Buddhism and Respect for Parents

Buddhism and Respect for Parents

            As we know Siddhārtha Gautama left his wife and his child in order to practice Buddhism. Similarly, in the movie Samsara, we saw the main character leave his wife and child to return to the monastery to practice Buddhism. We have had many discussions about how this bothers many of us because they are practically abandoning their family, which seems wrong to us. In the movie Amongst White Clouds there was a monk that talk about leaving his family. He said that he was allowed to leave his family because his brother was going to take care of his parents and if his brother could not have taken care of his parents he would have not been able to leave because the Buddha would not like that. I found this extremely odd because Buddha and many others left their families, or they at least left their spouses and children. So for my second blog post I wanted to research why Buddhism allowed men to leave their wives and children but not their parents.

            After researching I have found that there has always been much respect for ones parents in the east and in Buddhism. There is actually a Sutra about ones parents and the respect that must be shown to them. This particular Sutra is called “The Filial Piety Sutra.” In this teaching the Buddha talks about the “deep kindness of parents and the difficulty in repaying it.” Buddha explains that it is a difficult task to be a parent. He goes into detail about what the mother goes through when she is pregnant and about to give birth. He says that it is a great burden and worry because she could lose the child at any moment. Later on when the child is older the burden is still there because there is a great responsibility to raise a child right. Because this is such a difficult task the child must try to repay this kindness back to their parents. Since they must repay this kindness they cannot leave if someone cannot take care of their parents, because obviously that would not be kind. I still think it is odd that they are allowed to leave their spouse and children because I feel that there is a great sense of duty there as well, but apparently the Buddha is more concerned about parents rather than spouses and children.