Spiritual Development of the Child
Or, "What did they do with the Dalai Lama?"
by Alanda Wraye

We have a modern cultural fantasy that children are by nature pure. Parents tend to scrutinize a new baby's personality for special characteristics and imagine a highly successful future for their child. Some of us look for indications that our child is highly evolved spiritually.
The mind of a child, however, is not ordinarily a limpid pool of wisdom. Like all of us, children are driven by desire, greed, dissatisfaction, and anger. As children grow and the brain develops neurologically, these themes arise repeatly. In each phase of development, we find that children's actions are compelled by impulse, namely, how to get what "I" want. As the child's "I" differentiates itself from the "I" of others at about the age of three, desires become more personalized. A personality gradually manifests its own definite style, whether passionate, aggressive, cautious, or otherwise, according to the child's karmic affinities. Socially, we talk about the "terrible two's." After that, we are so dismayed we don't say anything!
Parents are normally interested in doing what they can to protect and nurture their children. We recognize that the best way to care for a child is to be deeply attentive to her needs. In addition, Buddhist practitioners realize that, as with other phenomena, there are obstacles to seeing a child as he is. Eventually, we hope to become clearly aware of all aspects, including the nature of being wholly responsive to love and the deluded mind of relative reality.
Living with a child gives us an opportunity to observe universal human nature, especially to observe how the mind responds to conditions. Still, young children are different from adults, because of their immaturity. It is the relative lack of conditioning that gives children their appealing innocence. Babies look around, smiling and laughing at what pleases them, crying and seeking our protective arms when they are not pleased. For awhile, we do not hold babies accountable for their feelings. At this early stage, they have not yet learned to mask and deny their feelings. They cry, scream, and reach out, acting on their desires. It is obvious that they are not naturally happy. As time goes on, distress steadily increases in both mind and body, and various cultural strategies are learned for dealing with this distress. Underlying these behaviors, the child is experiencing the first noble truth: life is suffering.
Many therapies exist to help adults and children overcome their conditioning, developed from honest attempts to look at pain. They offer us positive thinking, an optimistic personality, a healthy personality. They tell us we can choose to be happy. Although these methods are wonderful and instructive, they only approach the truth. Underlying these therapies is a belief that we are born in a primal state of wisdom, free of suffering, and can get back to it once and for all. They do not help us realize the nature of the mind. They do not teach us that desires lead to suffering. They do not teach us impermanence. They do not teach us selflessness.
We all have some memory of the celebrated "wonder" of childhood. Children do have a capacity for immediate encounter with experience - for "unadulterated confrontation," as Ven. Ayya Khema so clearly puts it. Our childhood memories are often graphic images of places or people or things. The great physical detail we remember shows that we were present with all our senses. Still, this is not the wisdom of knowing absolute reality. As adults we may experience it again, as if for the first time, like children. But now, as adults, there is the possibility of getting a totally new understanding of these sense contacts. As Ven. Ayya Khema says, "One can then - for a moment - actually see reality as it is."
Children often ask fundamental questions of philosophy, such as "Who am I?" Since kindergarten and even before, my daughter has told me about her sense of self in the world and in relationship to other people. Her words are amazingly profound. I have learned, however, that the feelings of the child, the feelings behind the words, are quite different from how we adults interpret the words. Children are primarily concerned with security and this concern is very concretely in their minds. The child's concern for security is natural, but also reflects a deluded state of mind.
When accepting the Noble Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama observed: "Since every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering, it is clear that this desire does not come from training, or from some ideology. It is something natural. Therefore, I consider that the attainment of happiness, peace, and joy is the purpose of life." Recognizing that the attainment of happiness is the purpose of life can greatly alter a parent's perspective. Our goals and attachments can be seen from a new point of view. If the important lesson is to avoid clinging and fear, what else do we hope to achieve? Because babies are helpless and dependent upon us for maintaining their lives, we move a little bit away from self-centeredness and toward giving without expectations of receiving something in return. Gradually we can extend this accepting attitude to others in our lives as well. Parents' commitment to their children helps them discover what leads to the experience of happiness and also what stands in the way.
To the extent that we are aware of our own feelings, we can observe the feelings of our children. We can see the fragility of the human experience, and also its predictability - totally at the mercy of feeling good or not feeling good. What if we were able to understand feelings (of liking and disliking, wanting and not wanting) as something to be accepted, but not necessarily to be acted upon? What if we were able to respond to our children without attachment to results? What if we could interact with them without wanting something in return, such as controlled behavior, love, obedience, or solitude? The pain of parenting lies in this descrepancy between our love for our children and our personal stress in responding to their needs. While parents want only their children's welfare, we often find ourselves hurting them.
I once heard an interview with a man who said that his mother was happy. At that moment I felt, 'What a great gift she gave him!' As a parent, my desire to be a happy person for the benefit of my children has been a strong motivation for spiritual practice. I think that all parents must feel a wish to be happy when faced with a smiling child. As the Dalai Lama points out: "If unpleasant things happen in our daily life, we immediately pay attention to them, but do not notice other pleasant things. We experience these as normal or usual. This shows that compassion and affection are part of human nature."
The qualities of compassion and affection are beautifully evident in children. The minds of children have an easy capacity for generosity and love. When young, they do not yet have strong negative habit patterns. Three-year-olds often say "I love you" and declare how much they like everyone they know. Most of all, children are very responsive to kindness and compassion. Since loving is security for them, they can easily give up their anger and hatred in a greater desire to feel loved. These qualities of kindness and compassion can be nurtured and strengthened. If we give them a good model, children will learn from their experience of our peacefulness. The sooner we can abandon agitation, the sooner they can experience the benefits of a quiet mind. An ability to recognize irritation before acting upon it and to respond to anger with compassion will be their greatest teacher.
My second child is deeply reflective and is also dominated by emotion. When he was three, his anger and desire for revenge were constant factors in his relationships, particularly with his older sister. Anything that spoiled his sense of harmony, especially, hurt him and made him mad! One day, shortly after I began to study the Dharma, I changed my response to his anger from asking him to relax to recognizing that he was in pain and hugging him. Although lost in passionate anger, he would say "I need a hug," and I would say "Hug! Hug! You need a hug." Even at that age, he learned to surrender his anger and melt in affection.
Just as the Dalai Lama says, the purpose of life is to be happy, and it certainly is a pleasure to see our children happy. Unfortunately, our culture is rife with adversarial relationships with children. I suspect that this is one of the most significant differences between our children's lives and the Dalai Lama's life as a child. The adversarial point of view - that a child is trying to take advantage of an adult - presents a model of fear and attachment. Communicating distrust and disapproval, it destroys happiness.
The distinction between pleasure and happiness is important for parents. Pleasure is a fleeting experience derived from sense contact, mental or physical. Happiness is an abiding contentment. Parents often want to give their children pleasure and use pleasure to divert a child's attention. If only it were possible to give someone a state of mind!
True happiness lies in spiritual development. At the same time, Ven. Ayya Khema says that a person must understand happiness before she can meditate. A mind in distress cannot meditate, but will only experience distress. Experiencing kindness and compassion makes one happy, so as parents, we facilitate our children's spiritual development by being kind and compassionate, which also gives them a sense of confidence. Children are very trusting. Out of love for us, they will accept what we say and try to do as we do.
One of the most important expressions of kindness and compassion is being encouraging, not critical. But Western philosophy and psychology, aimed at building solid and secure egos, rely on methods of criticism and correction. We are uncomfortable with anxiety, uncertainty, ineptness, and mistakes. Some fathers and mothers are so ambitious and critical that their children are reduced to helplessness, fulfilling the parents' fears.
I once observed a remarkable swimming instructor. She encouraged every effort, saying "Good job!" She never said "That's better," suggesting a need for improvement. Her attention was totally with her students and her concern was equal for each. Naturally, all the students increased their skills in such an environment.
The desire to protect children by controlling the circumstances of their lives is something we must examine. Like Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint, we must invite the ogres of our minds to come in for tea. In my own life, I was able to befriend a seven-year-old neighborhood bully and watch the changes in him. At first, we thought this kid would require too much of attention, but our son, eager for a friend, liked his high energy and rough-housing! Not wanting to say, "This boy is bad. You can't play with him," I took it as my practice. In the beginning, his behavior was mean and provocative. He would spit in a display of self-loathing, anticipating the rejection he was accustomed to. Soon, however, we saw his smiling, eager face at our door wanting to play (everyday). This dramatic change to a playful and cooperative child, first with us and then with other neighborhood children, occurred in just a few months and was not particularly taxing. All we did was focus on what we liked about him. We told him we liked him and told him he had good ideas. Letting go of fear and attachment, we concentrated on giving simple responses with mental clarity, which required little effort. Moreover, our children were not provoked to fight with him. Our son had never encountered a bully before and was only intent on being friends.
In another instance, a child yelled and criticized, displaying verbally and emotionally abusive behavior. I had more difficulty accepting this child with kindness and compassion. I watched to see how my son responded to such unkind treatment. At first his face looked hurt, and he drifted away from the game, but later accepted it with a wholesome attitude and joined in again.
"One cannot see in others what isn't happening in oneself." All spiritual teachings tell us this and we know it from experience. Parents, challenged by their child's recalcitrance or volatility, find themselves on the defensive here. They cannot see how they themselves have created this behavior. Yet, although each child comes into the world with its own karmic propensities, the same child will have a different relationships with different people. My husband's story of life with our children is not the same as mine. At the same time, our children's spiritual development is our own spiritual development. Ultimately, one's response to the dynamic of the present moment is the crucial issue.
Our minds develop and function by actions of identification. People with children know this. They've seen their children raise their legs over bushes in imitation of dogs. The children are not simply pretending to be dogs - they are being dogs. In the same way, our children will develop to be like us. They will do and say the same things that we do and say. They identify with us, and will try out for themselves the actions they see us do. In the same way, the untrained mind of an adult unconsciously identifies with its perceptions, believing and impulsively acting upon them. For this reason, the spiritual practice of parenting is a matter of clearing away obstacles to seeing the child as she is. At present our ability to experience life directly is limited by our perceptions and our automatic reactions to them, but through meditation practice we learn to recognize this process. We realize that mental formations are highly personal and derive from past experiences. In parenting, we begin to see behavior patterns formed in our childhood compulsively being acted out with our children.
An infant is utterly dependent on others for survival and vulnerable to the quality of care received. Recognizing this, the Dalai Lama says "a child is dependent upon the kindness and compassion of others." Thus, a child's spiritual development begins with experiencing kindness and compassion. As with all of us, a child's spiritual development is related to other aspects of physical and mental development. Growth naturally expresses itself in curiosity, exploration, and investigation, the final question always being, "Am I happy?"
Contentment is the basis of kindness and is a factor of non-attachment. Non-attachment to results enables us to be contently and whole-heartedly with our children. By being contented ourselves, we give children a model to emulate. Children learn more from what we do than from the lectures we give. This is a fundamental principle in every stage of their neurological development.
The door is never locked when I am meditating. At first my children came and sat on my lap. Now it is just "Mom's meditating." It is no mystery, just meditation. We can share our practice with our children by being a model of contentment, loving kindness, and compassion, and by using reason, which helps prepare the mind for alternative responses. As in our own practice, we can gently call attention to what is happening in the mind. In cases of conflict, rather assigning blame, we can draw attention to the inner causes of conflict: desire, response to hurt, or the desire to hurt. We can ask what anger feels like and how it arises. We can help them see that it always brings unhappiness and never helps.
My son, almost six now, cannot always surrender his anger with a hug. He often becomes attached to it. I have begun asking him to observe his breath when irritated or angry, just as I try to do myself. Once, when I had to remove him from a room and hold him to calm him down, I breathed deeply myself first, then he joined me and we both relaxed. A week or so later he asked me, "Why is my breath always warm coming out of me?" I answered automatically, "Your body warms it up." Later I realized that he was watching his breath - not only noticing that it is warm, but that it is constantly warm!
We can help direct children's attention to their immediate experience. We can teach them learn to observe both body and mind. When a child hits something or knocks something over, it is helpful to briefly review what happened. Ask if her mind was occupied with something else. Explain the wisdom of doing just one thing at a time. When a child is fixated on wanting something, tell her to think about something else for awhile. Ask, "Where are your feet?" When a child is fixated on anger ask, "Where in the body is the anger tube? Where does the anger come out?"
Our cultural solutions regarding self-esteem, "Be yourself" and "Above all, to thine own self be true...," are often quite different from Buddhist solutions. Buddhist psychology is profoundly introspective. We are taught to "look at what you are holding on to" and to question "what is it you are wanting?" These methods work well with children. One morning, after a day filled with disputes, my son looked up from play with a bright toothless smile and matter-of-factly said, "Mom, do you know what? I forgot all my madness against Alan and now I like him."
Teaching from an open heart and teaching from reason are interrelated. Kindness and compassion are also naturally related to ethics and responsiblity. The moral precept to "harm no living thing" checks the impulse to smash a snail. The advice on loving kindness teaches us to carry spiders gently from the bathtub to the yard. The advice to "take nothing that is not given" shows us what to do when a toy is found at the playground. From her work with children, Maria Montessori concluded that they are naturally cooperative. Children, like all human beings, respond naturally to kindness and compassion. They learn that kindness and compassion bring happiness - a natural process of spiritual development.
In the time it has taken to write this article, my practice has deepened. The anxiety in response to my son's anger has abated. I feel more accepting of him - angry little future buddha - and this seems to reflect a greater acceptance of myself. Sometimes I still have to intervene, separating him from a conflict or holding him, but I no longer try to instruct him. I simply focus on making my own body and mind as peaceful as possible. This is an example from my own life of the relationship between Dharma practice and parenting.
My role as a parent is to cultivate a positive mind. By cultivating positive mind states, I can nurture the wholesome nature within my children. Beyond this, I have no program for the spiritual development of children. The program is simply sharing our lives with them: as we meet teachers, study Dharma, meditate, chant sutras, sing kirtan, dance Sufi dances, light incense, bow, offer thanks for our food, and look at mandalas and images of bodhisattvas. Children seem to yearn for spiritual truth. I watch my children's keen interest in God and the Dharma. They love ritual and devotion, and they want guidelines that show them how to live. Remembering our own experiences as a child, we can be present as they ask their questions, even if we have no answers.
I am not sure how they handled the Dalai Lama as a child, but I know that Tibetans are very practical people. Perhaps he was allowed to be both a child and an incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. He has said that he did not take an interest in spiritual studies until he was fifteen, an age when there is a biological push toward the use of higher mental functions. Perhaps his teachers, those highly realized masters, were role models who simply waited patiently until the time was right.
May all parents be happy.