The seventh lunar month comes with the season of gratitude as a traditional beauty of most Buddhists. The bustling season awakens children to pray for peace for their parents by being vegetarian. The season reminds children to wear red roses when their parents are still alive, to wear white flowers to commemorate the souls of those who have gone to the peaceful paradise.
Early in the morning, as soon as I entered the company, I heard some colleagues talking about vegetarian restaurants, about how to make familiar dishes from vegetables of the mothers at home. Some invited me to go to the temple to worship Buddha after work to wear flowers. Roses for parents, yellow flowers for those who are still alive and those who have passed away, white flowers for those who have lost both parents. The stories about parents were whispered again. The old stories were brought up and pondered. There were also some who were married, had children and began to understand the anxiety, the worries, the sacrifices, the thrift for children. The story went around and around, the young colleagues looked at each other and concluded: filial piety is not just a season.
Filial piety is not just a season, a day or a moment in a year or a month. Parents give birth and raise their children until one day when they are fully aware, spread their wings and go out into the world to make a living, know how to see, know how to think; know how to turn stone into gold, know how to grow moss; know how time turns cruelly, then that is also the time when time turns gray on the hair stained with wind and rain. Time leaves bird migration marks on the faces of parents. When suddenly seeing the season of gratitude, their hearts are filled with anxiety. Just looking at each other, they tell each other how heavy filial piety is!
The time of young people can be miles long and endless, but the time of their parents is concentrated in one direction. Towards their children. Children who are eager for many fun activities with friends, many times coming home late, many long trips to explore, many relationships to cling to. In fact, they always think that way and sometimes refuse family gatherings; many times being grumpy when their parents keep asking them the same thing; many times coming home late and drunk, not knowing that their parents are waiting for them all night without sleeping…
Filial piety is just one word but its meaning is very broad. For parents, sometimes joy, success, or peace and prosperity, or simply the child returning safely after a day of hard work on the streets is happiness. The happiness of the elderly is sometimes only calculated by the day, by the hour, because no one knows when the leaves will fall, sometimes it only takes a gentle breeze. Therefore, complete filial piety is not about being vegetarian, nor waiting for the day to put on flowers, filial piety is the daily actions to let parents know that their love for their children is reciprocated appropriately.
Sometimes young people still bring filial piety to social networks with pictures of luxurious trips, with meals at fancy restaurants, with valuable gifts for their parents. They enthusiastically think that this is the practicality of children's duties. Filial piety suddenly attracts hundreds of thousands of likes, countless shares. Unfortunately, the age of technology is like a stimulating game that makes young people fall into a search for illusions and fame. Filial piety is sometimes very simple! It can be just a full meal with children with familiar dishes in the old house that warms the parents' hearts. It can be the act of making a cup of coffee in the morning for dad, buying a shirt for mom, finding the morning newspaper for dad, finding a book for mom. Or maybe sitting on the porch listening to parents tell old stories of their parents and their children. Listening to parents complain about the hardships and poverty of those years. Then seeing parents smile at our maturity today. Old people live on memories. Memories, whether happy or sad, are in their blood and flesh. Those memories are the things we remember forever and one day those white clouds will fly back to the sky.
The seventh lunar month is filled with vegetarian days and flowers worn on our shirts, but we don't need to wait for the month of gratitude. Let's try to start with the days we sit with our parents, see in their words, find in their smiles the peace that shines in their eyes. Those are the most complete days of filial piety and gratitude.
Article: Tong Phuoc Bao
Illustration: Document
