spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring

     One of the most important ideologies of Buddhism is ‘not to kill something alive.’ In the movie ‘spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring,’ to be more specific, in the part named ‘spring’, I could watch the story of a Buddhist monk and a young monk, which is closely related to the ideology I mentioned above.

     Well, I don’t want to talk about ‘how important the living things are, and the reason why we should not kill those precious things.’ That is common sense not only to Buddhist, but also to all the other people. We’ve already learned such things and I think we are old enough, so I don’t have to talk about the topic here. In this movie, the most impressive part was the way that the monk used to teach his young monk.

     People can’t fully understand other’s situation or feeling unless they are in the same situation. The old monk knew the fact very well, and that may be the reason why he hung a big stone on the boy monk’s body. I have same experience that young monk. When I was about 8or 9 years old, a new student came to my school. I expected a lot at the thought of making a new friend. When the new student came in to the classroom, however, I disappointed a lot. She was somewhat different from the feature of friend I thought. She was a mentally retarded so needed a lot of help from other students. Every behavior of her was slow. She ate lunch slowly, talked slowly, and walked slowly. She was totally different from me who was impatient and active. My homeroom teacher asked me to take care of the new friend. I hesitated a lot because I felt stuffy of her, but I couldn’t reject my teacher’s request. Since then, I spent most of the school life with her. At first, I tried to be a good friend to her, but I was too young at that time to carefully concern others’ situation. Soon, I gave up to be a good and kind friend to her. I started to ignore her, and naturally, she became an outsider in our class. And one day, my teacher heard about my ignorance toward her and asked me to see her after school. For quite a long period of time, she didn’t say anything to me. And then, she ordered me to take of my glasses. I couldn’t see anything, and it was so stuffy. My teacher said, “If you take off your glasses you can’t see things well, so you can’t do anything. Your new friend has similar difficulties. She also feels stuffy but she can’t do anything because of her difficulties. You have to understand her.” I already knew that I had to help handicapped people, at that time. But I strongly felt what was wrong with my behavior after I myself be in the same situation with my new friend.