Beyond Filters: How to meet our young adult and teenage children as and where they are

What is the ultimate goal we are seeking regarding educating and caring for our children, in our sangha and on the planet? The truth is, at present, they instead need to educate us. Our children are faster than we are. They see more than us, they see differently from us, they use different language. The sooner we listen, watch, and really delve into the minds and hearts of our young adults, teenagers, and children, the sooner we will be able to help guide and care for them.

Presently, we do not know them. They are being raised in a manner in which no one over the age of 25 can understand. Often they are living two lives, one with us on the planet and one within the vast cosmos of their phones. In a world that is increasingly unsafe and uncertain, the space inside their phone is completely within their control. With one swipe they can feel, happy, sad, angry, numb. With each year that technology expands, the children are increasingly losing emotional coping tools. It’s not just generational gaps any more, it’s yearly gaps.

Most have been raised with television/media not only in their home as we grew up with, but also in the car, walking down the street, in the forest, while hanging out with friends. And there aren’t even annoying commercials to sit through anymore. Our kids are not being offered the gift of boredom and annoyance, and by being able to call for help and receive help at any moment, our kids are not learning how to cope with fear. Why fear when you can look up the answer in your pocket or dial 911 from anywhere? Remember not linking up with your friends at concerts or festivals because they didn’t find the note you left at the port-potties when you said you were going to be late? Yeah, that doesn’t happen to teenagers anymore.

Because of the fast pace our children are now living, we must work harder than our parents did to understand us. We need to learn about sexual orientation, gender identity and fluidity, and preferred pronouns. We need to learn what micro-aggressions are, what “inherently racist” means, about privilege, white privilege, white supremacy, cultural appropriation, ableism and–how about this one–neuro-diversity. And, you should probably know what Snapchat, Instagram and Tumbler are, as well as what a filter is (beware: Snapchat filters are greatly enjoyable and you may find yourself wishing to live inside one of them). If you think I forgot Facebook, just ask a teenager how often they hang out on FB. If you don’t know what any of that is, you need to stop everything and look it up. When you feel safe enough to talk to a scary teenager, do it ASAP and ask them to please educate you and to have them bring their friends: the more racial, economic and gender diversity the better. (Note: you will not find all of these teens within your immediate sangha’ you’ll have to–gasp!–go to the public schools.)

Until we learn where our young adults, teenagers and children are at, we cannot begin to share our wisdom. We cannot teach them how to slow down until we know the pace at which they are running. We cannot introduce to them the preciousness of life as we see it, until we understand that in their fast-paced life, preciousness is a kitten video–and it’s a gif that’s only 2 seconds long.

Now I’m crying. Because that kitten thing was not a joke. This is real.

Despite the vastly different exposure to world issues compared to what you and I may have grown up with, increasing environmental disasters and the fact that we currently have a man who is anything but a positive role model as president of the United States, our factory style education system has not changed in any truly substantial way since the 1800’s. The telephone had not yet been invented when this model of education came onto the scene. Two hundred years later, 99% of what your child will learn in the average middle school and high school is available on their phone in their pocket. You know what they are hardly taught at all: 1. empathy; 2. techniques for helping with stress, anxiety and depression; 3. how to engage in healthy emotional conversation and active listening; 4. facts and contemplations about death and dying; 5. what various foods feel like while digesting in your body and how to make adjustments accordingly; 6. what pleasurable touch feels like and what unpleasurable touch feels like; 7. how to apologize on behalf of others, even if you yourself did not do it; 8. what to do with anger.

The path forward with our children, teens, and young adults is first to engage with like-minded individuals to discover personal inspiration and get focused. Then, it is to meet the kids where they are, and to do whatever is possible to fill in the gaps where our traditional education system and society are lacking. This is not an attack on schools or on teachers in general. They are symptomatic of a system of broken values that is prevalent throughout the human race at this time. This is a system that values grade point averages, efficiency, and productivity over human experience, curiosity, and kindness.

Grown ups, the next time you are sitting on your cushions, contemplate my favorite Dorje Kasung slogan: “Not afraid to be a fool.” Lean in to that so deeply that you might as well be wearing your rump on your head, and then go ask a group of teenagers to educate you. Listen to them, watch them. Some times they are as hard to find as leprechauns, and other times they come up close. Think of it like exploring newly-discovered Martians from outer space. What is their language? How do they communicate? How do they spawn? Oh, and you can usually bait them with food. Just get a ton of food and lay it out–you’ll see.

Source: Anne-Marie Keppel, Shambhala Times

Care for a cookie? by Noel McLellan

Teaching is a questionable undertaking.

Most of the teachers I have known have good hearts and and are willing to work hard, often for few tangible rewards, to help their students succeed.  No matter how rewarding, teaching is a challenging endeavour under the best circumstances, which rarely come together. Many teachers work in very difficult systems, and loss of heart is common.

But that’s not what makes it questionable.  It doesn’t matter if it’s difficult or if we’re not sure whether we’re making a difference.  Teachers know that teaching is worthwhile, no matter the challenges.  What is questionable is our assumption that we know what we are teaching.

If we think of teaching as simply passing  knowledge from one person to another, it’s a fairly simple matter, like making a cookie and handing it to someone to eat. We know how to spell, so we teach someone, and then they can spell.  That’s a good thing in itself, but that’s not all that happens.  Teaching is a social interaction that taps into some of the most volatile forces embedded in society.  So much is transmitted and communicated beyond the facts and figures of what is being taught on the surface.  It looks like a cookie, but it’s a nuclear bomb.

All social interactions have invisible dynamics in that we are always communicating more than the simple content of our words. Our attitude, outlook, bearing, eyes, tone, and the whole environment determine the feeling of the interaction.   In the teaching relationship those dynamics are heightened.  The hierarchy of teacher and student contains a treasury of unspoken implications.  Foremost among these is that the student must be open, on some level, in order to receive whatever is being taught.  What comes with openness is vulnerability.  Even just showing up in the role of a student invokes a degree of vulnerability.  Being a learner implies that you have something to learn- you don’t know something, and that makes you humble and soft.  The student is vulnerable to the teacher and the environment, and this meeting in the space of vulnerability brings a quality of intimacy to the relationship.  In this intimate space of communication, many lessons are being transmitted.  These are lessons of culture, values, how we are as people interacting, assumptions about human nature and society, and perhaps most importantly, how to relate with that feeling of vulnerability itself.  Knowingly or not, through our example, we are modelling and teaching how to be as human beings.  This is the inner curriculum, and although it is probably more important than the outer curriculum of academics in shaping the character of individuals and influencing the direction of society, it goes largely unacknowledged in the realm of education.

This is why “teaching” is questionable.  If we acknowledge the influence of the inner curriculum, teaching without intentionally examining and developing it is a failure to acknowledge the true influence of education.  It’s unclear what we and the whole environment are actually transmitting, though it most predictably defaults to the status quo.

On the other hand, there is something unsettlingly presumptuous about the notion of intentionally shaping the “character” and fundamental outlook of students.  What credentials do we have to do so?  What training have we gone through, and who agrees on the intended outcomes?

source:broken leaf blog

True Perception - The Path of Dharma Art by Chogyam Trungpa

Outrageousness
I don't think you learn dharma art, you discover it; and you do not teach dharma art, but you set up an environment so it can be discovered.

DHARMA ART IS BASED on energy and conviction. In this regard, the perceptions of everyday life are seen as a resource, or working basis, for both the work of art and the practice of meditation. But there seems to be a need for two further types of energy-the energy of non-aggression and the energy of outrageousness.

Generally, outrageousness is a product of extending oneself: you can't contain yourself, therefore you become outrageous. You tend to spill over what you can't contain in your container. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Outrageousness here is a sense of direct conviction, in which you feel intense humor, or intense energy and power, penetrating inside. Such outrageousness seems to be necessary, but it has to be accompanied by nonaggression. The question of nonaggression is based on whether you perceive your particular world in connection with glorifying your existence and your ego in the neurotic sense, or whether it is free from that.

That's very definite. But there seem to be mixed feelings in people's minds-inspiration is mixed with ego-centeredness. Somehow, that mixture tends to produce a sense of blindness in which you are unable to see the panoramic vision of a given situation, and consequently you are unable to act accordingly. So there's a problem with being self-centered, if there is aggression as well as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness alone doesn't seem to be a particularly big problem. In fact, sometimes there's room for being self-conscious: the constant checking, constant reviewing, might he a source of further cynicism toward one's ego, which could be desirable. But definitely aggression is a big problem.

Aggression is based on wanting to demonstrate something that you know, wanting to tell somebody the truth you have discovered. Although your demonstration might be okay, even fantastic, and the truth you have discovered may be relevant, the means and way the whole thing is presented seems to he a problem. From that point of view, we can't have rules and regulations as to what to say and what not to say, how to act and how not to act, particularly. The whole thing has to be genuinely intuitive. The medium, or the style that we use in presenting the truth, seems to be the crux of the matter. In other words, an artist may he able to present his or her work of art precisely and thoroughly. But a work of art doesn't come out purely transparent, without personalitv. A work of art always has the smell, so to speak, or the feelings of whoever produced that particular work of art. For instance, the smell and feeling of that person could be extraordinarily aggressive. In that case, no matter what the actual representations may be, the person behind it has a lot of aggression, so more garbage is involved. The question of nonaggression is extremely important. Nonaggression makes art the art of dharma, or truth-real art. Such art has a sense of real simplicity, without any handles attached. We only want to exhibit our work of art, perlhrrn our work of art, or live with our work of art.

In a lot of art there is a tendency to try to capture a glimpse of one moment of experience and make it into a solid eternity. We have some brilliant idea and we try to make it into a piece of art. But that is captured art. We try to capture our artistic talent in a particular work of art -a piece of music, a painting, a poem. Until that work of art is forgotten or destroyed, it is stuck on a piece of paper or Ofl a canvas or on a record that can be listened to over and over. It seems that such an attempt to solidify ones work of art, instead of giving birth to artistic talent, creates death for artistic talent.

We could shift our allegiance from death to life. In that case, art becomes a living continuity and is seen as a perpetual process. First somebody has an idea. The idea is presented in a very embryonic stage at the beginning. It begins as a seed, but then that embryonic essence begins to sprout and to make shoots. As it continues to develop and grow, it makes little flower buds. That concept of art is based on the idea of living. The basic point is that there is a sense of continuity in your understanding of life.

If you know who you are, what you are, where you are, and you have something to say about that, you could share it with your fellow human beings. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't want to publicize it. And even if you do want to publicize your embryonic discoveries, you don't spell out the whole thing at once. It is very tempting to spell everything out, which proves one's legitimacy, one's wisdom, or one's artistry. But according to the Buddhist tradition, in communicating with the world, particularly in the realm of art, the only thing you can do is hint, just give a basic headline. It depends on your attitude. If you want to demonstrate something very badly and you achieve that, then your work of art is a dead one. But if you present your work of art as a completely full message without spelling out every word of it, then you have just given the public a corner of what you might say. Therefore it is still fertile in people's minds and there is room for it to unfold. It is living art.

If you expound more than is necessary, it becomes apologetic. And it is boring because the audience begins to follow the logic while you are still standing on it. And you begin to pounce on it at the same time. I think the problem is that people are afraid they might be ignored, they might become failures, so they end up explaining everything they know, all the reference points at once. That attitude of poverty or failure makes your theater dirt, your poetry dirt. Usually the sense of something unsaid but implied makes more sense to people. It is not particularly holding back the truth, it is being honest and at the same time festive about what you have to say. Then art is a living process.

Nonaggression doesn't mean there is a regulation or cutting down of anything. Nonaggression is a product of awakened realization. You don't usually feel a sense of inhibition when you awake during the day from sleep. You just go about your everyday life, because awake and asleep are different. And of course you don't try to fall asleep in the middle of your activities during the day. But at the same time, you don't feel that you are inhibited from anything because you are not sleeping. Nonaggression is an organic process rather than a discipline or moral binding. Nonaggression is seeing through the aggression and realizing there are more ways to be active and efficient than being aggressive; it is realizing a new angle of energy.

In the case of meditation practice, either we do it at the simple, matter-of-fact level or we do it with a very meaningful religious or philosophical undertone. That undertone automatically becomes dogma and belief, and that belief becomes a very definite belief. Because that belief is very definite, therefore you should defend that belief. And defending that belief becomes aggression. The quality of outrageousness is the opposite of that-or the extension of that act without aggression. The definition of outrageousness is basically a sense of humor. In this case, humor is not particularly making fun and mocking somebody or something. Instead, it is an appreciative gesture. That is, things don't seem to be as heavy as we think they are, but they seem to be floating above the ground, and seemingly hilarious, funny, swift, and lucid.

At the same time, humor is not particularly casual or haphazard. The casual approach to life is often the result of being shy and feeling self-conscious and tense, so you would like to pass the buck or divert the attention to some other situation. But that also diverts the concentration of attitude and energy, so it is basically stupid rather than insightful. Humor is not like buying toys for your kids, which is somewhat lighthearted-unless the toy turns out to be extraordinarily expensive. And it is not at the level of the cheap world of plastics or teddy bears. It comes from delight and a sense of celebration. A sense of humor from that point of view is very transparent; at the same time, it is very definite. It has its own background and sanity.

Outrageousness is a question of being fearless in your celebration and your sense of humor. Sometimes it could be somewhat absurd and stubborn, but that seems to be the necessary eccentricity of this particular approach. Again, as long as it doesn't contain aggression and an exhibitionistic outlook, it seems to be quite simple. A sense of conviction brings fearlessness, outrageousness, and a sense of humor. And that basic sense of groundlessness and nonexistence brings up the question of aggression in the practice of art.

In dealing with aggression, we can't really separate ourselves into professional artists, amateur artists, and meditators. At the same time, somebody could be both a professional and an amateur artist and a meditator as well. Those areas are all related. Dharma art does not involve tricks or have to do with training artists in the Buddhist scheme. But our attitude toward art has to be expanded. This society in particular thrives on pigeonholing everybody's style and discipline into categories, which becomes very clumsy and imprisoning.

You could try to continue your artwork and your meditation together, whatever you do in your life and whatever job you might have. I don't think you learn dharma art, you discover it; and you do not teach dharma art, but you set up an environment so it can be discovered. It's like preparing a nice meditation hall, with nice cushions to sit on, so it's inviting for you to sit and take part in meditation practice. The makers of the meditation hail and the cushions can't make you meditate, particularly-that's what you can do. And that is dharma art, it seems to me.