The Buddha said that life is suffering and the cause of suffering is craving, the cessation of craving gives rise to liberation(nirvana), the way of liberation is noble eight fold path. According to the teaching of Buddha, the freedom from suffering begins with the mind of human beings. However the system of school education seems to overlook the emotional and spiritual parts of human beings, which are essential to cultivate in the system of modern education. The practice of Ānāpāna will give the chance for children to understand themselves, by the way of controlling their mind.
I found the possibility of understanding children’s development through Early Buddhism. The noble eight fold path, being consists of sīla samādhi, pāññā, is the foundation of moral discipline, emotional, intellectual growth, sociality in the development of children. Vipassanā is a meditation technique being aware of various phenomena, which are related with body and mind. I tried to reveal the significance of Vipassanā as an art of living in the education of children, and the possibility of Vipassanā of being the common ground of learning community in the relationship between students, teachers and the parents.
According to Buddhism, the nature of human being is totality of the latent habits. To educate children, it’s better to grasp children’s disposition and utilize the influence of meditation in forming personality in the childhood. The practice of Ānāpāna is being aware of breath in and out on the area of nostril. In this article, I tried to investigate the feasibility of Ānāpāna meditation for children, and to reveal the relationship between Ānāpāna meditation and children’s Emotional Quotient in the process of which shows that children grasp the inter-relation between the mind and breathing and later on come to understand themselves and learn how to control their mind. This study lights on the effect of Ānāpāna on children’s emotional development.
Lastly I presented the method of meditation camp in the tradition of Goenka Vipassanā. The children course is divided into two group of ages, i.e. 8-12 and 13-16. Through those courses, many children have been experienced the positive changes in their attitude and behaviour, thought etc. As many children have been enhanced the power of concentration and memory, it improved the result of academic learning as well.
The message is simple in the children’s development through the practice of Ānāpāna, i.e., anger, hate, jealousy, fear, passion, craving etc, which are the negativity in the our mind, make our life miserable. Good children do not hurt anybody mentally, verbally, bodily. They help others and control the their mind. So Vipassanā is the most potential method in the system of school education for cultivating emotional and spiritual development of human beings. Ending this article, I suggest to introduce Vipassanā which is the science of mind and matter in the system of modern education.