That's the Indian custom, to always run to the seat of the saints. They believe that saints are like the sandalwood tree, transferring to every tree around it the fragrance of sandalwood. Yes, this is true.

 

Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai,
the San Jose Ashram, Costa Rica,
June 2, 1991 (Originally in English)

Relocating for a Child's Sake

In China, there was a story about Meng Tzu. Meng Tzu was a very wise man of China, one of the saints. But he had a saintly mother, so that's why.

When he was a child, his house was next to a slaughtering house that killed animals. So he went to see the people who slaughtered the animals. When he came home, he began to catch all the small animals, like frogs, cats and dogs. And he also began to slaughter them, because he imitated what he saw.

Children imitate everything, good or bad. I didn't; I did not imitate. I remember many of my cousins and the neighbor's children always went and fetched birds, and would roast them and eat them. And they killed all kinds of insects, making them become like their toys. I never did this; I never liked it. But most children imitate things, whether good or bad.

So when the mother saw that the child had developed this very bad habit due to their neighbor's influence, she moved, because of him. She said, "This is not a good place for my child." She was a saintly mother. And they were not wealthy. I think she was alone. Her husband wasn't there; maybe he was dead. She raised the child alone as a weaver, weaving cloth. She was very poor and didn't earn much money weaving cloth. Even then, she sacrificed her time, energy and money for her child. Can you imagine how saintly that is? That's why I say she was a saintly mother. And in ancient China, moving was not easy. There's no transportation, no one to help you, only the mother and the child. You can imagine how difficult that would be.

So she moved to another neighborhood. Some time later, she discovered that her child came home every day wailing and crying, making a ceremony for the dead. He was making a funeral service every day. And then she discovered that they lived very near a funeral home; that's where he learned it. So she said, "This is not a place for my child."

She moved again, for the third time. Then, at last, she moved next to a school, where they taught about Confucius and all the saints' teachings. And the child came home behaving like a saint! He had all the manners of a good scholar and the thinking of a saint-very polite, very noble and very saintly. So the mother said, "Wow, this is the place for my child."

And then, when this child grew old enough, of course, he went to school. He liked going to school. He said, "I like it!" He liked to be like the scholars, so he went to the school. But one day he became fed up with the school for some reason. Probably the teachers had scolded him or his roommate wasn't nice, or else he was lazy. So he went home and went to sleep, in the middle of his classes. He didn't want to go to school any more.

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