Social Disaster : Protection and Correction

Meditation

Meditation for Beginners

 

Social Disaster : Protection and Correction

 

 

a baby first opens its eyes to look at the world.

 

Before inventing the measures to protect the society from the great disaster and to correct it, one must fathom the true root of the disaster. From the above explanation, it must be clear by now that the social disaster is cumulative in its nature and has its root in neglected parental duties. If one doesn’t understand the cause, finding a solution will be hopeless.

 

Reformation of human nature needs to start from the time a baby first opens its eyes to look at the world. Parents, as the child’s first teachers, are the most influential persons in the reformation of human nature. Just as the pediatrician must gives babies many kinds of immunization to nourish the baby and protect it from illness, the parents need to find ways to ‘immunize’ their childrens’ minds so that their minds can be sufficiently steadfast to protect them from mental defilements for the rest of their lives. The most important ‘vaccines’ are ‘conscience’ and ‘positive core values’:

 

Conscience: by ‘conscience’ we mean specifically the shame of behaving unwholesomely [hiri] and fear of the consequences of unwholesome behaviour [ottappa] – and it is a quality of human nature which Buddhists regard as protecting and instituting peace in the world. Wherever in the world there are people lacking conscience, it is like a countdown for the time-bomb of social disaster. This is the reason that the Lord Buddha taught that’conscience it the virtue that protects the world’.

 

 

Parents, as the child’s first teachers, are the most influential persons in the reformation of human nature.

 

Positive core values: positive core values are the basic assumptions in our lives that support us to choose to do scrupulous rather than unscrupulous things.

 

Parents who can instill their children with these two sorts of virtue can be assured that their children will grow up into good ones.

 

If parents fail to teach their children these two virtues, their children still have the hope of being taught them in school. The hope, however, is limited because teachers are already overloaded with their regular duties and have to take responsibility for hundreds of children at a time. Furthermore, instilling an awareness of good and bad is best done at pre-school age, otherwise the foundation of core values will be shaky later in life. Being taught later in life is ineffective, because by that time their minds will have accumulated so many erroneous core values that it will be difficult to redress the damage. For teenagers, in particular, talking about core values is almost futile. They have ears only for the values propagated by fashion and their peers and consequently have no interest in the and their peers and consequently have no interest in the advice of their teachers. Those who leave school without having learned these two core values, can potentially cause a lot of harm because they can conceive of crimes more sophisticated than when they were children.

 

 

For teenagers, in particular, talking about core values is almost futile.

 

The core values of the younger generation should be the No.1 issue in this age of globalization, together with the temptations that young people are subjected to, when away from the auspices of their parents. Young people who are neglected by their parents and left to hang around on the street, might become teenage mothers, or find themselves at the head of a family before even having a decent job.

 

Teenagers might be physically mature, but not spiritually. They haven’t left behind the playful behaviours of children. The relationship concerns little other than the physical aspect, rather than having the view to be ‘True Friends’ to one another for life. Their knowledge of spirituality is hardly enough for them to find meaning in life themselves, let alone to be able to pass it on to any children they might have in the future. They will be like trees that propagate poisonous seeds of erroneous core values, generation by generation, until such values fill the whole of society.

 

Young people who have failed to pick up positive core values from their parents or teachers will eventually enter into their working life. If they meet a True Friend, there is still hope to pick up positive core values from such people, to help them weather the temptations that surround them in society. The chance to meet such friends, however, is slim. They are more likely to find themselves chatting regularly with False Friends, and will consequently become a transmitter of erroneous core values to their wives, children, and employees. Erroneous core values will spread quickly, like the ivy that grows thick in the monsoon.

 

 

Young people who have failed to pick up positive core values from their parents or teachers will eventually enter into their working life.

 

It is also noteworthy that the bosses who have a background of problem childhood, no matter how hard they may try will fail to do their duties well. Such a boss tends to attract employees with the same erroneous core values. If they manage to recruit an employee with good core values, before long they will contaminate them with their own negative way of looking at the world.

 

The only saving grace is the possibility of help from the spiritual mentors of the world. They are the last hope for liberating people of all social groups from their erroneous core values. Societies of the world, which are already in deep trouble as the flames of the defilements start to consume people’s quality of life-await clergy with sufficient wealth of spiritual knowledge to harmonize society and extinguish the fire of the defilements in peoples’ hearts.

 

This issue should be the inspiration to spread spiritual values more widely in society. It is not effective enough just to be spread knowledge about spirituality. Spirituality needs to be made concrete and amenable to widespread practice and this should be the role of the clergy in any society. It is not necessary to rely on preachers by the thousand. Even if only a small number of clergy succeed in getting their message across to the parents and teachers of the nation, these two social groups will  quickly be able to bring out positive core values to all sectors of society. In the chapter to follow we will look at the social infrastructure that can make this sort of reform possible.

 

 

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