Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

their children’s upbringing is not simply left to chance.
Children begin to learn about basic common principles
from a very tender age. But unlike learning in the classroom, this
learning process is not interrupted by time or season. Such basic
common principles are more firmly implanted in children’s char-
acters than any of their school subjects, for these things exist all
around them – at home, in school, and everywhere else. Children
are constantly taking lessons from what they see, hear, taste,
smell, and touch in the world, remembering well what they have
learned. A child’s senses are its natural blackboard. The impres-
sions imprinted there are pregnant with moral significance; that
is, matters of good and evil. They constantly pick up impressions
from their playmates and the adults in their lives, as well as from
movies and other entertainment that is normally available to
them. Such everyday impressions are a child’s true teachers; and
children are all too willing to learn new ideas that are constantly
conveyed to them. Contact with evil affairs can definitely induce
a child to follow evil ways, while good influences can definitely
induce a child to go the way of virtue. Children naturally take the
things they see and hear as examples to emulate; and, over time,
this establishes a pattern of behavior that defines a child’s char-
acter. Once these patterns have become ingrained, the children
will speak and act according to the good or evil orientation thus
established.
The fact that some people readily take satisfaction in doing
evil and are unwilling to change, while others just as readily take
satisfaction in doing good and cherish moral virtue all their lives,
indicates the fundamental importance of character development.
Those left to their own devices easily abandon the effort to resist