It is a big question. Some of you here are already mothers and fathers. You know the Dukkha of having kids. It is not all fun, it is not all games. There is Dukkha and there is the opposite called Sukkha. It is worth it? It's up to you to make that decision. I am not going to tell you. In the definition of Dukkha that I give every retreat I leave off part. I leave off the first word, birth. Birth is Dukkha, then comes aging, decay, and so on.
Children, it's your decision. Can you grow with a child? Yeah, perhaps. In the same way that you grow with your interactions with anyone else, though. So, it's up to you. Do you want to spend that extra amount of time on one person or two people, whatever? Or do you want to give your time in a more broad way. In Thailand, as many of you know, the Thais will ask you certain questions. What is your name? How old are you? Are you married? Do you have kids? It is pretty set. Sometimes they find out we don't have kids, they are pretty perplexed and they talk about how, "well you know kids will take care of you when you are old." Maybe some Thai kids do, but not many westerners do, some, but I only know a few.
So, the Thais have that concept, it is important to have kids just so they get taken care of later when they are old. We tell them we have "Issara". Issara is a Thai word that means freedom, we are free from that responsibility. But then we do a play on words, it is the only pun we can make in Thai. The word for children is "luuk" and the word for student is "luuk sit". So, we tell them we don't have any "luuks," but we have thousands of "luuk sits," and we get a giggle almost every time. So with their thought of children taking care of them when they are old, we cover that and they understand.
Because as a Dhamma teacher, you don't get to retire and you don't want to retire really, you just keep going. The older you are, the more people come around, the more people want to stay, the more people take care of the old teachers. Every center we have been to, where the teacher is 80 years old, there are hundreds of people there, everything is being taken care of. So, being a Dhamma teacher, I have a better chance of being taken care of by some of you guys, right? Will you push me in the wheel chair, yeah? That is, of course, if I make it that far. So, that area of thought doesn't affect me. If I had personal children, well, maybe they will, maybe they won't. If I have many students, I actually know they will and I will be alright.
So, if that is a concern about having kids, then this wouldn't be a question because you can have it often easier in a meditation center or Buddhist orphanage. But developing the Paramis, developing Compassion, can happen any time, anywhere, any place, with anybody. We don't want to restrict this to thinking that if we have kids it's better for development or if we don't have kids it is better for development. The desire to have kids can come even for people who are partly enlightened. So, it's a personal choice.