Master Huijing’s Short Dharma Teachings about Education for Living
生活教育
Generally speaking, filial love can be divided into three grades from the Buddhist point of view:
The first grade is the basic one. It is our responsibility to love parents and ancestors, so that they don’t need to worry about being able to live their daily lives. Also, we should listen to them, and satisfy their wishes. We should respect and love our parents. It is the most basic way to be dutiful sons and daughters.
The second grade of filial love is to glorify our ancestors through our conduct, virtue, and merit in the community. This kind of filial love is very important in the human world, and through it parents will not be ashamed of how they brought up their children.
However, as far as the Buddhist teachings are concerned, all of human life is viewed from the perspective of cause and effect in the three periods of time, reward/retribution for good and bad karma, and reincarnation within the Six Realms. So, whether a person has filial love or not, the first two grades are not regarded as true filial love from the Buddhist point of view.
We must allow our parents and ancestors to thoroughly leave the cycle of birth-and-death within the Six Realms. This is truly a kind of “great filial love”. The former two kinds of filial love are known as “small filial love” and “medium filial love”, as they are imperfect and incomplete.
一般講「孝道」,從佛教的觀點來看可分為三等:
第一種是最基本的,就是對父母、祖先盡孝養之道,使父母在日常生活當中沒有衣食的憂慮,同時滿父母的心意,不違逆他們,表現對父母的既愛又敬,這是為人子女最基本應盡的孝道。
第二種,是中等的孝道,就是本身能夠立言、立德、立功,來顯揚祖先,榮宗耀祖。這二種孝道,在世間人的觀念,已經非常孝順了,使得父母不平白生下這個兒女。
然而,佛法是從三世因果、善惡報應、六道輪迴來看整個人生,也以這樣的人生觀來談什麼是孝、什麼是不孝。如果從佛法來談,前面那二種孝還不是真正的孝,而是必須使自己的父母祖先,徹底的離開六道生死輪迴,才是真正的「大孝」,前面兩種就是「小孝」跟「中孝」,這兩種孝是不圓滿的。
Namo Amituofo!
