Teachers' Day: On Education

Ignorance (avidyā) permeates every corner of the world, every aspect and dimension, permeating all worldly dharmas. Of course, it also permeates the field of education. Education without ignorance is the Buddha's education; education with very little ignorance is the education of bodhisattvas; and next comes the education of pratyekabuddhas and arhats. The education of ordinary beings, of course, is filled with ignorance—it is education aimed only at accomplishing worldly dharmas, not knowing that all worldly dharmas are illusory and false, that they are all empty. Therefore, worldly education always points to the existence of dharmas in the world and cannot touch upon emptiness even in the slightest. Who is more likely to attain liberation in this world—the erudite PhDs and postdoctoral scholars with vast knowledge, or the illiterate people of deep good roots? History has already given the answer. Education has enabled countless people to adapt to social life, but the more they adapt, the harder it is for them to realize emptiness and attain liberation. Those who attain liberation are inwardly out of tune with society, even though outwardly they have no choice but to go along with it. Among all the patriarchs and great virtuous ones in history, hardly anyone spent many years studying worldly culture; the vast majority left home early to cultivate the Way. Even those who could not immediately become monastics kept their bodies at home while their hearts were on the Path, and when the conditions ripened, they still left home to cultivate the Way.  

Buddhism originated in India—why is that? Because at that time in India, everyone wanted liberation, and there were many non-Buddhist practitioners who left home to cultivate the Way; yet because they had not found the true Dharma, none of them could attain liberation for the time being. Only when the Buddha saw that the conditions for sentient beings' liberation had ripened did he manifest the eight marks of a Buddha's advent, coming to western India and leaving behind the seed of Buddhahood. But in this present age, with so many people studying Buddhism, with the Dharma so widely spread, with faith in and study of the Buddha having become a prevailing trend, and with learned scholars gradually increasing—why does the Buddha not come to deliver them? Because nowadays hardly anyone truly wants liberation or truly wants the mind to be empty; they are all people attached to existence. They may appear to have good spiritual faculties (indriya), but in reality they do not.  

The more the Buddha-dharma proliferates indiscriminately, the more false dharmas will seize the opportunity to creep in. Sentient beings cannot distinguish the true from the false, and those who take the false to be the true are by no means few. Behind the flourishing of Buddhism lies withering: the more it flourishes, the shallower its roots become; the nutrients all rush to the surface, and the roots will wither more and more. Only a thin stream flowing long and steady can continue without interruption. Buddhism is the same: only by developing slowly and steadily can it endure for a long time, and only then will sentient beings truly benefit. Only those who flow into Buddhism in this way are true talents—those of deep karmic affinity, those whose good roots have matured, and they are the pillars of Buddhism. When fish and dragons are mixed together, the vast majority are fish, yet they smugly assume they are dragons—a tremendous misapprehension. Clearly, they should be carp leaping over the Dragon Gate, but instead they merely swim across, still with the body of a fish, without the slightest trace of a dragon.