Professor Hirasawa also said, “In the depths of your mind, you have many times more wonderful things than you yourself know. No matter what, be confident and do things magnificently.” If these are words of praise, in the educational sense, then it seems to me that raising people means encouraging awareness of Buddha nature, and praising them means believing in their Buddha nature.

However, in order to build a brighter future, I think it is important that we look unflinchingly at these painfully sad events and the tragically cruel past. Because we are now receiving life, it is up to us to pass down these memories, reflect on them, learn lessons from them, and turn them into wisdom so that we can make the world a better place for future generations.

As I mentioned in last month’s installment, for those of us who are alive now, thanks to the relay of passing the baton of life in an unbroken chain of connections that forms part of the history of one great life stretching back to the birth of the universe, thinking about the meaning of being filial to our parents also means looking at the origin of our own lives through the lives of our parents and ancestors and asking what we can do now as we look toward the future.