Amitabha Buddha! Venerable Master, Dharma Masters, and fellow cultivators, today I would like to speak a few words. Recently I've been reading some of Confucius's works. One quotation from Confucius goes like this: The Master said, "When I walk with two others, I always receive instruction from them. I select their good qualities and follow them, and avoid their bad qualities. "  

It seems to me Confucius is pointing out that we can learn from everyone. There is conscious learning, as when Confucius says, "I observe someone and I see what is good and I imitate that. I see what is not good and I try to avoid that." That is a conscious type of learning. Yet not only can we learn from everyone, but whether we want to or not, we always are learning. We learn from people even if we are not aware that we are learning. We learn from many people in our lives. We learn from our teachers, of course, and from our parents. We also learn from our friends. We learn from strangers--even people that we are meeting for the first time. We can also learn from ourselves.  

The type of unconscious learning, or unaware learning, that I'm talking about is the learning that happens when we just associate with other people. We are always learning from them. It is often a more powerful learning than the conscious learning that we do. We tend to imitate people even when we consciously don't want to imitate them. Sometimes we end up imitating the bad in people. If we are together with bad people, we end up being a little more like them than we perhaps want to be. Sometimes when we are with very virtuous people, even if at first we really don't want to follow that path, perhaps because it is a difficult path, we are almost pulled by that virtue in others to become more like them. So we need to be careful of who we are together with or who we associate with.

It is now almost exactly one year ago that I returned from Taiwan, after spending six months there. Living in that country which is based in Confucian ideals, I had a very different sense of the way that people can be with each other, of the way people can relate to each other. Of course if you talk to somebody in Taiwan, they will tell you, "Oh! No, no, no! It used to be that way. Taiwan used to really have Confucian values, but not now, not anymore. Not in the last twenty or thirty years. When I was a child maybe." This is what some people told me when I was in Taiwan. But if you come from a country like America, if you grew up in America, Taiwan seems a very different culture, a very different place.

What impressed me the most was the relationship of guest and host. Now perhaps it is only natural that I noticed this because I was a guest in Taiwan. And many people were my hosts at various times. I spent several weeks with one family, but all over Taiwan people would invite me into their homes. I'm not saying that the way I was treated there as a guest is something absent in the United States. I believe that people from foreign countries who visit the U.S. would say they are treated very hospitably. Yet I observed that the abundant sense of hospitality in Taiwan extends to everyone. It's the way of life there. People like to drop in, visit and spend time with their relatives and friends. And when guests arrive, the first thing is to serve them something to eat and drink. In the U.S. we tend to ask if our guests would like something, and if they say "No, thank you," then we don't serve them anything. In Taiwan you are brought some tea and some fruit or snacks whether you're hungry or not. That's part of being a good host. This is just an indication of the warm feelings shown between host and guests.

Overseas I experienced a different way of relating. As a guest, it felt wonderful to be treated with such hospitality. It certainly had an effect on me--I began picking it up and being the host when people would visit me. I found it is even more wonderful to be in the role of giver. On my return I felt that we in the U.S., in our modern, ever-accelerating society, have lost some of this human warmth. I hope that I am now able to be more that way and that it will rub off on the people I meet.

Recently the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas was host to a conference of educators from the Bay Area and other parts of the U.S. Many people worked hard to make the City a welcoming place. As I was walking through the City, I noticed how beautiful the grounds were looking, and the thought came to me, "How nice it would be if the City looked this way every day!" Now, I know that the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is not a place where people are lazy. People all work very hard here, and they have plenty to do all the time. But I'm hoping that we will all do our share, and a little more than our share. Not just pick up after ourselves but take a little responsibility. People are always learning from us, because when we are together with people they see how we are. If we consider, we will see that we are always hosting people here. Every minute we are always being host to some guest at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. There are the people that come here to eat in the restaurant. There are the visitors that drive in to take a look. There are the parents that bring their children everyday to school. There are those children that come here for school, and for whom we are suppose to be high models. And we can say that we are also being host to ourselves, to our Buddha natures. So I hope we all ask ourselves and do our best, to be true and wholesome and kind and encouraging hosts to all of these people. Amitabha!