Youth in Buddhism

The Buddha's life story portrays that the Buddha was a good student and a quick learner. For six years he wondered, studied and mastered many subjects and fields including self- mortification.

Nevertheless, it is natural that the younger generation with some education at background should question the decision of their elders, since policies in almost every sphere of life will affect both their present and future lives.

In similar vein, the Buddha questioned all his teachers as he was dissatisfied with all techniques he had studied and mastered. Still the Buddha did not give up his determination.

Evaluating his earlier life of self-indulgence and experience of self-mortification, he came out with a 'middle path' between extremes of this kind. Channelling his youth force properly to the practice of meditation and in the course of one night he attained the complete state of awakening which he had sought. He became the Buddha, the Awakened One while he was a youth spirit.

Little biographical detail is available concerning the latter half of the Buddha's life. It is clear, however, that his time was taken up travelling on foot through the towns and villages addressing audiences of many kinds of different religious, social, and the economic background.

Numerically, it is said that there are 84,000 Dhammas or the teachings of the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Those teachings were taught by the Buddha to different people who have abilities to understand his teachings in different occasions and places.

Those teachings of the Buddha can be used and practised by both adults and the youth alike according to an individual's capabilities not only to achieve the supreme liberation, the Nibbana, but also to lead a happy life in a peaceful society. Nevertheless, there are some teachings that Buddha taught, aiming directly to children and youth. Buddha taught these groups in a way that his listeners could understand it.

For example, there is a story in the Dhammapada commentary which the Buddha taught to a group of youth on the virtue of not to harm any life: On one morning, Buddha went out for his alms around the city streets.

Buddha saw a group of youth beating a snake with a stick. Buddha asked those youth: 'what are you doing?' 'A snake, venerable sir, we are beating with a stick.' 'Why ?' 'Because we were scared that it will bite us, Venerable sir.' Buddha then advised them, 'he who searches for his own happiness by beating animals who love happiness with a stick will never be happy.

Whereas he who search for his own happiness by not beating animals who love happiness with a stick will always be happy.' Listening to the Buddha, the group of youth understood and stopped afflicting any animal's life.

The most common and widely known formulation of the Buddha's teachings is that which the Buddha himself announced in his first sermon in Benares, the formula of the Four Noble Truths.

The Buddha declared that these truths convey in a nutshell, all the essential information that we need to set out on the path to liberation. He says that just as the elephant's footprint, by reason of its great size, contains the footprints of all other animals, so the Four Noble Truths, by reason of their comprehensiveness, contain within themselves all wholesome and beneficial teachings.

The Four Noble Truths can be deducted into a pragmatic approach of the Threefold Training viz. morality (sila) , cultivation of mind (samadhi) , and wisdom (panna) .

Therefore, in Buddhist training morality, cultivation of mind and wisdom have significant roles. It is a procedure formula for training in Buddhism as Buddha himself used in the case of his own son, Ven. Rahula.