Throughout the school year, we kids had the Kids Camp as our weekend refreshment of goodness to our lives. It was also the time we could come to hang out and make new friends and gain knowledge and wisdom that can help us throughout out lives.
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| Team work activity (lift bottles using a rope tied to waist) |
During the summer where we kids had too much time on our hands, we were lucky that the Dhammakaya Temple had summer programs. There was the Dhammadayada program, one for boys and one for girls. Dhammadayada programs are team building, meditation oriented, Buddhist based programs. There were team building games and Dhamma lessons appropriate for the youth. I say appropriate because there is a lot of knowledge in the world, but just knowing it doesn't enrich your life unless it is knowledge that you can use in daily life. That is the kind of knowledge we learned at DIMC. An example is how to differentiate between good and bad friends, and also learn how to become a better friend to ourselves. This knowledge will not only benefit the kids learning, but also the ones who are in contact with these kids. Each person is a little candle to help brighten the world, lighting one candle at a time.
Meditation is another big part of the program. Since Dhammakaya's motto is "World Peace Through Inner Peace," you can't go through a program that doesn't teach you how to meditate. This in itself is a valuable tool that anyone can benefit from.
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| Candle Light Meditation |
For the boys, they get an extra special part in their training. They get the chance to see what it is like to be a novice monk. They would get to experience the life of a monk starting with shaving their heads, learning special blessing chants, and learning how to wear the monk's robe. This is the main difference between the boys and girls programs. Most teenage boys will not like the idea of shaving their head, but most will tell you that the experience of being a monk for a short time was well worth it.
sa dhu
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