The Lesson of Spring

           “Spring,” the first chapter of Kim Ki-deuk’s movie “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring,” is about a child monk and a lesson that he learns from his mentor. The boy, as a childish prank, ties a fish, a frog, and a snake to individual stones. He then watches, laughing, as they struggle to move. Later that night, while the boy is sleeping, his mentor, an older monk, ties the boy to a stone as the boy did to the animals. The next morning, the old monk tells the boy to find those animals that he harassed the day before and let them free. The boy finds the animals but, much to his grief, the fish and the snake had already died.

           The lesson that the old monk wished to teach the boy was probably one of humility. Humans, even a young boy like the child monk, obviously have an upper hand in terms of strength or intelligence compared to animals such as fish, frogs, and snakes. The boy, in a naïve joke, misused this power to treat the animals poorly, and made them go through sufferings that they did not deserve. While the action itself was not nearly an atrocious crime, the older monk saw that it would be necessary to teach the boy about this by letting the boy experience the hardships himself. Letting the boy experience the error in his ways personally would, the monk probably believed, would have a long-lasting impact on the boy and prevent any future incidents of similar structure but larger scale. This lesson is significant not only to the life-revering Buddhists, but to all people that are in a position of power compared to others.