Modern parenting practices, I dare say, are less than adequate. Today's parents will rear tomorrow's immature adults in which desire and emotions rule. Looking at the typical Dharma center, what teachers and their staff are teaching is not Buddhism, it is how to become a mature adult which means to be in control of one's desires and emotions. Most of the people who attend Dharma centers are the victims of less than adequate parenting (child neglect and abuse, for example).
The huge majority of parents believe they know how to rear their children. This is where the problem begins. They fail to see that day in and day out they are reinforcing immature behavior and ignoring mature behavior—mainly because they are themselves immature. Mature behavior gets no reward and certainly little if any attention. Parents what their children to be children which means parents will inadvertently reward a child's immature behavior without knowing it.
When these children become adults, their immaturity is still with them. Now it consists of adult desires and emotions which lay hidden behind a facade of maturity. Their immaturity is their temporal soul—and it doesn't serve them well. These are the same people who, eventually, seek out a Zen or Dharma center. They sense something is really wrong. The Zen center eventually becomes their new family hopefully taking over where their parents left off.
The real task of the Zen or Dharma center these days seems to be concerned with making mature adults whose temporal soul is not based on desires and emotions. They have learned, to some extent, to control and manage their desires and emotions; rather than being their slave. With this new found ability they can look towards a spiritual horizon and begin their voyage of discovery seeing one day their true nature which is pure and radiant, and certainly undying.
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