Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 404
Buddha
Hello Everyone
You probably know that there are many religions in the world.
Most of them direct worship towards a deity. That means that they have an idea of what or who God is.
Some religions started when a person at a time in history, sometimes called a prophet, taught people about how it is best to behave and relate to God. Examples would be: Christ (Christianity) or Mohammed (lslam).
A prophet is a person who, it is believed, speaks on behalf of a divine, supernatural source because they are in touch with them.
Buddhism is the only main religion that does not believe in a personal god. lt does not focus on the relationship between humanity and God.
Buddhism is a tradition that focuses on personal spiritual development to understand the true nature of life and the universe.
There are many hundreds of millions of followers of Buddha world-wide.
There are many divisions of Buddhism in the world now. They worship at home or in a temple. They have festivals like other religions. These are holy days and social occasions.
Most Buddhists are not evangelistic – that means that they do not try to convert people to their religion.
They follow the example and teachings of Buddha by developing morality and wisdom and they use meditation to improve their insights into life.
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born over two-and-a-half thousand years ago into a royal family who lived in the place that is now called Nepal.
One day, he left the palace grounds and saw for the first time, and old man, a man who was ill and a dead body.
He felt very disturbed by the encounter and was persuaded to become a monk and consequently left his privileged life.
But the ways of the monks he followed meant he had to live in poverty, and that did not make him happy either. He lived a life of self-denial for six years and did not feel it helped him. He had not, in any way, found how to help suffering or escape from it.
So he decided to live a life without either extravagant luxury or grinding poverty. This is referred to as the Middle Way.
The Middle Way means to not live only at one extreme or the other, or to only live dead centre between the two, but make a value judgement about what the right thing to do is in any given situation.
The story is that he then spent a lot of time sitting under the Bodhi tree. l mentioned this tree in my blog post about famous trees. (Blog Post 148)
Whilst he was under this tree he spent a lot of time meditating – or opening his mind up to receive wisdom from inside and outside of himself. He also thought about his experience of life until he became enlightened – that means very wise about it.
This led him to become an enlightened teacher and it is his teachings that Buddhists learn from.
Buddha started teaching people about his enlightenment rather than encouraging them to worship one god – or many. For the next 45 years he taught many of his followers or ‘disciples’ who were also in the pursuit of enlightenment. Enlightenment is another word for understanding.
Buddhism was a way of life that started in the East but many people in the West are now Buddhists. The biggest differences in their lives are cultural rather than religious.
Some people of other religions such as Christians can practise the kind of meditation Buddhists teach. This focuses a lot on your own breathing.
There are different kinds of meditation. Meditation calms your mind which in turn calms your body and relieves stress. When you reduce the effects of stress in your body, you can relieve symptoms of all sorts of different kinds of illnesses like asthma and eczema/psoriasis and it also helps you to better focus on your studies at school.
When you are asleep all night, you keep breathing. The subconscious part of your brain makes sure this happens.
lf you take a deep breath on purpose when you are awake you, do this consciously – that means you decide to. You are using the conscious part of your brain.
During meditation, if you are focussing on your breathing, you are combining these two parts of your brain which is why it is a very healthy thing to do. lt helps your brain to relax. Even if you do this for just one minute a day it is better than not at all.
A very easy meditation to learn is to count 100 breaths in and then swap straight away to counting 100 breaths out. Think about nothing but your breathing.
You can do this sitting up or lying down, but you must find a quiet time in which to concentrate – with no distractions.
The Dalai Lama is the head monk of Tibetan Buddhism and traditionally responsible for the ruling of Tibet until the Chinese government took control of it in 1959.
The name ‘Dalai Lama’ means ‘Ocean of Wisdom’. Each one is supposed to be a reincarnation of the one before.
Buddha told many stories to illustrate his ideas about how people could live better lives.
Stories make ideas more understandable and memorable.
So now l expect you would like to hear a story that the Buddha told.
You can think about the meaning of it and what you can learn from it.
lt goes something like this…
Once, there was a man who went on a long journey.
His walk was long and arduous.
After a while, he came to a wide and fast-flowing river.
The river was too wide to jump across and the water too full of currents to swim across. There was no bridge to use.
So the man spent some time making himself a sturdy raft out of any suitable timber that he could find about him.
He worked hard and did a good job.
The raft floated well and got the man safely across the river.
Then the man thought about how much work the raft had taken to build and how useful it had been in getting him across the river, so he decided to take it with him as he travelled on his way, just in case he could use it again.
But as the man tried to make his way through the forest beyond the river the raft seemed to grow heavier and heavier as he carried it along, and it impeded his progress as he tried to force his way through the undergrowth.
The raft that had been so useful in carrying him across the river became a burden to him…
What do you think about the meaning of this story?
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: What did one Buddhist monk say to the other Buddhist monk?
Bill: “l hear reincarnation is making a comeback!”
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Statue
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Miss Pringle said that her class really needed to focus more on their sentence structure when they wrote.
She said that she would teach them about parts of speech yet again and this time they had better take notice, or else!
She did not specify what the ‘else’ was.
She divided her class into little discussion groups. Bill, Bob, Emily and Henry wanted to be together.
She gave each group ten pieces of paper. Each piece of paper had something written on it.
The group had to match the pieces up into five pairs.
The groups could confer if they wanted to.
The important thing was that all the children should understand the meanings of what was written down and remember what they had learned.
Can you complete the puzzle that Miss Pringle gave her class?
Match the parts of speech with the meanings…
A proper noun
A concrete noun
An abstract noun
A compound noun
A collective noun
- A thing you can see and touch like a table or a chair
- The name of a person, place or movement like: Salty Sam or Britain or Puritanism
- The name of a quality or state – it is like a thing you can’t see or touch but you know about in your head; for example: love, hate, belief
- A collection of things; like the word ‘flock’ when referring to a group of sheep
- Two single nouns put together to make a new word like ‘swim’ and ‘suit’ makes ‘swimsuit’
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Quick Quiz
Purple is thought to be a very spiritual colour.
Can you fill in the gaps to find different types of purple?
- m _ _ _ e
- l _ _ _ c
- v _ _ _ _ t
- a _ _ _ _ _ _ t
- l _ _ _ _ _ _ r
- a _ _ _ _ _ _ e
- m _ _ _ _ _ _ y
Chakras are energy point in the body that have colours allocated to them
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A PENGUlN FlNGER PUPPET
Do you have some tiny scraps of black and white yarn to use up?
This finger puppet can be taken anywhere to play with.
BODY BACK (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and black dk yarn cast on 8 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Knit 20 rows of stocking stitch
Don’t cast off – leave a length of yarn to pull through your stitches
BODY FRONT (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and white dk yarn cast on 6 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Knit 12 rows of stocking stitch
Change to black yarn
Knit 8 rows of stocking stitch
Don’t cast off – leave a length of yarn to pull through your stitches
WING (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and black dk yarn cast on 6 stitches
Knit 2 rows of stocking stitch
Decrease 1 stitch at the beginning of the next 4 rows until 2 stitches remain
Knit 2 together
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Sew two eyes onto the face by wrapping your yarn around your yarn needle once to make French knots
Make a beak by wrapping your yarn around the needle three times and make a French knot
(Don’t put your needle back in the hole it came out of)
Pull the stitches in at the top of the head and using over-sew stitching and right sides together sew up the side seams
Turn the body the right way out
Sew the under seams of the wings using over-sew stitching with wrong sides together
Attach the wings to the sides of the body
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Answers to the News Desk Quiz
A proper noun
The name of a person, place or movement like: Salty Sam or Britain or Puritanism
A concrete noun
A thing you can see and touch like: a table or a chair
An abstract noun
The name of a quality or state – it is like a thing you can’t see or touch but you know about in your head; for example: love, hate, belief
A compound noun
Two single nouns put together to make a new word like ‘swim’ and ‘suit’ makes ‘swimsuit’
A collective noun
A collection of things; like the word ‘flock’ when referring to a group of sheep
Religious symbols
Quick Quiz Answers
- mauve
- lilac
- violet
- amethyst
- lavender
- aubergine
- mulberry
Mulberries
Embroidery Stitches
