Jazz and meditation are for adults. This thing feels like a Scientology promo.

Many Indian people would disagree with you, Old Spider. If Ravi Shankar thought Jazz was no good for kids, just think of what early musical influence Nora Jones would have missed out on!

Many Indians don't have a problem with their kids meditating either.

What I like about meditation, is that it gets you to an awareness of the part of yourself that is unchanging, the part that is not altered in any way by your life's circumstances, or by what people tell or do to you.

When we can tap into our essential nature, we are learning important skills like resilience and self-acceptance.

Kid's worlds can be as harsh as adult's, especially since they are so vulnerable to adults. I think meditation can be an excellent resource for kids to help them survive not only childhood, but adulthood as well.

If it's taught in fun way, in a non-religious environment, meditation can be such a powerful tool for kids to learn.

disturbing. nearly as much so as religious madrasa inoctrination.

We know you don't think much of 'navel-gazing', Glu. Thanks for not down-voting!!

Vipassana and Samatha are exercises which foster both continual attentiveness and the rigorous delving into the patterns and relationships of one's own thought. Theravadin Buddhism - from which Vipassana and Samatha emerge - is arguably both sometimes a 'religion', and also something other than a religion.

no WAY should kids be sitting down quietly. They should be on playstation or trying to beat other kids in competitive sports. this religious bullshit is scary.

Vipassana Meditation Centre in Australia is offering a children's course one day this month at Ashfield Public School, Sydney. Does anyone have any first-hand experience of this centre, to be able to report on it?

I agree with what you say Persephone.

But can't meditation be taught by anyone? I know I learnt it myself.

I don't like it packaged within a religious context.

Yeh, I think you can learn it a lot of ways, there are heaps of methods. I read/listened to instructional material in my 20s, but didn't really take it up as a regular practice until a few years ago.

We're pretty protective of our kids and wouldn't send them on any camp unless we knew exactly who was in charge, what the agenda was and were satisfied that it would be a safe, non-religious event, and even then, one of us would probably go along too, just to be sure.

I don't really think it's blatantly obvious from the video that it's aim is religious indoctrination.

Maybe for someone who's never been inside a meditation hall, the sight of a bunch of kids sitting in rows meditating looks scary, but that in itself is nothing harmful. It's what the instructors are saying to the kids that determines the aim of the centre, and since the video doesn't include much dialogue, that's hard to say.

Our guys have done some meditation as part of a kid's yoga class and they loved it.

When they can't get to sleep at night, because they're so wound up by the day's events, I put on a guided visualisation CD for them and they're relaxed and asleep in no time.

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Meditation prep is great for kids....get them ready for a life-time of peace, by having them sit still and upright for time-outs, ...show them how to calm themselves with breathing exercises....Hell, worry about a religious slant or doctrine, and run the risk of becoming a bitter atheist as an adult...or a born again burn-out......

Alll ya folks who want religion stamped out....to you I ask?? "Would you also throw out the richness of cultures and history?"

Persephone, meditation is similar to prayer in focused energies and effect....the more one becomes proficient at either, teh better one gets with results.....i.e.. we speak into being, that which has existed, and will.

Body follows the mind-

"Would you also throw out the richness of cultures and history?"

Straw man.

Personal opinion:

Meditation is simply self-hypnotism. It's a way of getting your conscious mind to believe it's in an sub-conscious state and that the sub-conscious state is the more "real" one. The sub-conscious state of mind is simply a view of the world without the full set of tools your conscious mind has access to, (the tools that translate info from the senses). It's good to dip into your sub-conscious just to get a different view for analysis purposes, just so long as you realize that it's a handicapped view and not real. Like a dream view verses an awake one, you shouldn't take it too seriously.

Ohter attempts to tap into this "true" reality usually involve sleep/food deprivation and drugs like with shamanism etc. It's all bs that people can get caught up in while the real world goes on without them.

Upvote for meditation... wish I'd learned as a kid.

Upvote for the debate.

Upvote for the video and for the comments not containing the "dark side of mankind"

...."just so long as you realize that it's a handicapped view and not real. Like a dream view verses an awake one, you shouldn't take it too seriously."

Oh and you have a valid reason to believe in one intangible principle over another....that of your finite, and limited perception???

old_spider....
baby with the bath water........
The the kind of mettle it tales to be a key-turner...a bomb launcher

how straw is dust, dust man????

How dust is straw, straw man? The removal of religion is impossible, but the removal of superstitions and illogic is probable. So say me. You don't have to throw away a culture to remove it's idiocies.

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