The Tibetan people train their monks from childhood. Most of the monks learn from childhood. They come into the monastery when they are young, mostly as orphans or poor children whose parents cannot afford to raise them; they get offered completely to the temple and never go back home. So they are trained from childhood, and that's how they grow up. Even if we don't say anything about their levels of sainthood, at least their manner and behavior are very sweet.

So everything we were taught in childhood is very important. I guess my grandmother and my father were good teachers for me. My grandmother used to make me read a lot of books to her because she couldn't read; she was very old. I read her all the philosophical books that were meant only for adults, but she was very fascinated by them. And I loved her; I was always sticking around her, so I was the one who read a lot for her. And I was more fascinated than she was. Sometimes she went to sleep or she was busy, and I would read them all by myself. So I read all the things that a child should not read, like Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu and all kinds of Chinese and other cultures' philosophies. In the evening when I slept, I would fly around meeting saints and things like that. And I had all kinds of magical powers in my dreams. Anyhow, I guess that's what made me become what I am today; it had an influence. In the world today, people teach pregnant mothers to read good books and imagine beautiful faces, or hang beautiful pictures in the bedroom or around the house, just to make a beautiful baby, to plant noble ideas into the fetus. It helps.

Actually, the parents are commissioned by God to teach Hiers children. But most parents do not remember their duty. They love the children but they think of the children also as property, that the children should grow up and make a name and make money for them, to repay them for their kindness. So most of the time, they emphasize more to the children that they have to go to school, they have to learn a craft, or they have to do this and do that. There's really no moral motive behind it at all, just a monetary motive. This is just most of the time; I don't mean all families are like this. But the people who are like that teach each other-that you have to spend 10 years or 20 years in education just to get a position, to earn good money, to get a good husband or wife and to be secure in life. This is always emphasized in our society. And then if they have a religious background, they send their children to the priests, and the priests know nothing.

So that's how we are left alone to struggle for ourselves spiritually in this world. If we are not lucky enough to happen to stumble into a saint or the saintly teaching of a living Master, can you imagine how we carry on with our life? You're born and you die and you have only one ideal in your head: making money, gaining position, and raising children, like raising ducks, pigs, or any other animals. If we as humans don't have a higher ideal about life and God, we are just like the animals. But how do you find a teacher who will teach you anything like this? We have been brainwashed for 15 or 20 years in school, just for money! Let's face it; that's the only motive. It doesn't matter how much flour they put around it or pepper and chili on top to cover it, it is all for monetary purposes, nothing else. And not only to earn enough money for a living; sometimes money tricks people into selling their dignity and forgetting all their moral standards.

That's how the society teaches us, even our family members. Of course, not all families are like that. Thus, we should earn money or have a position to take care of ourselves, but not to the extent of forgetting everything else. That's why we are very far away from God. If we are near God, it must be a money god, or a banker god!

Previous

Next Page