Gratitude

1. GRATITUDE IS A QUALITY OF ETHICS

Living in this world, we have received kindness from a great many people. But when it comes to kindness and obligation, people usually take one of two attitudes: either they are grateful to their benefactors and always think of repaying them, or they show ingratitude.

Here we acknowledge one thing: a grateful person is a person with ethics, and an ungrateful person is a person without ethics. But why is an attitude of gratitude an expression of ethics? By analysing this clearly, we will choose a suitable way of living for ourselves.

In the very title, we have defined gratitude as a quality of ethics. To understand this, we must rely on a basis of reasoning. First of all, each person is the owner of himself or herself and must look after himself or herself and take responsibility for his or her own life. Even if we fall into poverty, hunger and rags with no one to help us, we have no right to blame anyone. Or if we see a neighbour hungry and suffering and take no interest, no one will reproach us or hold us guilty. That is how things ordinarily are in life. That is, in principle, no one can compel anyone else to do it. This is a basic principle. If in life people share and help one another in difficult times, it is thanks to the principles of conduct between people that arise when social ethics develop.

However, in life we are not always able to look after ourselves thoroughly. There are times when we truly lack the strength to look after ourselves. These are times of misfortune or illness when we cannot even do the simplest things of daily life such as eating, bathing and washing clothes. At such times, if someone comes to share that responsibility with us, or, to put it more simply, comes to help us, we feel that it is something very precious. When we value another's help, a state of mind arises in us called gratitude. So gratitude is valuing help, always remembering our benefactor with affection and hoping for a chance to repay the kindness.

From this state of mind, we can infer that gratitude also means valuing the kindness and sacrifice of others. For what others do to help us is an expression of the spirit of sacrifice and of kindness. A person who loves kindness and holds it in high regard is holding in high regard the goodness of human beings in life. From this, a further state of mind arises in us: that we ourselves will treat others kindly. By definition, ethics is the good tendencies in the mind, expressed outwardly as good conduct between people. Therefore, gratitude is a quality of ethics.

The opposite of gratitude is ingratitude. Ingratitude means not valuing the kindness and help that others give us. For example, once when we fall into hardship and want and are helped by others, but after we have got through the hardship we pay no attention and do not remember them, that is, we do not value their help. In that way we have not cherished kindness in life. That also means that we ourselves have no need to be kind to anyone. Ingratitude is an attitude contrary to ethics and to what is right, and so it is often condemned and criticised by people.

2. A WHOLE LIFE WEIGHED DOWN WITH DEBTS OF KINDNESS

Looking back over the life we have lived, we will see that we carry the weight of kindness from countless people. First of all, there is the kindness of our parents. We will discuss this more deeply under the topic of filial piety. Still, when speaking of gratitude, we cannot fail to mention our debt to our parents, because it is a kindness as vast as sky and sea.

Our parents gave birth to us and gave us a physical body so that we could be human beings in this life. That alone is a kindness beyond any comparison. When we could not yet look after ourselves, our parents, unmindful of morning or night, toiled and struggled to raise and teach us until we became people. That kindness cannot be weighed or measured. Even comparing it to "Mount Thái Sơn" or "water flowing from the source" cannot fully express our parents' kindness in "bearing and rearing" us. Many of us entered the path of practice too early to have deeply felt our parents' kindness. In lay life, quite a few people confide that only after they had a family of their own did they learn to love their parents. When they have children, and must worry and stay up late and rise early to care for them on the days the weather turns and the child falls ill, they realise that their own parents went through the same hardship in the past, and they feel their parents' kindness all the more deeply.

Now think back: when we were ill and could not wash our own clothes and had to ask our fellow monks to wash them for us, we felt moved and immensely grateful. Yet our parents did such things for us a thousand times. Or one day when we were stranded on the road, hungry, and some kind person invited us to a proper meal, we are always grateful to them. Over a lifetime, who knows how many times our parents fed us well and clothed us nicely. From the moment we were born, our parents nursed us, fed us mouthful by mouthful and cherished us so that we grew into a body and form. That kindness is as great as sky and sea. Not to mention the times when we were sick and our parents had to keep watch morning and night. If once on a journey we fell and hurt our leg so that we could not walk, and someone carried us a whole kilometre on their back to the clinic for emergency treatment, we would be infinitely grateful to them. And because of that, we feel our parents' kindness more deeply. For throughout our whole childhood, our parents carried us in their arms, cherished us, and went through so much hardship every time we were ill. However much we write, however much we tell, we could never finish telling that kindness.

Now, perhaps the memories of childhood in each of us have faded with the years. We cannot remember all those images. We have not been through the worries and toil of looking after children that might recall our parents' kindness. But surely everyone understands that this kindness cannot be compared to any other kindness. That is, in our life from now until we leave this world, there will never be a second kindness that can compare with our parents' kindness. When we have grown up, looking at our parents' frosted hair, we feel deeply that their hair turned white so that ours could grow greener with each passing day. Or looking at our parents' thin, frail figures and bent backs, we understand even more that their backs are bent because they gave all the strength of their lives so that we could grow up and mature.

Strictly speaking, we should take responsibility for our own lives, yet our parents looked after us in every little detail. That kindness is so great it cannot be counted. Therefore we must be grateful to our parents. Gratitude is one of the qualities of filial piety. To fulfil filial piety, children must be grateful and repay their parents, and respect, love, care for and support them when they are old and frail. According to the Eastern view, filial piety means expressing a child's deep gratitude towards his or her parents. In English there is no concept of hiếu; there is only "obedient", meaning well-behaved, compliant, easy to teach, or "pious", meaning well-behaved. So it can be said that the Westerners' concept of gratitude to parents is not as deep as ours in the East.

Lay people must repay their parents with filial piety. But how do we who have left home repay our parents? Lay people still live with their families and so have the responsibility to look after their parents in old age as a repayment of kindness. But those who have left home no longer have that opportunity. For we have left our families and gone into the temple to practise, taking on a responsibility to the Buddha's teachings. We have the right not to repay our parents in the way lay people do, that is, we need not care for and support them. However, we must not forget our parents' kindness and must always be conscious of repaying it in the way of a practitioner. As those who have left home, we repay our parents by making sure that their efforts do not stop with ourselves. That is, we turn their effort in creating our bodies into practice, love and benefit for all living beings. In this way, the effort our parents made in creating us no longer stops with us but becomes a benefit to all beings. We give our parents immeasurable merit because they were fortunate enough to have brought us into being. That is a very great repayment.

Understanding this, we must try so that in our life of practice countless beings may benefit. That is, we shall study and practise well so that later we can spread the Teaching everywhere. This is the most meaningful way of repaying our parents.

Speaking of the filial piety of those who have left home, we recall the story of the "Crab Monk". Long ago in northern Vietnam there was a family in which the husband had died, leaving only a mother and her son living together. The mother was very fond of eating crab, and often went to catch crabs or buy them at the market to eat. One day she told her son to go and catch crabs, but he refused. When she came back with crabs, the son took the basket of crabs and emptied it out, because he pitied them so much. The mother was angry with him and chased him to beat him. The boy fled headlong from the beating and went away, and never came back. After that beating, she was filled with remorse and abandoned all her work to go looking for her son. She wandered begging from place to place hoping to find her child, but news of him grew ever scarcer. Three or four decades later, she was old and was living by begging at the roadside. One day a Venerable met her and asked:

• Where is your home? Why are you sitting here begging? Where is your son?

The old woman answered:

• I have no son. I had only one, but once when I was angry I beat him, and he left me and never came back. For all these years I have been begging and searching for my son, but I have not found him.

Hearing this, he said:

• Come now, go to the temple and do voluntary service. To live homeless, wandering and begging like this is very hard.

She agreed and went to the temple with the Venerable. He gave her a vegetarian diet and a brown robe, and set her only to voluntary work, sweeping leaves and reciting the Buddha's name, because she was old and frail. One day, before going away, he told the monks of the temple:

• After I leave, the old woman may pass away. If she dies, do not bury her. Lay her out and wait for me to return.

Indeed, after he had gone, the old woman died. Because he had the eye of the Path, or had attained the Path, he knew both past and future. When he returned, the old woman's body was still there. He stood before the coffin and said:

• The sutras say that when a person attains the Path, his parents of seven generations are reborn in the heavenly realms. If that is true, then his mother must be reborn in the heavenly realms. If it is not true, then what the Buddhas said is false.

As soon as he finished speaking, the old woman appeared in mid-air in dazzling radiance, in the form of a heavenly maiden. She spoke marvellous words showing that she had been reborn in the heavenly realms, and then vanished. At that moment the monks understood two things: first, that he had attained the Path; second, that the old woman who did voluntary service was his own mother. And all this time he had kept it hidden in his heart, telling no one.

In fact, he understood very well a mother's longing for her son, and the anguish of searching for him through all those years. It gnaws and cuts so deeply. If she knew she had found her son, she would surely be very happy. That happiness would be immense and could not be put into words. Understanding that, he should rightly have given her that happiness; he should rightly have told her that he was her own child. But as a person of wisdom, he understood that such happiness would carry the seed of misfortune. Knowing she was his mother, he could not abandon her, and so he took her to the temple to look after her. But if she knew she was the mother of an abbot, arrogance would arise in her and she would not treat the monks properly. She had never been a practitioner or someone who understood the Path. For decades she had lived wandering and begging in the streets, knowing nothing of practice; if she suddenly became the mother of a renowned abbot, her arrogance would surely arise. It was this very arrogance that would cause her to decline later. As a practitioner, he saw that giving her the happiness of finding her son again was not as precious as preserving her humble mind. For a humble mind is more precious than those fleeting, small, short-lived forms of happiness. If she could keep a humble mind while having a son who had left home and attained the Path, she would later enjoy her merit in full.

From this story we see his superb wisdom. He always valued ethics and valued a humble mind. At the same time, his story shows us the special filial piety of one who has left home: wishing his mother lasting peace and joy in the future, not merely bringing her fleeting, small happiness in ordinary life. The moving story of the filial piety of the Crab Monk gives us a precious lesson. We too shall try to practise and attain the Path and benefit living beings in order to repay our parents. For now, we must learn to keep a humble mind, for it is more precious than all other happiness and all the fleeting joys of this world.

Besides our debt to our parents, we also owe kindness to our elder siblings and younger siblings in the family. They are the people closest and dearest to us. Throughout the time of living together under one family roof, brothers and sisters love one another and often help one another. Among them, younger siblings usually owe more to their elders. For it is always so: older siblings are older and so must bear and shoulder many responsibilities. Our grandparents used to teach: "To be an elder sister is easy; to be an elder brother is hard." Thus the support family members give one another has become a great debt of kindness in this life that each of us must always remember.

In our social relations, we also owe kindness to many other people. First of all, the kindness of teachers. This too is a great debt. In the past, East Asians who followed Confucianism greatly valued the teacher's kindness. They set out respect in a hierarchy: Sovereign – Teacher – Father. The Sovereign is the King. Understood today, these are the state officials, those who have the merit of running the country and keeping it at peace so that the people can live in peace and joy and can study and work with a quiet mind. For the people, the kindness of protecting the country's stability is a great kindness. Moreover, in the past the king was placed first also because of the notion of loyalty to the sovereign. The person given second place in respect after the King is the Teacher. Only after that comes the Father, the one who gave birth to us. This is very strange.

So why did the ancients regard the kindness of teachers as weightier than that of parents? By analysing this, we will see the depth of the Eastern way of thinking. They thought so because they held that the kindness of parents in bearing and rearing their children cannot be counted, yet all the same that kindness has a material meaning. Parents give us our bodies, raise us until we grow up… but all of this belongs to the material. Teachers, on the other hand, give us wisdom and a life of the heart and mind. These belong to spiritual values and so have great significance. Just think: if we could not read or write, and were not taught about how to live and how to behave…, how would we live? We would understand nothing about life; we would be insolent towards our elders and ready to quarrel with everyone. Then we would have no value at all, for a person's value is judged on the spiritual side more than on the material. This is expressed through wisdom, ethics and the ability to deal with others. Practitioners, Buddhist disciples and lay people living in this world all need these things to increase their own value. Therefore, although the body is important, spiritual value and the value of the heart and mind are more important still. East Asians affirmed this. It is a very deep and bold idea that Westerners did not think of.

But those spiritual values come largely through the kindness of teachers in teaching and guiding us. Thanks to schooling, we have wisdom and a deep understanding of questions of nature and society, we know how to speak politely and behave properly, and not to infringe on the rights of others, and so on. That is why Easterners placed the teacher's merit above the parents'. To this day, the traditions of "Honouring teachers and respecting the Way" and "When drinking water, remember the source" are kept and developed by each generation of Vietnamese. However, in today's education system, from the time we first toddle into school until we have become accomplished, we have been taught and cared for by very many teachers. Each of us grows up carrying countless images of teachers in our hearts. So expressing gratitude to everyone who has taught us is not a simple matter. As the years pass and life changes so much, often the images of the teachers who watched over our steps in childhood fade. At times, thinking back, we feel moved and wistful, immensely grateful to our teachers, yet we may never meet them again. So, to be grateful to our teachers, we need only live well and cultivate our talent and ethics day by day, contributing to the benefit of living beings. That is also the most meaningful way to repay those who nurtured spiritual values in us.

In life, no one can live without friends. Besides family members, good friends can also share with us the joys and sorrows of life. When we meet with difficulty, friends help us get through it so that we can move forward together. If we have good friends, we can share experience and learn from one another what is good and right so that we progress together. We must also value and be grateful to such friends.

When we read Return from the Realm of Light by Nguyên Phong, we find a detail that is somewhat hard to understand. The story is about a man who, after dying, meets an angel in the invisible world. He tells the angel his wish to follow the ideal of serving God. Hearing him, the angel answers: "To achieve that wish, you must live a life of solitude, with no wife or children, no friends, accepting every adversity and suffering…" The other conditions can be understood, but having no friends is very strange and very hard to explain.

Human beings also cannot live apart from their relationship to the community and society. In life, we also owe kindness to our neighbours and to the people who live around us. Our grandparents often said: "Distant relatives are not as good as near neighbours." In times of "dark and no light", in times of difficulty and misfortune, neighbours are the closest people who can help us.

The more we mature and the more we understand, the more clearly we see that social relationships are a great debt of kindness. We are almost placed in a tangled web of social obligations. The bowl of rice we eat is the result of the farmers' hard days of labour "under the sun and in the early dew". The clothes we wear owe something to the weavers. The things we use every day, such as pens, notebooks, tables and chairs, cabinets and beds, bowls and chopsticks and so on, owe no small debt to the effort of workers, technicians and craftsmen. We must be grateful to all these people. That is why after the meal we usually hear the officiant chant the Dedication verse:

Thân phi nhất lũ, thường tư chức nữ chi lao.

Nhật thực tam xan, mỗi niệm nông phu chi khổ…

Thân phi nhất lũ: when this body wears a single plain garment, we must think of the toil of the girls who work as weavers (thường tư chức nữ chi lao). Nhật thực tam xan, mỗi niệm nông phu chi khổ: eating three meals a day, at each meal we still think of the hard work and hardship of the farmers. That is the beauty of Buddhism. Even at mealtimes, it reminds the practitioner of the tangled debts of kindness in life that we bear. Among them, the kindness of those who meet the two most basic human needs (food and clothing) is the greatest and the most worth remembering.

Broadening this out, in life there are many more people to whom we need to be grateful. For a practitioner, gratitude must be still greater and deeper. We are grateful not only to the farmers who produce food and the weavers who produce cloth, but also to everyone who has contributed to building this life and this society. Whatever they have done, so long as it is useful to society, it creates a debt of kindness towards us. The police who maintain security and order and bring everyone a peaceful life also make us grateful. Without them, society would fall into disorder, everyone would live for himself, and we could not practise with peace of mind. Illness is a great suffering for human beings. Doctors and physicians have tried to soothe, to some extent, our suffering from disease. Each of us must be grateful to them. The leaders in the state apparatus (except dictatorial, corrupt leaders who plunder and exploit the people…) are all people to whom we must be grateful, because they "stand at the prow and bear the pole", looking after the people and the country and seeking ways to make society ever more civilised and advanced. If we always hope that society will develop and grow in ethics, with everyone knowing how to love one another, then the people working in the state apparatus hope to build a country with a developed economy, abundant material goods, a stable life for the people, and so on… Speaking of this, we recall an event that happened recently in Taiwan which surprised many people. After graduating from university, several dozen students did not go to work but went into a temple to practise. A senior Taiwanese leader, in a speech, said that this was a gloomy day for the country, because so many talented people had put effort into study only to go and become monastics. But on inquiry, people showed great respect for the Venerable who had made those young people, full of dreams, dare to turn away from the future ahead of them and enter a simple life of practice. Only a genuine practitioner, full of moral authority, could have done that.

From this event, we see that the President's way of thinking is not the same as that of practitioners. We feel glad when young, highly educated people choose the path of practice as the ideal of their lives. For when people of such a level go to practise, they will surely bring much benefit to the Buddha's teachings and be able to bring the true Dharma to living beings. This in itself will contribute to society growing in ethics, increasing good and reducing what is bad and evil. Their choice not only does not hinder the country's development but brings it much benefit.

Although the ideal of practitioners and the ideal of those in the government's leadership differ in many respects, we are still grateful to them, because they have to worry and take thought, and sometimes work hard all day long to the point of forgetting to eat or sleep, in order to find plans to lift the country up.

Living in peacetime, many people do not think of the kindness of the soldiers who once fought on the front. But if we lived in circumstances of war in our country, we would see how great their kindness is. They did not spare their lives or their youth, and were ready to dedicate their lives to the Fatherland and bring a peaceful life to the people. The most recent was the war against the Khmer Rouge on the Cambodian battlefield. After 1975, the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia. They carried out a very brutal purge. Anyone listed as not good for building communism, they beat on the head until death. About two million people were killed in that purge. Meanwhile, the total population of Cambodia at that time was only about four million. It was terrible! That was not all: they also crossed over into the Châu Đốc region, entered Ba Chúc village and killed Vietnamese civilians en masse. Today our State still displays heaps of skulls to record their crimes. That was around 1979. Unable to bear such brutality, our State made a plan to send troops across to drive out the Khmer Rouge and liberate Cambodia. Only then did the genocide of the Khmer Rouge pause. Today the Cambodian people should be grateful to our government. Had our soldiers not shed so much blood and bone to liberate them from the hands of the Khmer Rouge, would the Cambodian state still exist, and how many Cambodians would have survived? Yet at that time the international community held that Vietnam was invading Cambodia and condemned us. For Cambodia, Vietnam is a benefactor. The Cambodian people still do not know that kindness today, although we saved them with our own blood and bone. Even more than ten years afterwards, Vietnamese troops continued to go to Cambodia to fight the Khmer Rouge in the forests. The number of soldiers who died was even greater than in the war of twenty years before. Our State did not count it as merit, yet the international community kept condemning Vietnam as an invader. But the truth is always the truth. We shed so much blood and bone to help the Cambodian state and at the same time kept peace in the southwest of our own country. We cannot deny the merit and sacrifice of the soldiers in those years.

To this day, whenever we hear again the songs written about the soldiers, our hearts are still moved and filled with gratitude to them. Living in the rear, far from the sound of bombs and guns, we eat, sleep and work in peace. Meanwhile, all day and night, at the front the soldiers face the enemy and face death every day, every hour. So their kindness to the homeland and country is immensely great. If we are only content with the peaceful life of today, we will not understand their silent sacrifice of yesterday.

In short, we must always remember that living in this life we have received countless tangled debts of kindness, and each of us must be conscious of repaying them.

3. THE KINDNESS OF THE THREE JEWELS IS BOUNDLESS AND IMMEASURABLE

We know that this physical body will at some point decay and cannot exist for ever. So the material kindness that so many people have given us is also relatively temporary and not lasting. This life has many joys, much suffering, and is also full of torment. At times people live in wealth and comfort, and at times they fall into poverty and misery. We say this so that we understand one thing: in this life we are indebted to very many people, but we also bear no small share of the joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains that life brings. So the kindness we receive from so many people is sometimes very precious and sometimes no longer so precious.

We can understand this from the simple words of a child. A child was playing and was bitten by a mosquito. He cried and blamed his mother: "Oh heavens, why did you give birth to me just to let the mosquitoes bite me?" It is a very childish reproach, but it also gives us something to think about. It is true that our parents gave us this life; our teachers cared for it and nurtured it; the farmers, the weavers, the doctors, the engineers… all contribute to bringing us this life. If we are happy, we will be immensely grateful to them. But life is sometimes joyful and sometimes full of bitter suffering. At times, when suffering is too great, we come to resent those who gave us this life and are no longer grateful to them. That is no different from the child's reproach to his mother.

So, although we are grateful to everyone, we still understand that this life is only relative, both brief and alternating between suffering and joy. The kindness so many people have given us is immensely heavy but also relative, also brief, also temporary. We do not say this to show ingratitude, but to compare it with another kindness that is greater, more eternal, more sacred, more imperishable: the kindness of the Three Jewels, the kindness of the one who gives us the road back to the infinite light, the road to a place of lasting peace and joy, to a place of liberation without boundaries. We compare in this way so that we see that the kindness we owe to the Three Jewels is boundless and immeasurable, beyond counting.

On the other hand, we also know that the cycle of rebirth is endless. That is, in each life we receive kindness and also repay kindness. When we die and pass into another life, we again receive kindness and again repay it. Going on like this is truly bitter and wearying. We truly must take responsibility for ourselves, but we also receive so much help from others that we must be grateful. But those kindnesses merely circle around within the cycle of rebirth, binding us, bitter and wearying. So even though we owe kindness to so many people, we still suffer and have no real peace, no real happiness.

Within this cycle of rebirth, cause and effect is truly frightening. We need only make one mistake and we pay the price at once; we need only make one mistake and karmic consequences come immediately. Someone who merely let slip one wrong sentence went mad and took many years to recover. Or someone who in a moment of anger struck another person once was still not finished repaying the consequences after five or ten years. Cause and effect is that frightening, so, living in this life, the kindness of so many people is still not equal to the kindness of the one who gives us light, a path and truth. The teaching on cause and effect alone gives us a road to take our lives towards a place of peace, holiness and happiness. Thanks to understanding the cause and effect the Buddha taught, we are careful in every action and every word, avoid bad causes, and always try to create good causes. Thanks to creating good causes, our lives gradually grow. In the first stage of life we may be ordinary, poor people, but thanks to believing the Buddha's words, knowing how to make merit and help others and to do voluntary service, the rest of our lives we live more happily. When we die and pass to the next life, we will be even more glorious. Thus, only through knowing cause and effect, our lives gradually turn in a good direction, towards peace, joy and holiness.

Higher still, with the teachings of liberation, meditative concentration and so on, the Buddha opened for us a road out of this prison of the three realms. Through countless previous lives we were wanderers in the cycle of rebirth, with no light and no way out. We would for ever sink deep in the darkness of ignorance, delusion, greed and anger, knowing only how to live for ourselves, struggling, fighting, killing and creating many wrongs, if the Buddha had not opened the road towards the light, out of this bitter and wearying cycle of rebirth. On that road, we learn to overcome ourselves, to be free of small, petty, selfish hatred; we learn to open our hearts in love and to care for everyone. It is these good causes that help us travel through the cycle of rebirth with less suffering. These good causes also help us gradually go out of the cycle of rebirth, out of the three realms, towards the light.

Once we are enlightened and step out of the cycle of rebirth, the joy and happiness we gain are endless and without limit. That is why, at the memorial service for Venerable Thiện Hoa, his teacher, Venerable Thanh Từ said something very fine: "Parents give their children this body, which after a few decades must decay. But the Teacher gives us wisdom, and once this eye of wisdom opens, we step out of the road of rebirth for ever." This is a very deep and accurate judgement about the Three Jewels. That we have what we have today, that we have this value, we owe to the kindness of the first person, the Buddha. Without the law of cause and effect, we do not know what our lives would be today.

Every day as we walk the streets, we often see poor people without homes, huddling in the rain and storm under other people's eaves or sheltering beneath bridges. We feel pity for them when they fall into such dire circumstances. But in terms of cause and effect, perhaps in the past they committed some wrongs, so now their merit is gone and they must bear such consequences. When we think of this, we are boundlessly grateful to the Three Jewels. It is thanks to the Buddha's teaching of cause and effect and karmic results that over many previous lives we have tried to keep our human character, to do what is good and right and avoid what is bad and evil, and so now have a peaceful life. As monks and nuns, we are free to practise at ease. As lay Buddhists, we are also people of worth in life, whom no one dares to despise.

Through that teaching alone, the Buddha has opened up for our lives countless kinds of peace and happiness. When we believe in cause and effect and know how to do good, that teaching is imprinted deep in our hearts from one life to the next. In this way, in every life we easily meet the Buddha's teachings, easily do good, and avoid falling into suffering. Also thanks to believing in the teaching of liberation, to resolving to practise meditative concentration, and to making vows to go towards liberation, from this life through other lives we always meet the Buddha's teachings and can practise. We know how to recite the Buddha's name, to eat vegetarian food, to keep the precepts, to practise meditative concentration… so that step by step, gradually, we go out of the suffering cycle of rebirth. So the kindness we owe to the Buddha is very great and cannot be counted.

If we compare the joy we have in this ordinary, fleeting, short life with the joy the Three Jewels bring, we will see that the peace, holiness, joy and happiness that the Buddha's teachings give us are truly lofty and lasting. That joy far surpasses ordinary material things. We have acknowledged that a person's value lies in the heart and mind, and the Buddha's teachings are the summit of spiritual value, so the peace and holiness that the Three Jewels bring us are priceless. Therefore our gratitude to the Three Jewels is limitless.

On the other hand, because the value of enlightenment and liberation is absolute, our gratitude to the Buddha is absolute. When we have just entered the path of practice and hear this, we often cannot yet feel it. One day, after we have made efforts to practise, to bow to the Buddha, to practise meditative concentration and to do many good deeds, and unexpectedly attain enlightenment, a real awakening, with the mind completely shifting into another state of utter peace and joy, only then do we have an intense feeling for the kindness of the Buddhas and of the Three Jewels.

Today, in meeting the Buddha's teachings, we are grateful to countless revered elders and patriarchs who preserved the true Dharma. They were deeply practising people of outstanding wisdom who made an impact and developed the Buddha's teachings. As we know, the Dharma has passed through many periods, people's dispositions are always changing, and the Buddha's words are condensed. If there had not been wise patriarchs who, according to people's dispositions, developed and enriched the Dharma and exerted lasting influence on people, would we still be meeting the Buddha's teachings today? So the kindness of the patriarchs is also immensely great.

At present, we are able to study and practise at school thanks to the efforts of the revered teachers who went before us. For it is they who taught and guided the lay followers who help us in our studies and practice. Being grateful to our donors also means being grateful to those Venerables and revered predecessors.

That is not all. We are also grateful to the original master with whom we first took refuge, the one who gave us the three refuges and five precepts. At the time of taking refuge, many good original masters taught their disciples many good things for life. We cannot fail to remember the kindness of that first benefactor. Besides that, we are also grateful to the master who ordained us, who shaved our heads so that we could enter the ranks of the monks. When, through the conditions of study, we turn to a teacher as our support (y chỉ), his effort is also very great, and we must remember his kindness. Once we have entered the life of practice, we must be grateful to the precept masters, who have the merit of transmitting the precepts and teaching us the monastic discipline.

During the time we are studying at the school, we must be grateful to the teachers, the supervisors and the principals. They are the ones who have sheltered us and worried about us in every little detail. Just look at the world outside and see how hard and toilsome it is for parents to raise their children, and we will understand the toil of the senior monks of the board of directors in looking after so many of us so that we can study and practise with peace of mind. That effort is immensely great. In fact, the teachers' concern and care are not for their own later benefit but for the future of the Buddha's teachings. In creating conditions for the next generation to study and practise, they hope we will become good people, grow up to preserve the Dharma, and bring the Dharma to teach countless beings afterwards.

In addition, so that we can study and practise with peace of mind, we are also grateful to the Sangha organisation and the Sangha community. Our Buddhism has a tradition of gathering the monks into one organisation to help and rely on one another. Among them, those in the Sangha organisation are usually the ones who shoulder the most responsibility (except for a few individual cases of people within the organisation who are selfish and do not look after the monks).

In short, to be able to study and practise in such stable conditions as today, we have received boundless and immeasurable kindness from the Three Jewels. Everywhere and at all times, we can see that kindness.

4. REPAYING KINDNESS

Gratitude is a quality of ethics. Therefore, from deep gratitude for all the kindness we have received in life, we vow to repay it worthily. But the kindness we have received throughout this life is limitless and cannot be counted, while our lives are short and our hands are small. How can we repay it worthily? How can we use these small hands and this finite life to repay the limitless kindness of the many people who have given to us in this life?

To repay that limitless kindness, we vow to give this whole life to living for the Buddha's teachings, living to benefit living beings. That is, we must live a life of complete altruism. For once we understand the kindness we have received, if we live only for ourselves, we no longer deserve to be disciples of the Buddha. If any trace of selfishness remains in our minds, however slight, we will never be able to repay the great kindness we have received in our lives. We have only one way: to vow to live altruistically for our whole lives. In every word and action, and in our private thoughts, we act for everyone, never for ourselves. We must accumulate from one life to the next before we can repay the great kindness that others have brought us from outside the world and from within the Path. Thus, living altruistically is the best way to repay the Three Jewels. Within that, the most important thing is that we make everyone know the Buddha's teachings.

In truth, in life we cannot always repay directly the person from whom we received kindness. For example, when we are grown and fully understand our parents' kindness, we want to repay that great kindness, but our parents are no longer there. Or once in our life we fall into a difficult situation, our pockets picked clean on the road. At that moment a kind person gave us money for the bus home. We met only for a moment on this endless road of rebirth, and then the person went away; when will we ever find them to repay them?

A lay practitioner told how once, returning from a village, he had not a single coin left in his pocket, was hungry, and had to walk a very long road in the midday sun. Seeing a temple, he stopped to ask for a meal. Hearing him speak very sincerely, the nun warmly and attentively invited him to eat, and afterwards even gave him money for the bus. He never forgot that kindness for the rest of his life. For in his time of distress he had been helped, and helped with such kind regard. Later, thinking of it, his heart was weighed by a wish to find that place again to repay the nun and the temple. But busy with earning a living and with his wife and children every day, he had not had the chance to go back. When he confided in the abbot of a temple near his home, the abbot advised him not to worry about repaying that temple and the nun who had helped him, but to help anyone around him with love, as the nun had helped him. By doing so, he would have repaid that nun. Hearing this advice, he understood and vowed to live well with everyone. Since changing his idea of how to repay kindness, he felt his heart naturally opening wider.

So, often we do not repay directly but only indirectly, through other people. That is even nobler and more precious than hoping to repay our benefactor directly. If we think only of repaying the person who helped us, our minds are still too narrow. Let us think that if we cannot repay our parents directly, we will repay them by benefiting many other people; if we cannot repay the Buddha, we will use the Buddha's teachings to help others. That is the best way to repay. In the same way, by treating everyone well, we have repaid our benefactors.

5. THE MOST MEANINGFUL REPAYMENT

Of all the ways of repaying kindness, bringing the Buddha's teachings to living beings is the most meaningful. Why? Because material things are always temporary. However much money and property we give others, it has no real meaning, because at some point the money will run out. But if we give people faith and an understanding of cause and effect for travelling through the cycle of rebirth, we can save them from suffering. That is what is truly precious. So, to repay the Buddha and the Three Jewels, it is not enough to bow to the Buddha and make offerings of money; we must go on bringing the noble Dharma to those who do not yet know it. We must regard the fact that the people around us do not know the Dharma as our own suffering. As long as few people know the Dharma, there will be more darkness than light in this world. When we see that in this life there are still many who carry on carefree, living by their feelings, with no light and no moral principle, we must feel pain and vow to bring the Dharma to them. By doing so, we have repaid the Buddha and the Three Jewels.

From the people around us, we widen our view to the world. At present the world has about five billion people. Of these, only a little over three hundred million know the Buddha's teachings. Meanwhile, Christianity accounts for a little over a billion, Islam over a billion… In addition, a small number follow Hinduism and local religions, and the rest have no religion. That is the pain of every child of the Buddha who has a conscience and gratitude to the Three Jewels. Let us think of the billions of people in this world who do not yet know the Dharma, accept that this is our responsibility and make a great vow: the vow to let them know the Dharma.

First of all, we must not live ordinary lives, practising just to get through the days, or practising with the aim of growing up to become abbots or preachers with a famous name. We must think of the world where many people do not yet know the Dharma. The kindness we have received is limitless, so we must also do something of great significance to repay it. Let us begin with altruism, then bring the Dharma to everyone, and further, make everyone on this earth have ethics. Let us make that vow. Once we are grateful to the Three Jewels and have vowed to repay them, however many difficulties we meet, whether in this life or many more lives, we must carry it through to the end.

One more thing: we must give people the teaching of meditative concentration so that they gradually go out of the cycle of rebirth. For only meditative concentration is the road out of the cycle of birth and death. To teach others the teaching of meditative concentration, we must practise it first, and practise with the utmost diligence and as perfectly as possible, because if there are still many gaps, it is very hard for us to teach others. Of course, we cannot now attain the absolute, but we must be fairly perfect, with few flaws, so that we have enough strength to bring the teaching to everyone.

In short, to repay the Three Jewels and to repay this life, we must live very altruistically, benefit everyone and bring the Buddha's teachings to them. And to bring the Buddha's teachings to everyone, we ourselves must practise with diligence.

6. A FEW OTHER ASPECTS

As we know, human life is closely connected with nature. We could not exist without forests, air, rivers and water, the sun… Therefore, we must be grateful not only to people and to the Three Jewels but also to nature. Remember that loving nature is also a quality of ethics, especially for a monastic. Being grateful to nature, each person must be conscious of protecting it. We will study this more deeply in the lesson on Loving Nature.

When speaking of gratitude and repayment, we also need to note one thing: while grateful, we should also know how to repay according to the true Dharma, because often a benefactor is not a truly good person, and we should not become dependent on them. For example, a robber chief usually has many henchmen and followers because in a previous life those followers received kindness from him. Because they owe him, now that he is a robber chief, they must follow and obey his orders. Or a person who works as a helper in a Buddhist family (because in a previous life he owed that family) will surely also be influenced by the Buddha's teachings. Every day the head of the household will be sure to ask him to light incense, wipe the Buddha statue, take sutras to other people, take rice to the neighbours…

So, if we receive kindness from a bad person, we must follow a bad path; if we receive kindness from a good person, we will follow a good path. The difficulty is that we do not know whom we received kindness from in previous lives. Sometimes we have already received kindness from a bad person, but we must be careful and alert and never become dependent on our benefactor. We may owe a debt of kindness to them, but we are resolved not to repay it by letting them order us about. We must be alert, break free, and repay them in another way, in keeping with the true Dharma.

For us practitioners, kindness must be remembered and enmity forgotten. In life, if others help us, we must not forget. But if others speak harshly to us, pick quarrels or plot to harm us, we must forget it and cast it out of our minds. We must use love to wipe out hatred, repaying kindness but not repaying enmity.

The last thing to remember is that before sitting in meditation we should try to think of the kindness we have received in this life. In this way, we will gain more strength of diligence. Whenever we meet difficulty in meditation and the mind cannot be gathered, we settle our hearts and think of the kindness of the Three Jewels, of our parents, of our donors, of our senior teachers and masters…, and then resolve to gather the mind and not lose heart, and we will succeed. In the life of study and practice it is the same: when we meet difficulties and obstacles, let us remember that we have received too much kindness to step back; we must press forward and fully realise the ideal of the Buddha's teachings so that later we can repay everyone. Gratitude also increases our strength and our diligence.