Death Education for Children and Youth
Children always make people feel full of hope and energy but neither the old or the young, can escape their destiny; for this reason, we should help children comprehend death while they are still young.
Question:
I am a nurse. Sometimes when a doctor orders no CPR, I’m very depressed at the last breathing of the patient. From my understanding, the wisdom of dying tells us to help people concentrate on their breathing.
But I am a pediatric nurse. Thinking about pediatric patients, they’re kids and they’re going to die. How should I help them? I don’t know how to teach young patients. Is there any way to help those dying kids? We adults know about death. But I don’t think that children know about death or anything about their future. They don’t know about their coming death.
Khenpo Sodargye:
In fact, Buddhist education is similar to worldly education in the way that neither adults nor children can understand the teaching unless one spends plenty of time learning it.
For children, such teaching is related with how to grow up, how to live life and so on. They need to receive the corresponding education. Only through this way, will one have wisdom to live one’s life. Otherwise, even if one follows religion, a faith with a lack of wisdom cannot help one grasp the true meaning of life.
