Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

I wasn't really sure what to expect by this movie and my initial response after watching this was, "huh?" I'm not schooled in eastern philosophy or buddhism so I know that I missed out on the meaning of a lot of things. There's also not much dialogue in the film, it's mostly imagery. The movie starts off with a monk living out in the middle of nowhere in a floating house on a lake. A young boy lives with him who is being trained to be a monk. Eventually the boy grows up, becomes tempted by worldy desires, and leaves the old monk. Then, later on the boy returns a grown man and learns yet another lesson from the monk before leaving again. Now the old monk is all alone again and eventually dies leaving the small monastary empty. In the last "season" a new monk comes to tend the monastary. I'm not sure if this is just some random monk, the old monk reincarnated, or maybe even the grown boy that the old monk taught. Like I said earlier, there is a lot of Eastern symbolism that I know I wasn't understanding. There are several things including statues of Buddha and another statue of what I believe was a goddess of some sort. I was trying to read some things on the IMDB message boards, but that turned into a lot of people giving their opinions and telling the other person they were totally wrong. This movie definitely has an Eastern religious theme to it. If you don't know much about that topic, aren't really into foreign movies and need dialogue to keep the movie flowing for you, I would stay away from this one.