My first grade teacher was Ms. Flambeau. I learned to nap on cue, be quiet, behave while walking in a line, even if I had to hold a girl’s hand, and to say yes mam and no mam.
I counted stuff, and read stuff, and mastered the high swing-set on the playground and found out I was not a very fast runner. All critical to my survival in the conditions and variables of 1952, in Forsyth, Georgia.
My granddaughter is a freshman at the University of Virginia in 2021. A very good student, she informed me she was going to Valencia Spain in the Fall of 2022 for study abroad in Spanish, and next semester she was taking an introduction to Buddhism course. Her major is Global Development Studies, and she speaks German and Spanish.
Please note the difference in activities and time between these two examples.
It is hard to see a causal link between the two by just the information given. Yet, that is the point. We know we learn but are not always aware we are being taught. In both examples both persons exhibit activities that are born of experience. You as reader fill in the blanks to create a narrative that transcends sixty-nine years. The first is cute and accurate, the second is amazing and accurate and probably conjures a smile within you.
In Buddhism we acknowledge everything as teaching it’s original nature and second everything is interconnected with everything (else). I am excited for my granddaughter's learning experiences, as I expect my mother was when I read her a very complex treatise on life and inter-species cooperation called... See Spot Run.
November is Founder’s Month in our Order of Soto Zen Buddhism called Mokurai (Silent Thunder), and our 11th year as the Falmouth Soto Zen Sangha . We acknowledge the teachings of our ancestors in a 2500 lineage. Passing along and adding-to, an evolving awareness gained through sharing similar experiences with others awakening to being and meaning.
sharing
we teach each other
the dharma
please and thank you
smiling
Gassho...Sangaku