The reason that sentient beings are born into a Buddhist family is to meet the Dharma. There are great advantages for them in meeting the Dharma, learning it, and practicing.
One should bring up children by teaching them tolerance, compassion, and loving kindness, and by teaching them about their responsibility for the happiness of all sentient beings. One should also teach them practices they can do as part of their daily life, such as offering some of their food to the Triple Gem before each meal, prostrating in the morning and at night before they go to bed, and also other practices, such as offering lights, incense, or water. Even for them to offer one bowl of water is very nice. Each child can have his or her own bowl to offer and can offer it to different deities and buddhas. Each child can also have his or her own altar.
I have some relatives in Darjeeling who have very beautiful children, a daughter and a son. Every day, before going to school, they make three prostrations in the shrine room. The family has a very beautiful shrine room. There is a monk taking care of it, cleaning it, setting up the altar, and performing pujas.
A former center director in London has two children, both sons, and each morning they go to the meditation room before they leave for school. They each have their own cushion, alongside his and his wife’s cushions. The children chant some mantras—probably “OM MANI PADME HUM.” There is a bell on the table for them, and when they finish meditating they ring the bell and leave.
It is very good to teach children some traditional practices. Even if the children are small, it is good to bring them up in this way and let them become familiar with these practices.
In daily life, children could do prostrations, make offerings at the altar, and offerings before eating and drinking. They can learn to be generous to others. Parents can teach them how to be kind to others, how to respect others, and not to retaliate when others harm them or say rude words to them, but instead to be kind, have compassion, and think that the other person is suffering. This is the most important education.
By teaching children to have a good heart and be kind to others, they grow up to be very good human beings. With this good heart, they can benefit others so much, helping them as much as they can. Their hearts become good, tolerant, and kind. Then there is less negative karma in their lives and also less harm to others, which means that other sentient beings receive peace and happiness from your child. There are so many other sentient beings, and they can all receive peace and happiness from your child. Your child can become the source of peace and happiness for all sentient beings, the happiness of this life and of all future lives, as well as liberation from samsara and the highest happiness: enlightenment.
The children can make offerings, as many times as possible, to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha each day. This enables them to collect so many causes for enlightenment each day. When they offer to the Buddha, it becomes a direct cause for enlightenment, and also creates the cause of a good rebirth for hundreds of thousands of lives. Because karma is expandable, the result is experienced many times. As Aryadeva said in his Four Hundred Stanzas: “If you cheat one sentient being, you will be cheated for one thousand lifetimes.” Therefore, because all happiness comes from good karma, these virtuous action take care of the happiness of this life along the way. And because all obstacles come from negative karma, so much negative karma is purified along the way, and some very heavy negative problems are prevented from ever occurring.
This is the correct way to proceed if you really want to help your child to have a successful happy life, a good life. It has to come from their mind. They have to create their own good fortune themselves with their positive mind. Making offerings to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha creates very powerful merit, and is such an easy way of achieving enlightenment and to be liberated from the suffering realms. Also, by collecting merit in relation to sentient beings, by practicing loving kindness and the special attitude of taking responsibility for other sentient beings’ happiness, your children can make so many people happy. With this attitude, with a good heart and generosity, helping others in daily life, so many people are made happy. Then, as a result, so many people will also make your children’s lives happy.
Therefore, you should understand that if you educate your children in this way, one child can become a source of peace and happiness for all sentient beings. In this way, you, the parent, also become the source of peace and happiness for all sentient beings. If you have 50 or 100 children, and you educate them all in this way, even better! It would make the world happier, less violent, and more peaceful.
Of course, children also have their own karma, but, generally, a lot depends on their life situation and the example of people around them. Therefore, the parents become a key condition determining the quality of their life.
Each time the child practices tolerance, compassion, and loving kindness, it benefits others and makes its life useful for others. Similarly, through making offerings, performing prostrations, and chanting powerful prayers and mantras, they collect merit and purify heavy negative karma. This makes worthwhile all the effort of carrying the child in the womb for nine months, bearing so many hardships during pregnancy, and, after that, all the hardships, experiencing all the worry, fears, and concern for the child. Parents undergo all these difficulties and hardships, experiencing endless problems while taking care of the child. Then, each time the child does something good, all those years of life sacrificed for the child gain that much meaning. Their virtue gives meaning to the hardships and sufferings that the parents undertook for that child.
Otherwise, what is the point of having a child if he or she ends up harming the world and sentient beings. What is the point?
