitaka
   Abhidhamma Pitaka
     Twelve Divisions of Buddhist Canons
Nine Divisions of Buddhist Canons
Sutta Piṭaka

— The basket of discourses —Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta (DN 22) {excerpt} - all infobubbles— Attendance on awareness —Kāyānupassanā

Dhammapada Verses 260 and 261 Lakundakabhaddiyatthera Vatthu Verse 260. Grey Hair Alone Does Not Make An Elder-Verse 261. The Person Full Of Effort Is The True Elder

>> Sutta Piṭaka >> Digha Nikāya

This sutta is widely considered as a the main reference for meditation practice.

Value of consciousness…

Please watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR3dM-GlZK8
for
Relax - Buddhist Meditation Music - Zen Garden - Kokin Gumi
13,484,371 Views
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuJdzRcW174&feature=related
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meditacion - musica para dormir (excelente)
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Verse 260. Grey Hair Alone Does Not Make An Elder A man is not an Elder though his head be grey, he’s just fully ripe in years, ‘aged-in-vain’ he’s called. Explanation: One does not become an elder merely because one’s hair has turned grey. One, who is only old in years, has grown ripe uselessly.

Verse 261. The Person Full Of Effort Is The True Elder In whom is truth and Dhamma too, harmlessness, restraint, control, he’s steadfast, rid of blemishes, an ‘Elder’ he is called. Explanation: All things that men do arise out of the mind. The words and deeds of men spring from their minds. Sometimes, their mind are blemished - evil. If they speak or act with an evil mind, the inevitable result is suffering. Wherever they go, this suffering will follow them. They cannot shake off this suffering. This is very much like the wheel of the cart that follows the steps of a draught bull yoked to the cart. The bull is perpetually bound to it.

Nebraska
    •    Nebraska Zen Center, Omaha, Nebraska

Nebraska Zen Center
Information
Denomination	Soto Zen
Founded	1975
Founder(s)	Rev. Dainin Katagiri
Reverend(s)	Rev. Nonin Chowaney
Address	3625 Lafayette Avenue, Omaha, NE 68131
Country	USA
Website	Nebraska Zen Center
Portal:Buddhism

Sitting area at NZC

The Nebraska Zen Center at the Heartland Temple is a Soto Zen Buddhist Temple located in the Bemis Park Landmark Heritage District of Omaha, Nebraska.^[1] Established for Zen practice in 1975, the Nebraska Zen Center follows the tradition established in Japan by Zen Master Eihei Dogen in the 13th century. Rev. Dainin Katagiri was instrumental in establishing Nebraska Zen Center in 1975. Today Rev. Nonin Chowaney is the Center’s teacher.^[2][3][4]

Raising Moral Kids: Nurturing Kids’ Character and Conscience

Molly and Justin Sousley of Ballard
were caught off guard when their 6-year-old daughter, Jillian, suddenly
displayed some unwelcome traits: cheating, fibbing and poor
sportsmanship. During family game nights, Jillian would regularly alter
the game’s rules to give herself an edge and throw a fit if she didn’t
win. “Right away, we realized that we needed to have some big
conversations about right and wrong,” says Molly.

As the parents of two happy, well-adjusted young children, the
Sousleys have been shocked at the intensity of the moral
issues—including respect, kindness and self-control—that seem to be
cropping up at younger and younger ages. “I remember elementary school
as this idyllic time,” says Molly. “I didn’t expect to be dealing with
things like cheating and lying so soon.”

Add in increasingly raunchy media messaging, declining family time
and growing concern about modern kids’ lack of empathy and conscience,
and it’s no wonder parents like the Sousleys feel like they’re in the
middle of a moral mess.

Morality in a changing world

Modern parents are bombarded with information about how to keep their
child’s body and mind healthy—but what about their child’s moral
health? “Historically, morality was the central goal of child-raising.
Today, that doesn’t appear to be the case,” says Harvard psychologist
Richard Weissbourd, Ed.D., author of The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development.

Bestselling author and parent educator Michele Borba, Ed.D., wrote Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing
a decade ago, and believes that today’s moral climate is worse than it
was in 2001. Most Americans agree: A recent Gallup poll indicates that
seven out of 10 Americans feel the moral state of the country is
declining.

As Borba points out, peer cruelty is escalating—government reports
show that a third of middle school and high school students have been
bullied—and today’s kids are more likely to cheat academically than any
past generation. In a 2010 study by University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 87
percent of high school juniors admitted to cheating, and nearly half of
the students surveyed (47 percent) didn’t believe cheating was wrong.

Media meanies

Borba cites a decline in family time as a big reason for a poor moral
atmosphere. In October, University of Missouri human development
scientists reported that wireless technology is harming family
relationships as people spend more time plugged in to a device and less
time connecting with each other.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids’ media use has
increased more than 20 percent in the past five years. Kids ages 8-18
spend more than 53 hours per week—seven hours and 38 minutes per
day—using entertainment media. Thanks to media multitasking (using more
than one medium at once), they actually observe 10 hours and 45 minutes
of media content per day.

With fewer high-quality, face-to-face interactions, kids don’t have
the chance to build and practice empathy, the trait Borba calls “the
core of goodness.” As Borba notes, “You can’t learn empathy from a
screen.” It’s this troubling lack of empathy, says Borba, that
contributes to antisocial and anticommunity behaviors like bullying and
cheating.

Social entrepreneur Mary Gordon, author of Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child,
agrees. A longtime educator, Gordon piloted empathy-building program
Roots of Empathy in Seattle in 2007, 11 years after founding it in
Toronto. “When we don’t have empathy, we don’t have a social brake,” she
says. “There is nothing to stop us from being cruel.”

Religion’s role

With church attendance declining steadily—the Hartford Institute for
Religion Research reports that church attendance has dropped 16.9
percent over the past 10 years—fewer parents are benefiting from the
support of a values-based community or a ready-made moral script. Lack
of support can hurt parents’ efforts to guide children’s moral growth,
Weissbourd says; parents sometimes need other trusted adults to tell
them when they slip up.

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, executive director and cofounder of Seattle’s
Kavana Cooperative and the mom of two young daughters, believes that
religious communities can boost kids’ moral development. “There’s
immense social benefit to belonging to a community of like-minded people
with shared values,” she says. “And any religious tradition has a
shared narrative that parents can use when talking with their children
about morally complex issues.”

Families don’t need to attend a traditional bricks-and-mortar church
or temple to benefit from this type of support, she notes. Innovative
communities are springing up to fill a demand for outside-the-box
religion: Kavana creates Jewish programming centered around holidays,
learning and social activism throughout its Queen Anne neighborhood—at
parks and in private homes—without a physical building.

Regardless of religious affiliation (or non-affiliation), one of the
most important things parents can do for their children is to invest in
their own moral growth, according to Weissbourd. “Parenthood can make
you morally progress or morally regress,” he says. As an example of
moral regression, he points to the increasing numbers of fathers who
abandon their children. (According to David Blankenhorn, author of
Fatherless America, the percentage of children growing up fatherless
doubled between 1960 and 1990.) Today, says Weissbourd, too few parents
view themselves as engaged in moral development—leaving children without
a healthy model of moral growth.

How happiness undermines morality

Though it’s tempting to blame declining religious affiliation and
growing media use for children’s moral shortcomings, experts place the
blame squarely on parents’ shoulders. In his book The Moral Intelligence of Children,
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert Coles reports that parents are the
single most important source of moral instruction in a child’s life.

Ironically, modern parents’ fixation with their children’s happiness
has become hazardous to kids’ moral health. According to Weissbourd,
happiness has replaced morality as the central goal of raising children.
“My research suggests that in white middle- and upper-class
communities, parents are focused on happiness—goodness tends to be
secondary,” he says.

When parents prioritize happiness over basic human traits like
kindness and compassion, children grow up with a skewed worldview: They
are more likely to have an inflated sense of self, which corresponds to
less empathy for others. The all-encompassing focus on happiness even
creeps into parents’ attempts to teach their children moral values.
Familiar statements like “Be nice to others, and they’ll be nice to
you,” and “Pass the ball to her, and she’ll pass it to you” masquerade
as lessons in kindness and sharing, but the underlying message is that
actions should be motivated by personal happiness—not the greater good.

Children raised on a steady diet of happiness need to learn to
appreciate sadness—an important component of empathy, says the Rev.
David R. Brown of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma. “It’s
appropriate and healthy to feel sad and troubled at times, when we’re
thinking about poverty or abuse or problems in our community.” In fact,
sadness is essential to moral development. “That’s how kids can begin to
feel compassion for others.”

Parents also undermine children’s moral growth when they try too hard
to befriend them. This type of “peerenting,” exemplified by Phil Dunphy
on ABC’s hit show Modern Family, can backfire. “We identify
with our kids so much, we often really see their challenges,” says
Melissa Eller, an Edmonds mom of four children ages 16 through 23. “But
sometimes that means we’re empathizing with them, instead of saying,
‘What you did is not right.’”

Children of character

Despite these common parenting traps, both Weissbourd and Borba see
much to be encouraged about in today’s parenting culture. One bright
spot: Many parents are teaching kids basic manners, says Weissbourd.
“Being polite and respectful is one way kids develop moral awareness and
moral identity.”

According to Borba, the most vital moral traits for children are
empathy, conscience and self-control. “Kids need to feel the right
choice in their heart—that’s empathy. They need to know it in their
head—that’s conscience. But they also need the self-control to actually
do the right thing.” These three qualities form a “moral core” that
creates a foundation for other virtues, such as patience, perseverance,
tolerance and kindness, she says.

Children are born with an innate sense of empathy that needs to be
stretched and nurtured, says Anil Singh-Molares, the father of six
children and the president and founder of the Compassionate Action
Network, a Seattle-based network of groups dedicated to advancing
compassion. “Children are born with compassion, but parents can’t assume
that their kids will grow up to be good people. We have to be
intentional about it,” he says.

Parents can do this by responding to and “mirroring” a child’s
emotions in infancy, and talking with toddlers and preschoolers about
how their actions affect others, instead of relating all consequences
back to the child’s own happiness. “Don’t say, ‘Stop pulling the cat’s
tail because you might get scratched,’” says Borba. “Say, ‘Don’t pull
the cat’s tail because that hurts him.’”

Parents have a bigger influence than they realize, says Ian James Corlett, author of E Is for Ethics: How to Talk to Kids About Morals, Values, and What Matters Most,
but the degree of their influence hinges on the closeness of the
parent-child relationship. “Adults need to create strong relationships
with children, be people whom children trust and respect, and truly know
their children in order to assert any type of moral authority,” he
says.

Parents fail to realize the power of their own moral example. “When
kids 12 and under get a discount, and your child just turned 13, do you
pay the higher rate without complaining? Kids notice those day-to-day
decisions about right and wrong,” says Eller.

The most natural way to assert moral influence? Spend time—real,
unplugged, face-to-face time—with kids. Spending unstructured time with
children encourages the types of conversations and questions that allow
parents to share their values, something experts agree is critical to
children’s moral growth. “If you can start talking about these types of
ethical issues when kids are young, you’ve got a great foundation to
build on when those more challenging years come around the corner,” says
Corlett.

The Sousleys are seeing their ethical instruction start to pay off.
When Jillian recently declared that she was quitting her youth soccer
league, they held firm: “We told her that she made a commitment to the
team and she needs to honor it. Even if she doesn’t play, she needs to
go to the games to support the team.” It’s a hard lesson, Molly says,
but it sends an important message about responsibility and community.
Jillian is starting to grasp those concepts, and Molly looks forward to
continued moral growth. “More than anything, we want her to be
compassionate.”

Malia Jacobson is a nationally published freelance writer specializing in parenting and health. She blogs about family life at thewellrestedfamily.com.

Targeting the ‘moral core’: empathy, conscience and self-control
These tactics were developed by Michele Borba, Ed.D., to help children develop the traits she calls “essential to goodness.”

Empathy

Draw attention to unspoken feeling cues. Point out facial expressions,
“people watch,” or watch television without sound to help children tune
into the emotions of others.

Ask kids to switch roles
During conflicts with siblings, friends or authority figures, ask
children to imagine themselves in the place of the other party to help
them appreciate different perspectives.

Conscience
Be a strong moral example. Parents are a child’s strongest moral influence; ensure that your own moral behavior is up to par.

Explain the reasons behind the rules
Telling children why you set certain rules gives you an opportunity to
share your values with children, and gives them important insight into
your ideas about right and wrong.

Self-control
Create a family self-control motto. Post your slogan in a spot where it
can serve as a constant reminder of the value your family places on
self-control.

Encourage self-motivation
Help your child develop an internal compass by encouraging self-praise
for positive moral behaviors: “You didn’t give up and you figured out
that tough assignment. Did you remember to tell yourself that you did a
great job?

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VOICE OF SARVAJAN

Oppn BSP attacks UP govt on atrocities on SC/STs

Lucknow: Opposition BSP
Friday lashed out at allegedly growing incidents of atrocities,
specially on SC/STs, in Uttar Pradesh and said that humanity has been
put to shame in the four months of the Samajwadi Party government.