Dharma Rain - Dharma School Manual

Dharma School Manual (back to table of contents)

Description of Sunday Program

High School Group

By high school, almost all of the dharma school students have been given the option of not attending by their parents. Nonetheless, the high school group is thriving, probably for the same reason that youth groups are popular at churches and temples everywhere. The high schoolers provide a positive peer group for each other, and dharma school becomes a place where they feel safe, relaxed and appreciated. Most of the youth agree that they feel more “like themselves” at dharma school than almost anywhere else. The importance of this in their often stressful and confusing lives cannot be overestimated. The youth describe the immense difference between their school and work environments and the Zen Center environment: when the kids are at the Zen Center, they know they are unconditionally accepted. It doesn’t matter how they dress, what sports they play, how their grades are, or who they hang out with. The rule in the group is confidentiality except in the cases where health and safety are in question (when it becomes the teacher’s responsibility to inform parents or guardians). Because of this, dharma school also provides a place to rest from and reflect on home life. Though they generally come from different schools and areas, the high schoolers frequently develop friendships with each other outside of the dharma school setting.

Providing this positive and supportive environment for the high schoolers may sound simple, but it is not. Though the youth themselves do much of the work and provide the primary attractive force for each other, they do this within a carefully constructed and monitored “container.” The structural elements of this container include a series of dynamically balanced opposites: real choices and responsibility balanced with close and personal adult presence; unconditional acceptance balanced with clear expectations for moral and respectful behavior while at the Zen Center (or camp); affirmation for who they are — just as they are — balanced with challenges and suggestions for higher aspirations; spontaneous and organic discussions and activities balanced with formal and structured ones; and pure fun balanced with substance. To make the group thrive, the teachers need to be attentive and responsive to what is needed in any situation. Left alone, the group will usually be naturally drawn toward the free, accepting, affirming, unstructured and fun, but over time the youth miss some of the structure, challenge and substance and often don’t know how to put these elements back into the mix. That is what the adults are for. At times, the teacher’s most important role is to be a drag, a nag, a bore or a preacher. At those times, the role of the youth is to sigh and resist but to go along and (usually) be glad they did in the end. At other times, within appropriate boundaries, the adults relax, goof around and self-disclose. At those times the youth find it easier to relate to and understand their teachers, and a genuine affection and mutual respect results.

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On a typical dharma school Sunday, the high schoolers meet separately. Even though they enjoy singing with the other groups, they skip that activity in the interest of time. The group meditates in the classroom for about 15-20 minutes, seated on cushions and facing the center. One student keeps time and signals the beginning and end of meditation with a bell. Meditation is rarely an activity that the youth look forward to, but most admit that it makes them feel more relaxed and clear. The ritual of meditation not only creates a habit energy within the youth that may help them later, but sets the tone for the day’s discussion and activity.

After meditation the group typically does some kind of check-in, much like the middle school group. In fact, many of the high schoolers will have spent years in the middle school group becoming familiar with this kind of activity, so they are usually very comfortable with it. Kids and teachers settle in a circle in armchairs, on the floor and on couches, and have tea, cocoa and cookies. The level of self-disclosure in these check-ins is generally fairly superficial, having mostly to do with recent life events in school and interactions with family and friends. Teachers may ask a few leading questions, but never put a kid on the spot or try to draw out more information than what they are freely offering. This is in part because there are other times and venues where the high schoolers will spontaneously open up more and discuss issues of serious concern to them. These venues include the Fusatsu ceremony which is done in the evening at overnights or at camp, and the peer group without adults around (again, primarily during overnights and at camp). However, if teachers manage to select a topic or activity for the day that really engages the high schoolers, serious and/or personal issues may emerge within the course of the day’s discussion.

The subject matter of high school group discussions and activities is chosen on a class-by-class basis. The teachers — always one male and one female — discuss a plan together and make choices based on the current flavor and interest of the group. The inclusion of perspectives of the two genders in this choice is essential, and ensures that topics and activities address the needs of a range of personality types, energies and learning styles. Unless one teacher is training or mentoring the other, leadership alternates between the genders to provide role models for all of the youth.

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High school group (smiling and goofing around at the same time).

High school group subject matter is rarely explicitly Buddhist and never academic. The kids have made it clear that they have very little interest in “learning about Buddhism” in any formal sense. This is not due to any marked antipathy toward Buddhism, because most of the students actually identify themselves as Buddhist even in non-Buddhist settings like school, despite the fact that it sometimes causes them to stand out or get faced with difficult questions or stereotypes. Rather, the high schoolers spend an enormous amount of time every week in school or doing homework, and the last thing they feel like doing is listening to another lecture or being required to memorize another list. Subsequently it is almost impossible to get the youth to do any reading or prep outside of class time, even about topics that interest them. Our working theory is that the students will investigate Buddhist teachings and practice later in life if they feel the need and interest — especially if they had a positive experience in dharma school.

Dharma school meets only twice a month and individuals will often miss classes, so it becomes essential that each class become a “stand-alone” experience. In many ways this is actually a beneficial constraint on the teachers. It requires them to be less abstract in what they present, and keeps them from attempts to eagerly communicate to the high schoolers the large amount of Buddhist material they think would be good for the teens. The 45 minutes to an hour of formal “class” time with the youth once or twice a month is precious and needs to get right to the point. Realistically, volunteer teachers also have limited time to prepare material for class, so it works well for them to speak from their own experience and try to engage the youth in meaningful dialogue, minimizing hand-outs and references.

Despite the relatively small amount of explicit Buddhist teaching in the high school meetings, there are a number of essential and deeply Buddhist messages that are conveyed. These messages are not lessons or dogmas that the youth are encouraged to accept. Rather, they are part of a subtle but pervasive worldview with which the group approaches all topics and activities. First, teachers emphasize the concept of buddha-nature (usually without calling it by that name): each and every individual is originally pure and selfless, and has a vast potential for wisdom, compassion and skillfulness. The only reason we often don’t have a sense of our own buddha-nature or that of others (or act like buddhas, who are “awakened” beings) is because of ignorance and habits patterns that obscure who we really are. Second, teachers emphasize the concept of the life-long spiritual quest or process. Shakyamuni is offered as a prime example, but teachers also actively model this through sharing their own experience and perspectives. The high schoolers are challenged to deeply question themselves and the world around them, and to see difficulties as opportunities to grow in generosity, acceptance, patience, compassion, equanimity and wisdom. To make the process of questioning and examination real, teachers do not censor disagreements or skepticism about what Buddhism teaches. Instead, the adults operate with a sense of trust that as long as a student stays honest with him or herself, his or her spiritual process will unfold in a beneficial way.

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Finally, teachers work with the high schoolers where they are: in the process of learning about and discovering themselves. Zen master Dogen stated that to study Buddhism was to study the self, to study the self was to forget the self, and to forget the self was to be enlightened by the myriad things. With teenagers we have found it ineffective to introduce the concept of forgetting or letting go of the “small” self or ego; they are still avidly studying the self — in one way or another — and (hopefully) forming a healthy ego. With adults we have found that those who did not complete this process when they were younger have to finish it (to the extent that it is ever finished), often with the aid of therapy, before they can embrace the teachings of letting go of self. Therefore, teachers do not jeopardize the high schoolers’ process of growth by throwing out gloomy pronouncements about how they will sooner or later have to see through the ephemeral and shallow nature of the small self, or recognize that love and friends and dreams offer no permanent refuge. Nor do they hold such gloomy perspectives internally while condescendingly encouraging the youth to enjoy themselves while they still can. The group is led based on the sincere belief that fully appreciating and understanding the “small” self is essential to spiritual practice, and wholeheartedly embracing it does not in any way obstruct the process of letting go.

The actual topics of high school group discussions and activities have been varied, and generally center around a challenging and open-ended question like, “What does it mean to ‘really’ be yourself?” In response to that question, for example, the high schoolers pointed out that we are different selves in different situations, and the less we feel we have to hide in a given situation, the better and more accepted we feel. A topic like this can be simply introduced, or flow from a reading, an activity or a short questionnaire. Once the group started a discussion of attitudes toward death by having each student bring in a photo of someone they personally knew who had died and telling the group about them. The teachers also shared a story, and in the process were able to bring in some of Buddhist perspectives on death and dying. A newspaper article on the recent death of Pope John Paul II prompted a discussion about the respect people felt for him and about how it felt to be Buddhist in a predominantly Christian culture. The teachers start out with a clear idea of what direction the discussion can be taken if it starts to falter or get shallow or irrelevant, but we easily let go of that direction if the students find a different direction that interests them.

One year the high school group worked their way through the book Dharma Punx, Noah Levine’s gritty autobiography describing his descent into drug addiction and crime as a teenager. It chronicles his eventual return to a healthy and productive life through working the twelve steps and starting Buddhist practice. The first part of the book — the part about a kid their own age that was full of conflict, excitement and swear words — kept the high schoolers eagerly reading the book outside of class. Some lost interest after Noah got into recovery (which was the climax of the book), but reading aloud from the book in class stimulated some juicy discussions. Noah Levine then came and visited the high school class at the end of the year and they got to ask him questions and admire his plentiful tattoos. It is often useful to introduce sensitive topics like drug use, sex, lying, peer pressure and criminal activity somewhat indirectly — for example, by discussing the behavior of a character in book or imaginary scenario. The youth can then state their opinions and listen to their peers and teachers without having to give details about their own activities (which could later be reported to parents). J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye promised to be a similar thread for discussion, but most of the kids were simply too busy with school work to spend time reading it outside of class.

Vital to the high school program are the monthly overnights and camp. Meeting for an hour or two twice a month does not give the youth enough time to get to know each other and build a sense of community. We added the overnights many years ago, and find that the kids are willing and able to commit Saturday nights once a month to come to these events.

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