Faith

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Kids study Tibetan Buddhism at family camps

By: Kimberly White

Posted: 01/12/2013 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 01/12/2013 6:56 AM | Updates

Brooke Roy, 6, paints a Green Tara at Vajrapani Institute camp near Boulder Creek, Calif. In Tibetan Buddhism, Tara is a female Buddha known as the 'mother of liberation' and represents the virtues of success in work and achievements. (SHMUEL THALER / SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL / MCT)

BOULDER CREEK, Calif. -- Inside the large meditation room, 10 children are circled around their teacher, alternatively squirming and listening as she explains the significance of the offerings on the altar behind her.

The water bowls, Bev Gwyn says, represent generosity; the flowers, happiness; the string of coloured lights and small candles, illumination. And she talks about the abundance of gifts and "stuff" the children already have, and how seeing their friends wearing something new or getting a new toy often prompts feelings of envy.

People love to get things, she concedes, but "that doesn't really help our lives much."

"That just makes us crave and want and feel greedy and jealous and upset if we don't get what we want," she adds. "That's not helpful for our minds. So at the altar, we practise giving and being generous."

At Family Camp, a three-day retreat for adults and children ages five to 12, groups separated by age spend their days engaged in activities to gain a better understanding of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and their nights sleeping in dormitory-like buildings or camping in the forest.

Outside, a group of children is seated at picnic tables, quietly working on various crafts: colouring drawings of Buddha. The children use watercolours and glitter to animate small plaster statues and use string to connect small scraps of paper to plastic cups. The cups are used to catch and release bugs rather than killing them.

Yet another group, this one made up of adults, slowly circles around a larger-than-life statue of Buddha, with elephants, peacocks and horses carved into its base, water bowls balanced at each of the four corners. The Enlightenment Stupa was built to celebrate the life of Tibetan monk Lama Yeshe, whose followers founded the 30-hectare Vajrapani Institute in 1975 in a tucked-away corner of Boulder Creek off Kings Creek Road.

Camp participants also take nature walks and perform rituals such as fire pujas, where they set afire sesame seeds that represent undesirable aspects of their personalities.

Vajrapani has operated the family camps for 19 years, with each having its own theme. The most recent theme was Compassion in Action, and the roughly 50 children and adults learned how to be compassionate with themselves and others.

Some families already practise Buddhism, a way of life that emphasizes peace, kindness and helping others. Others just want to learn how to be better parents and have more "mindfulness in their parenting," said Giselle Tsering, who's been operating the camp since the late 1990s.

Family Camp -- and the presence of children in general -- is an aberration at Vajrapani, a sister centre to the more well-known Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, Calif. Both are operated by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, said Fabienne Pradelle, who's served as director of Vajrapani since 2004.

The institute provides a place for weekend workshops and retreats, and even short personal withdrawals from the busyness of everyday life, said Sharon Gross, one of the institute's initial founders.

For information, go to www.vajrapani.org

-- Santa Cruz Sentinel

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 12, 2013 J13

History

Updated on Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 6:56 AM CST: edit

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