| |
learn anything. That's why history repeats. It is because of the idiots; otherwise there is no reason for history to repeat. It will always bring a new dawn -- not old, rotten, lived, finished completely. But history has to repeat because idiots go on and on repeating themselves, and they are the makers of history. It is unintelligence that makes it possible for history to repeat.
The saying is that the unintelligent will not learn from his own mistakes, but the intelligent can even learn from others' mistakes. And the man who can learn from others' mistakes has a great potential. At the age of fifteen, Isan must have learned from others' mistakes. He must have watched carefully his parents, his neighbors, his teachers -- their lifeless lives, their meaningless wanderings, no sense of direction except misery and suffering. All that they have is some promising hope that may be fulfilled in the future, perhaps in the next life or perhaps in paradise. But this life is going to be a suffering, it cannot be otherwise. It is the nature of life and they have accepted it. At the age of fifteen he left his home. He was not going to commit the same mistakes that everybody else was committing.
HE LEFT HOME AT FIFTEEN TO BECOME A MONK, STUDYING UNDER THE LOCAL VINAYA MASTER. A Vinaya master is only a rabbi, a pundit, a learned scholar. Vinaya is the name of the Buddhist scriptures. The very word `vinaya' means humbleness, and Buddha teaches that to be humble is to be close to nature. All his scriptures -- and they are many -- have been called the Vinaya scriptures because their fundamental teaching, from different directions, is the same: just to be nobody, just to be ready to disappear into the blueness of the sky without leaving any footprints.
Obviously he was in search; he went to study under the local Vinaya master. A fifteen-year-old boy does not know where to go. So whoever was in the locality, the most famous and learned scholar -- he went to him.
HE WAS ORDAINED AT HANGCHOW AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.
Being ordained means that now he is making an absolute commitment to find himself. He is declaring to the world, "Help me not to go
|
|
|