Ancient Cultivation Stories: You Are All Correct

One day, a monk was meditating on a rush cushion, with a servant standing besides him. Outside the door, two disciples of the monk were having a serious disagreement. Neither wanted to yield to the other and each stuck to his own argument. They both thought only what he had enlightened to was right.

Angrily the more senior disciple walked into the monk's room and asked, "Master, cultivators should have no attachment to anything in the mundane world. Honor or disgrace, gain or loss, right or wrong, good or evil, nothing can touch a cultivator's heart. This is the true meaning of cultivation. But the junior disciple doesn't agree with me. May I ask you, Master, whether my opinion is right or not?"

The monk answered gently, "You are right!"

The senior disciple walked outside proudly. He acted like a victor and told the junior disciple their master thought his opinion was right.

The junior disciple was not convinced. He then immediately walked into the monk's room and asked, "Master, cultivators should have principles in their hearts toward the mundane world. They should be clearly aware of what to maintain and what to give up. They should differentiate right from wrong and tell good from evil. That is indeed cultivation practice. The senior disciple's understanding is wrong. Why Master, you told him that he was right?"

The monk said, "You are correct!" Hearing the monk's remark, the junior disciple felt delighted and happily departed.

Having observing all of this, the servant standing beside the monk felt confused. He asked the monk, "Their understandings of cultivation and the Buddha Law are completely different. Why did you agree with both of their arguments? Whose opinion is truly correct? "

"What you said is correct!" the monk replied to the servant.

The Buddha Law is boundless. Different cultivators have different levels of understandings of the profundity of the Buddha Law. There is no absolute standard in judging which opinion is right or wrong. Cultivators' understandings are always delimited by their own knowing of the Buddha Law at a certain level. With obtaining more enlightenment of the Buddha Law and upgrading one's level, one will find that the Buddha Law is extraordinarily great and profound.