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.

In that sense, these days for expressing gratitude to our parents may be an important opportunity to reconsider the nature of family and parents, along with the words passed down to us by our predecessors: “Fathers should be the object of their children’s respect, and mothers should be the seat of compassion for their children.”

NOVEMBER 2024: LIVING THE LOTUS- "Nurtured by Encounters--The Mind of Reverence and the Mind of Humility