On Education: A Discourse for Teachers' Day

Ignorance (avidyā) permeates every corner of the world, every aspect and dimension, pervading 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 educates only for the accomplishment of worldly dharmas, not knowing that all worldly dharmas are illusory and false, that they are all empty. Thus worldly education always points toward the existence of worldly dharmas and can never touch upon emptiness in the slightest. Who is more likely to attain liberation—a worldly doctor or postdoctoral scholar of vast and abundant knowledge, or an illiterate person of deep wholesome roots? History has already given the answer. Education enables 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 through the motions. Among all the patriarchs and great masters in history, hardly anyone spent many years studying worldly culture; the vast majority left home early to cultivate the Path, and even those who could not immediately leave home 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? Because at that time everyone in India wanted liberation, and there were many non-Buddhist practitioners who left home to cultivate the Path; 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 attaining the Way, coming to western India and leaving behind the seed of Buddhahood. But in this present age, with so many people studying Buddhism, the Dharma spreading widely, faith and study of Buddhism flourishing as a trend, and the number of highly learned people gradually increasing—why does the Buddha not come to liberate 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 look as though they have good spiritual faculties, but in reality they do not.

The more the Buddha's Dharma proliferates, the more false dharmas will seize the opportunity to creep in, and sentient beings cannot distinguish the true from the false—those who take the false as true are by no means few. Behind the prosperity of Buddhism lies withering: the more prosperous it becomes, the shallower the roots, as all the nutrients rush to the surface while the roots wither more and more. Only a thin but steady stream flows long and unceasing. The same is true of Buddhism: only slow, steady development will endure, and only then will sentient beings truly benefit. Only then will genuine talent flow into Buddhism—those of deep karmic affinity, those whose wholesome roots have ripened, who are the pillars of Buddhism. When fish and dragons are mixed together, the vast majority are fish, yet they smugly imagine themselves to be dragons—a colossal 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 a trace of the dragon about them.