We visited new PUC school building and the president Kol Pheng’s home in Takhmau city in the suburb of Phnom Penh. We accompanied by Mr. Sor Songheng as an interpreter and Miss. Sreymao Mean, Mrs. Theary Mao as usual.
Dr. Kol Pheng’s home was in calm appearance, wonderful house with big Buddha statue in wide and beautiful garden. He seemed fine and relax during his busy time, and welcomed our visit.
First of all Venerable Daiho greeted to be delighted to meet again, and we received invaluable Buddha statue and token for celebrating to meet each other again, and then started conversation
<Summary of Ven. Daiho talking>
We were asked about how to teach the moral to small kids last year, and we had been extensive researched after back to Japan. And we came up with conclusion as “a life education”.
The “life education” that we advocate has the following three important characteristics;
1) It is very close to Buddhism, because when we look back the details of achievement Buddha enlightenment, the simple confrontation with ‘life’ or ‘life to death’ has led the prince Siddhartha’s motivation of practice and attaining enlightenment.
2) The “life education” as a base of producing moral, is not just acquiring knowledge, nor can it be learned by pressed by others sense of value, but it is a process in which children feel and become aware of each other through facing ‘life’ and ‘life of death’.
3) “life education” has the power to create morality naturally.
For this purpose, we create the picture stories show and other activities, and planned the life education. This is not yet complete and is on the way. We hope that we can improve together while receiving your feedback and ideas.
<Summary of Dr.Kol Pheng>
It is definitely and I agree with you. I think it’s important to understand when kids are 5 to 6age, and same as growing flowers, elementary and junior high school time is very important.
For this matter I’ve written books recently, the story of Bodhi Sattva’s 10 times life which spent before Buddha attained enlightenment.
I’m thinking to read these books for our students, and we teach them how to live their lives with compassion along to Buddha teaching, and to do actual action as much as they can.
On the other hand for monk students we teach them to know their own mind as a training besides learning Buddhism. Now there are about 500 monk students learning in PUC and it’s too much increased, so we use the temple space and teach them. Sometimes we also invite some high priest and communicate with them through programs, and we prepare the space for meditation at that time.
Ven. Daiho : I’d quitted the doctor and get into the Buddhist way, because I started to do the meditation and wanted to get at the truth of the matter. The Darma would shining appear through me, and I aim to relieve people through my pray and practice.
Dr. Kol Pheng : It’s really marvelous. We’d like to do anything what we can do each othet.
After that we showed the new picture story, and then prayed in front of the Buddha altar together, finished the interview.
After left the Dr.’s home, we visited PUC stuff Mr. Savoeun’s home both an celebration for baby born and a small meeting. Mr. and Mrs. Savoeun have 3 children, so we tried to show the picture story again for the family and asked the impression.
The kids were looking intently to the picture story show, and after when we asked how they feel, they said that ‘The cow is pity’.
We explained the detail why we created the picture story that having the question about ‘How we can teach the moral to the small kids?’ we’ve examined various matter and gradually come up the idea of ‘life education’. We focus on ‘life’ itself, let the children to feel and become aware of it, then it would begin to grow the mind to care their and other life naturally.
Mr. Savoeun and his wife Mrs. Thearith agreed with us, and said that they’ve done the activities that going to rural villages and cook and eat the lunch, and planted trees together, but they’d like to do this picture story show too.
And about the words of the story, Mrs. Theary said that they are not mistake as a translating, but still several words are slightly different in nuance from Cambodian typical conversation word, so she will make some revision of it.
Then we invited to see another PUC school building and office nearby. It was 7 flour building opening in November, and they’re planning to set the base office of various activities. They said that their hope to set CEP’s office here in the future. We surprised what they said, but also very glad that it would really come true.
At the end we promised to keep in touch from now on and said good-by.
