This morning a
Chinese man asked me why I come to this temple. I answered “This temple teaches
my children the values of being a good person. What are the human and family
values? Coincidently, Thay today touched on an important value (When we drink
water, we need to think of its source), a value that I want to instil into my
children’s young mind.
Thay asked “Why this
month is called Le Vu Lan (Ullamabana)?” He said this is the month for us to
pay gratitude. There are four things that we need to pay gratitude for:
1)
Our parents
– without them we won’t be here. Our mother bares all the hardship to bring us
up. She goes through physical (pregnancy and give birth) and mental (rebellion,
worries for their children’s health, future and all sorts) pain that we have
caused. Our parents work hard to get money to give us the best education and
life style. Most of the time we don’t thank them and we complain to them
instead.
2)
Our
homeland (Australia) – without this land where can we stay? Where can we work?
Where can we have live comfortably? Where we can get our necessities (such as
food, clothes, household items, cars and so on)? We should be thankful to have
this land to live and support; we should thank people who provide our
necessities; we should thank the earth, natural resources, beautiful clean air,
etc. etc.
3)
Our
teachers – without teachers we cannot tell what is right and what is wrong. We
pay gratitude to the main stream school teachers who provide us skill to
survive and we pay gratitude to our spiritual teachers who lead us to
understand the right and wrong. Buddha is our teacher who shows us the Truth of
the phenomenon. All the patriarchs that carried and taught Buddha teachings
from generation to generation. Our present monks and nuns that teach us
Buddha’s teachings, help us to understand the Truth of the phenomenon. We
should thank Buddha, all the patriarchs, Su Ong Thich Thanh Tu and Thay for
these profound Buddha's teachings. We should thank Thay for providing a place
for us to learn and guide us.
4)
Our friends
and relatives – without friends and relatives we can be very lonely. They
support and help us every single day. Our friends and relatives can be our
teachers as well. Through our interaction with them we can use them to reflect
on ourselves. We should thank the temple community who support us, provide food
and ao trang for us, provide a clean and happy place for us to learn Dharma.
When I read the
sutra for paying gratitude to our parents, I couldn’t hold back my tears. What
have we done to repay for our parents? Nothing compared to what they have done
for us. From time to time we make them happy and we think we are giving back to
them. Like the Buddha said in the Sutra on the Difficulty in Repaying the
Profound Kindness of Parents: “If there is a person whose left shoulder carries
his father and right shoulder carries his mother until his skin is rubbed away
to the bone, and his bone is bored through to the marrow, and who climbed Mount
Sumeru for hundreds of thousands of kalpas until the blood pours down to
his ankles, then that person would still not be able to repay the deep kindness
of his parents.” As children there is nothing much that we can do to
repay our parents’ kindness other than being obedient (not talking back),
making them happy, not letting them worry for us, speaking loving kind words,
being appreciative of their kindness, be there, care for them and love
them. We can also help them to understand the Truth of the phenomenon (Dharma)
and lead them to attain their inner peace (liberation from fear and anxiety).
In summary this
month is for us to pay gratitude to the sources who give us life, support and
help us to become who we are. Without the above 4 sources we won’t be able to
survive in this world.
Happy for the month of Le Vu Lan
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