As you know the Buddha who is the perfectly enlightened and experimental teacher and educator imparted virtue, meditation, wisdom, joy, happiness, and peace to the dharma Realm of living things and living beings all over the planet.
We are his disciples who have striven to study and propagate the Dharma, vow to light up the light of the World-Honored One’s Dharma, vow to bring peace and happiness to ourselves and other people right in the present life.
In the Thiện Sinh Sutra, the Buddha has taught the interrelationships and interactions between teachers and students mentioned in the Thiện Sinh Sutra as follows:
To the teachers, the students have the five duties: 1/ Being respectful, polite, and willing to help the teachers to do the necessary things. 2/ Knowing to obey the teachers’ teachings. 3/ Knowing to listen and learn about the good things from the teachers. 4/ Having to have the spirit of learning with teachers about new and good things that you do not know yet. 5/ Knowing to practice, apply, and create something to have been learnt.
Conversely, to the students, the teachers also have the five duties: 1/ Teaching their students right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration and meditation. 2/ Guiding students in pedagogical methods. 3/ Do not hide knowledge, and wholeheartedly impart knowledge and life experience to students. 4/ Transmitting bodily teachings, verbal teachings, mental teaching to students. 5/ Expecting students to become talented and virtuous people and better than teachers.[1]
Good, happy, and exemplary teachers, students diligently study, practice, and apply well what they have learned from the bodily teachings, verbal teachings, and mental teachings of the transmitted people, successors, receivers, and acceptors, they will change themselves, other people, and the whole world right here and right now in the present life.
On the occasion of Vietnamese Teachers’ Day on annual November 20, we wish you all over the world a lot of the best health and happiness for the careers of educating and training talented and virtuous people for families, schools, and societies around the world.
[1] Dīrghāgama, Part II, Sutra 16, and Dīgha Nikaya, Sutta 31.
