Self-Development and Teacher Training Initiatives : หน้า 53/164

Meeting #8 January 03, 2010 Today I am here with Luang Pi Joshua and Luang Pi Anurak. I have just returned to Bangkok and the Wat, after spending the end of 2009 in New York, helping my daughter move into her apartment and begin graduate school. I have been working on several projects while I was there, one of which is a Self-Development program using the teachings of the Five Rooms and the Six Directions. Another is a project for teachers, because Luang Por believes that teachers are the next most important people in the lives of children to their parents. The Wat initiated a project called V-Star that helps teachers teach young people ethical behavior, using meditation and journaling, and this highly successful program is now being started in Bhutan and Mongolia. I have re-written their information journal for young, international people. My project for teachers is a course that will be offered at colleges and one that is strictly for the teachers themselves. It is called “The Reflective Teacher: Using Meditation, Journaling, and Self-Directed Resolutions to Create a More Effective Learning Environment”. This course has already been approved by a university in Vermont, and we are waiting to see if any teacher signs up for it! I have brought the entire course curriculum for Luang Por to see, and to ask some questions about how we can improve it. After I present him with some treats from the United States, we talk about general topics; but I must say that with Luang Por, you have to get down to business pretty quickly because he is such a busy monk. He has just moved his Ashram from one location to this current one in order to make room for a huge conference center that is being constructed. They have had to disassemble his old Ashram, which was so beautiful, and I feel pretty sorry for him, but he cannot get attached to anything. So I think it best that I do not dwell on the topic - because this is my hang-up, not his. Getting down to some seriousness, I ask, “How can we help all of the teachers?” “It depends, of course, on how they were raised by the parents. Each person is different, even within families, raised with the same parents, in the same house, having the same education, same food on the table – everything! Same-same. But are they the same? NO! Each one is different, because of different kamma.