GCBP Temple The Third Youth Meditation Experience Camp

Great Compassion Bodhi Prajna Temple Peaceful Mind Meditation Camp - to experience meditation in a lively curriculum and to inspire children's innate benevolence.

From 2015 August 1st to the 9th, the GCBP Temple held its second youth meditation camp and brought in around twenty youths from age of 9 to 16.  From walking, resting, sitting, to sleeping the youths experienced the beauty and goodness of meditation.  The biggest peculiarity of the camp was the combining of teaching and pleasure.  The lively multi-element camp curriculum led the youths to intuitively recognize the innate pure Buddha nature, to learn the meaning of life, and to be grateful for the giving of all living beings!

At the ice breaker on the first day, the children built the teamwork spirit through the games.  From their self introduction, the youths opened up their diaglog boxes and to slowly transitioned from the feeling of strangeness to acquantance throughout a day's activities. Through their sharing, the different affections and the warm heartedness pervade the rich curriculum.

Rolling up their sleeves, spontaneously they learned by doing and appreciated by doing.  That is also an important element of the camp.  The Masters and the loving mother volunteers, big brother and big sister take the youths to tidy and clean the bedrooms, classroom, washroom, kitchen, and the temple yard.  From the strangeness and stiffness feeling at the beginning to the second and third day, the children familiarized themselves and learned their responsibilites, importance, and limitless possibilities.  They squat down, bend over, head different ways to pull up the weeds.  The work is delightful to them regardless of sweating all over.

"Hoeing millet in mid-day heat,

Sweat dripping to the earth beneath:

Do you know the food on your plate,

Each grain was hard-earned."

Gratefulness, cherishing blessings, and filial piety are the core values the Masters want to teach the children.  To be graful for everything they are given by parents, to cherish their blessings, seeing  the children finishing the excessive food they picked up in their plates with tears,  till the second day they learned to take only the amount they can finish, to complete a meal in time, and to spontaneously clean their dishes and arrange the plates and cutlery, the children influenced each other, learned from each other, they all became each others' good and wise models.

Under the blue sky and white clouds, the children experienced sitting, lying, and walking meditation in the woods to calm their minds and to learn and practice focusing.  Inside themselves, they learned tenderness and found peace.  There was no TV, no Internet, no shopping centres.  But from the face of every child, we saw their beauty and goodness, contentedness, and happiness.  These optimistic and postive children will be the good and virtuous seeds in our society.  They will have pure hearts to benefit themselves, benefit others, and make a better society and realize their self values.

The 2016 GCBP the Third Youth Summer Meditation Experience Camp will take place from July 16 to 20.  We welcome all of you to register for your children to let Buddhism take root among the second generations in Canada.