JOIN USFilial piety is a matter of ethics and faith
In one of his sermons The Buddha observes, “There are two transgressions you should avoid, the first being, failing to respect and support your parents. The second is doing any kind of evil deeds or committing a crime in the house of your parents.”
He continues to say, “Conversely, there are two great virtues that speedily enable a person to partake in great
blessedness and joy of the devas. The first is filial piety, supporting and showing respect to your parents. The second is performing all virtuous deeds in the family home.”
Filial piety, in other words, an attitude of respect for parents and ancestors, is a Confucian philosophy. But the ethical concept of respecting one’s parents exists in major world religions and cultures. The central aspect of Hindu Dharma includes reverence to one’s parents and elders which results in good karma in this life and accumulates merits in afterlife. The Bible stresses in one of the Ten Commandments, ‘honour thy father and thy mother’. The holy text of Islam, the Quran, declares that honouring the parents and taking care of them in old age is just not optional but an obligation and those who do not fulfil these requirements are considered to have committed sin. The two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics are Filial piety and loyalty.
Fan Meng, who works for an e-business company in Beijing, loves hiking. In 2012, when he told his family that he planned to go on a hiking trip, his wheelchair bound mother said she wanted to accompany him and that visiting Xishuangbanna’s tropical nature park in Yunnan Province had always been her dream. Unfazed, Fan walked the whole distance, pushing her in wheelchair and completed the trek of over 3,000 km from Beijing to Xishuangbanna in about 3 months. Fan shared their journey through microblogs and when they entered Yunnan Province, many volunteers and journalists joined them on the last leg of their journey. ‘China Daily’ described Meng’s act as the best example of filial piety. In the words of the 18th century English historian, Edward Gibbon, “The law of Nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of Reason inculcates to the human species the returns of filial piety.”