On the Lunar New Year’s Day in 1994, the Venerable Master Hua made a New Year’s announcement at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. He said very gravely,
All mankind will one day be annihilated. The extinction of the human race won’t be caused by earthquakes or other natural or manmade disasters. Rather, it will happen because people will gradually forget about morality.
The Master’s goals in setting up schools are to arouse people’s sense of morality, to liberate people from the deep pit of evil karma, to foster promising young people of good character, to further the prosperity of mankind, and to bring peace to the world.
In the past, people studied in order to understand the principles. Nowadays, people are studying for the sake of fame and profit.
The Master often criticized the faults of modern education. Because he couldn’t bear to see the future of mankind going down the drain as everyone indulged in the ignorance of the five desires, he actively set up schools at the same time that he was working to propagate the Buddhadharma and translate the Buddhist Canon. The Master said,
In setting up schools, I am not only perpetuating the Buddhas’ wisdom, I am also perpetuating the wisdom of living beings. If we can run the schools well, the students who graduate from our schools in the future will understand how to deal with society, and they will be able to influence the society to reform its customs.
In all the nations of the world, dating among young teenagers has become so common that it is regarded as normal. The number of pregnancies, births, and even abortions among unwedded young women rises steadily, developing into a serious social problem. The Master especially instructed the students of Instilling Goodness Elementary School and Developing Virtue Secondary School,
Girls should wait until after they are twenty before starting to date. Boys should wait until after they are twenty-five before having girlfriends. That way, children won’t get hurt. If children start looking for boyfriends or girlfriends before their bodies are biologically ready, they will be injured and will take a loss.
It’s not that I don’t allow you to have boyfriends or girlfriends. But if you start dating too early, then you won’t be a good student or a good person. You should all be good people and good students, so that in the future you can do good deeds. If you start dating too early, you will get hurt. It’s like shoots of grain: If you cut the grain before it is fully grown, it will be totally useless. It will be spoiled. In the future if people start indulging their emotional desires too early, each generation will be worse than the one before. Good seeds have to be taken from grain that is ripe. Prematurely cut grain cannot produce seeds.
If boys and girls start dating before the proper age, they are not mature yet! The children in this nation watch T.V. all the time, and as a result seven- and eight-year-olds already know what dating is all about. That is terribly harmful to them! There won’t be any promising people in this nation in the future. Why not? Because everyone is confused.
We should clearly understand that analysis! In order to prevent children from developing emotional desires at too early an age, the Venerable Master Hua founded schools in which boys and girls study separately. That way, they can concentrate on their studies and become capable individuals who will be able to pull living beings out of the sea of suffering. The Venerable Master once described his aim in setting up schools:
We are running schools for the sake of recruiting students. What kind of students? Those who are wise and intelligent. Does that mean we don’t accept dull students? No, we cannot overlook them either. We must also think of ways to activate their inherent wisdom. This is one of the goals of our school.
Instilling Goodness Elementary School and Developing Virtue Secondary School instill the fundamental human virtues of loyalty and filiality in students, teaching them to take care of their bodies, cherish their families, and love their country. When the schools first started, the students were mostly the children of the laypeople who lived at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. For more than ten years, the schools have been growing steadily and have received excellent commendations from cities and towns near the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. Many American parents have taken their children out of public schools, preferring to send them to the schools in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas to be steeped in a pure environment of virtue where they can concentrate on their studies. Here, they don’t have to worry that their children will casually start dating or take drugs, or that their classmates will bring guns to school.
When graduates of Developing Virtue Secondary School apply to universities, they are seen as very unique because of their school’s emphasis on virtue, vegetarianism, and segregation of boys and girls. The pure, simple lifestyle at school helps them to concentrate and do well in their studies. Many major American universities seek to accept students of different cultural backgrounds. Because students of Developing Virtue Secondary School have such special backgrounds, many major universities compete to accept them. There have been graduates of Developing Virtue Secondary School accepted to Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Davis on scholarship.
The Venerable Master once used the analogy of grass and trees to explain that the only way to train people effectively is to take cultivation as the foundation. The Master said that grass grows in the spring and dies in the winter. Although it will grow again next year, it will still be grass and won’t be able to take on any great function. People who don’t cultivate are the same. They bob up and down in the cycle of rebirth, unable to set down a noble foundation for their spirit. People who cultivate diligently cannot avoid the death of their illusory body, but their birth and death is like that of trees rather than grass. Even though all the leaves fall off, they stay alive, and each spring there is new growth that increases their strength. Eventually they will turn into great trees that will be useful as lumber. In teaching disciples and exhorting students, the Venerable Master is helping them to purify their minds and to work hard to become useful individuals who can help humanity and living beings advance towards a bright future.