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Part Four - Family and Society
Chapter - 19. Family
2) Filial Piety
Filial Piety Is The Age-old Moral Principle that children show respect and honor to their parents. It is the parents’ due, for they have sacrificed and labored for their children’s sake, giving them birth, feeding them and providing them with a good start in life. Therefore, filial children do not regard it as an imposition to care for their parents in their old age. Ideally this is not regarded as a matter of duty, but as the spontaneous and natural prompting of a grateful heart.
Among Father Moon’s extensive teachings about filial piety are these: Filial should be encouraged as an enduring tradition that links the generations in an unbroken chain of lineage. Filial piety is perfected in a mature unselfish mind of the adult child who sympathizes with his parents’ difficulties and sufferings and recognizes them to be more serious then his or her own small problems. Most importantly, filial piety is a doorway to a deeper relationship with God, our divine Parent.
1. Filial Piety as the Root of Virtue
World Scripture
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you. Exodus 20.12
There are three partners in man, God, father, and mother. When a man honors his father and mother, God says, “I regard it as though I had dwelt among them and they had honored me.” Talmud, Kiddushin 30b (Judaism)
Do not neglect the sacrificial works due to the gods and the fathers! Let your mother be to you like unto a god! Let your father be to you like unto a god! Let your teacher be to you like unto a god! Taittiriyaka Upanishad 1.11.2 (Hinduism)
Thy Lord has decreed… that you be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in your lifetime, do not say to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor. And, out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility, and say, “My Lord! Bestow on them Thy mercy even as they cherished me in childhood.” Qur’an 17.23
The superior man works upon the trunk. When that is firmly set up, the Way grows. And surely proper behavior towards parents and elder brothers is the trunk of Goodness? Analects 1.2 (Confucianism)
Those who wish to be born in [the Pure Land] of Buddha… should act filially towards their parents and support them, and should serve and respect their teachers and elders. Meditation on Buddha Amitayus 27 (Buddhism)
This do I ask, O Lord; reveal to me the truth. Who fashioned piety in addition to dominion? Who made a son respectful and attentive to his father? Avesta, Yasna 44.7 (Zoroastrianism)
Now filial piety is the root of all virtue, and the stem out of which grows all moral teaching… Our bodies—to every hair and bit of skin—are received by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or wound them: this is the beginning of filial piety. When we have established our character by the practice of the filial course, so as to make our name famous in future ages, and thereby glorify our parents: this is the end of filial piety. It commences with the service of parents; it proceeds to the service of the ruler; it is completed by the establishment of [good] character. Classic on Filial Piety 1 (Confucianism)
If your parents take care of you up to the time you cut your teeth, you take care of them when they lose theirs. Akan Proverb (African Traditional Religions)
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Filial piety cannot be practiced with a self-centered attitude. (62:37, September 10, 1972)
Who is a filial child? He or she always thinks of what his or her parents want most and then acts upon it, taking the position of their object partner. The eyes of a filial child see the things his or her parents would like to see. The ears of a filial child hear the sounds his or her parents would like to hear. The heart of a filial child has feelings his or her parents would like to feel. In other words, filial children love centered on their parents’ five senses, always yearning for the realm of their parents’ heart. They only want what is good for their parents, never anything bad. And when their parents have something good, they try to make it even better. (161:132, January 18, 1987)
A son or daughter who worries more about his or her parents’ cares and difficulties than about his or her own can be called a filial son or daughter. On the other hand, a son who always expects his parents to worry about his troubles, never concerned that they have their own difficulties, is not truly united with his parents.
According to the principle of filial piety, the child who habitually ignores his parents’ situation will fail to properly respond to his parents at the crucial moment when they desperately need his help. Though the son clings to his parents, continually imploring them to recognize and resolve his difficulties, at the crucial moment he will be a treacherous son. We experience this in our daily life.
Filial piety starts when a child worries about his parents’ difficulties more than his own, adding theirs to his own, and accepts this as a matter of course. On the other hand, when the child ignores his parents’ difficulties, a breach occurs in the relationship. The way of impiety starts there. (62:187, September 25, 1972)
A filial son takes responsibility for his parents’ sorrow. He goes to difficult places in order to resolve their sorrow, that they might rejoice. If his parents work ten hours and the son works fifteen, the parents will feel joy corresponding to the extra five. Thus, a filial son considers how to supplement what is missing. He serves his parents, trying his best. (24:261, August 24, 1969)
What should you do in order to become a filial son or daughter? You should always keep your mind and heart in line with the direction of your parents’ heart. A child who walks the path of filial piety does not act apart from his parents. If his parents go east, he goes east, and if his parents go west, he goes west. Should his parents suddenly turn back, he turns back without dissent. Even if they change their direction ten times, he still follows them.
If you resist and complain, “Father and mother, I don’t like this. What kind of parents are you, changing your minds so impulsively?” then you will not be able to keep the way of filial piety all the way to the end. Even when your parents do something that seems crazy, you should still follow your parents’ direction. It might seem that they are mad, but your parents know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Sometimes parents act capriciously to test their children, to pick the most filial child from among them… Therefore, you should take your parents’ follies as your vocation. (62:32-33, December 18, 1985)
When educating children, parents should not teach them only to love their parents. They should explain to their children, “I am a loyal patriot who loves this nation. I’m not a mother first, but a patriotic mother; I’m not only a father, but a loyal citizen.” In order to teach filial piety, parents should behave with filial piety themselves.3 Otherwise, their children will fall like autumn leaves. (26:296, November 10, 1969)
People have traditionally brought up their children to put the benefit of their own families first, but this is upside-down. Rather, we should train our children first to please Heaven, then please the world, then please the nation and the community, and after that, to please our family. That is the original principle. But our way of life has become upside-down due to the Human Fall. (8:105, November 22, 1959)
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