Understanding the Roles of Students and Teachers in Monastic Life : หน้า 193/207

1) A student who seeks knowledge. 2) A teacher who imparts his knowledge. “Students seek knowledge from schools, colleges or institutes. Do you think they have ever done anything wrong while they were students? Of course, they have. Do we, as adults, take their mishaps seriously? No, we believe they have come to school to learn; so we should forgive their recklessness and misconduct. However, if a teacher behaves inappropriately, students believe he should be condemned. However, in the same manner, there are also two types of monks in a temple: 1) A student monk. “Student monks come to the temple to learn. Some just ordained two days ago; some have ordained for two months while others have been monks for two years. Undoubtedly, they are still learning and are new to the monastic discipline. As a result, they sometimes act inappropriately but unintentionally. This is common and likely to occur with any student monk. Think for a moment. Should we hold their faults against them? 2) A teacher monk. “There are over 100,000 teacher monks, residing in temples around the country. It is obvious that without teacher monks to pass on their knowledge to others and to maintain Buddhism during the era of our country’s ancestors, Buddhism may have disappeared before the present day.” “It can be noticed that all the teacher monks with good knowledge and good conduct are overwhelmingly busy with their undertakings. It is not in their nature to publicly promote their virtues. Some of these teacher monks practice Dhamma devoutly. Some of them dwell in the forests and appear in the villages from time to time. Some reside in cities to train themselves as well as their students. They never promote their virtues to the media because they are pure and moral. This can be illustrated in a Thai proverb: No sound comes from shaking a full bottle of water. This means a person who is replete with virtue and goodness is never boastful.” “In secular schools, we can distinguish teachers from students by their age and clothing. However, in the temples, with the same uniform of saffron robes, it is very difficult to distinguish teacher monks from student monks. Therefore, when you have seen a few monks or, at most, 1,000 of them misbehave, you hastily make the decision not to pay respect to the rest of them. You should carefully think this through and ask yourself: “Am I doing the right thing?” “Next time, when you make a donation to the Sangha, when you do not know who is a teacher monk or student monk, and when you do not know the monks’ levels of virtue,