The First Sangha

Do you remember, that before the Buddha became enlightened he fasted and meditated with five friends?  Well after his enlightenment he returned to these men.  How do you think they reacted to his visit?  Do you think they were happy to see him?  


I read to the children an account of this story from the book titled Prince Siddhartha: The Story of the Buddha by Jonathan Landaw & Janet Brooke.  A simple retelling of the story can also be found here.

This story chronicles the beginning of the Sangha.   The Sangha is a group of monks or nuns.  They have dedicated their lives in a special way to following the teachings of the Buddha.  
The names of these first five monks are:

Kondanna
Vappa
Baddiya
Mahanama
Assaji
We wanted the children to become familiar with these five monks for future stories so we had them write the names on paper while we spoke the pronunciation over and over again.  I am very thankful to have a teacher with me who speaks Sinhalese.  I would be at a loss for knowing how to say these names without her.


The five monks were not thrilled to see the Buddha at first.  They thought he had given up his quest for enlightenment.  They planned to not even speak to him.  But as the Buddha came closer to them a radiant light shone around him and the monks completely forgot their plans to ignore him.   They were so impressed by his mere presence that they took his bowl, prepared a seat and washed his feet.  The Buddha told them to no longer call him Gautama.  From now on he was to be known as the Buddha.  The monks asked for forgiveness for thinking badly of him.  Then the Buddha began to teach them.  Once they understood his teachings they shaved their heads, put on robes and formed the Sangha.

Keep it Simple.
This was the Buddha's first teaching.  It is often referred to as The Turning of the Wheel of Truth or The Turning of the Wheel of Dharma.  There is A LOT of rich teaching in this first discourse, far too much to address individually in one lesson for children.  Rather than addressing the details of the Buddha's first discourse, we wanted to expose them to the basic story.  The points of this important discourse will be explained to the kids in smaller bites in lessons throughout the year.

Reflection
There were two main points we wanted the children to take away from this lesson.  First, in this first teaching, the Buddha explained that many problems come from wanting things in a selfish way.  We can become wiser and happier if we stop wanting things so badly that we become attached to them.  Second, there is a symbol we use for The Turning of the Wheel of Truth.  It usually looks like this:

Once the Buddha began teaching the Dharma, the wheel of truth was set in motion.

Use what you have.
The children were given a picture of the Wheel of Truth to color.  Some chose to color it gold.  Others colored it one or all of the colors of the Buddhist flag.
The older children will be learning more about the Buddha's first discourse and the meaning of the Wheel in weeks to come.

Next time:
Yasa, His Father, and the Triple Gem

May all be free from suffering by the power of the Triple Gem! 

The Buddhist Flag

The children have been very interested in the colors coming from Buddha's aura upon his enlightenment.  They quickly connected these colors to those on the Buddhist flag.  I decided that this would be a good time to teach them a little more about the Buddhist flag.

Each of the colors represent a quality of the Buddha or the Buddha's teaching.

Blue: Compassion - having loving kindness for all living beings and wishing that no being should suffer
Yellow: The Middle Path - avoiding extremes
Red: Blessings - following the teachings of the Buddha bring good things to our lives
White: Purity - the teachings of the Buddha are clean, without any flaws
Orange: Wisdom - the teachings of the Buddha are wise 
Blend of all five colors: UNITY - the teachings of the Buddha are good for everyone, everywhere and unite us together


Keep it simple.
After we introduced the flag, its colors and their symbols, the children used crayons to color a picture of the Buddhist Flag.  They used small cards to make theirs, but you could also use a print out like the one here.
  
Use what you have.
I made a simple matching game for the kids with index cards and coiled pipe cleaners.  You could use painted rocks, legos, bean bags, anything really in the flag's colors.

For very young children (five or younger) I would recommend matching the colored coil to an index card with the word the color symbolizes written in the same color ink like this:

For our class, the children took turns matching a colored coil to an index card with the word the color symbolizes written in black or brown ink like this:

Then we made a game out of it.  We laid the index cards out in a row on the floor.  The children lined up for a relay race against the clock.  One at a time, the kids were handed a coil to take to the floor and match with the proper card.  We timed ourselves.  Then we tried to match them faster, and faster.  By the end of the game, all the kids had memorized each of the colors of the flag and the word it symbolized.

Reflection
The children were encouraged to think about what the flag represents whenever they see it.
Simple lessons seems to stick.

May all be free from suffering by the power of the Triple Gem.

The Seven Weeks After Enlightenment

This lesson was shared with children between the ages of five and seven.

The book we used is not available online and I can't remember the title.  (Sorry.  It belonged to another Sunday School teacher.  I'll try to write it down next time.)  Buddhanet has a simple retelling of what happened.  Here is a synopsis of what occurred.  

Week 1: The Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, meditating and enjoying the perfect peace and happiness of enlightenment.

Week 2: The Buddha stood and meditated with perfect, unblinking focus on the Bodhi tree with thankfulness for its shade and protection.

Week 3: The Buddha built a golden bridge in the air to walk across, proving to the devas that he was truly enlightened. 

Week 4: The Buddha built a jeweled throne. As he sat upon it, six rays of color radiated from him - blue, yellow, red, white, orange and a rainbow of all five colors.  

(We will devote the next lesson to these colors)

Week 5: The Buddha meditated under a banyan tree.  Evil Mara sent his three daughters to dance before him and destract him.  The Buddha remained undisturbed.

Week 6: The Buddha meditated under the mucalinda tree.  As it began to rain heavily, a serpent winded itself around him to protect him from the storm.  When the rain stopped, the snake turned into a young man who learned from the Buddha.

Week 7: The Buddha meditated under the rajayatana tree.  Two merchants approached him and offered him food.  This is the first food the Buddha had eaten since his enlightenment.  These merchants became the first lay followers of the Buddha.

Keep it simple.

This is a lot of information for young children.  Rather than expecting them to memorize what happened and when, I just wanted them to become familiar with the story.  First it was read.  Then it was retold by asking the children to fill in the blanks.  "On the first week, the Buddha sat under the....." (Bodhi tree) and did what?  (meditated)  

If time permits the children could also act this out while someone narrated the story.

Use what you have.

I have to admit, our project to reinforce the story this week was a bit of a failure.  My idea was to use clay.  After showing the children pictures of many different paintings, statues and sculptures of Mucalinda protecting the Buddha, I wanted to encourage them to sculpt an image to represent one of the seven weeks.  The children were very excited about the project and had some great ideas.

Unfortunately, the clay I brought was awful.  It was very hard and no amount of pounding and pushing seemed to soften it.  Some of it actually crumbled and fell apart.  They had more success with the soft play-doh I brought for two, tiny tots (3 and 4 years old) who sit in on the class occasionally.      

Lesson learned.  My advice is to always try use what you already have.  I didn't.  To save time, I bought very cheap clay from the dollar store.  It was useless.  Any nice, homemade play-doh would have worked better.  

Here are a few pics of the more successful attempts at working with awful clay.

Buddha meditating under the Bodhi tree
(This one melted my heart a bit)  

She's making the colorful rays that beamed from the Buddha.  

Buddha under the tree

The "golden bridge" (Picasso had a blue period too...)   

Rev. Sirithana tries to soften the clay for the children to no avail.  

Some of the kids gave up trying to sculpt the clay and chose to line up the Buddhist colors instead.  

Next time: The colors of the Buddhist flag and what they represent.  No cheap clay involved.  : )

May all be free from suffering by the power of the Triple Gem.