[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Buddhist Literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha) › [Taishō Tripiṭaka (Chinese Buddhist canon)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho) › [父母恩重經](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887) › [English (machine translation)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt) › 1.2 # 父母恩重經 1.2 English (machine translation) 1.2 - **Language:** English ### [1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1.2) The Buddha said to Ānanda: "Listen closely and reflect on it well; I shall analyze and explain it for you. The kindness of parents is boundless as the vast heavens. How can it be repaid? If there are filial, loving children who can create merit and make sūtras for their parents, or who on the fifteenth day of the seventh month can make a Buddha-patra and Ullambana basin to offer to the Buddha and the saṅgha, they will obtain limitless fruit, and be able to repay the kindness of their parents. Furthermore, if anyone copies this sūtra, circulates it among worldly people, receives, upholds, reads, and recites it, you should know that this person repays the kindness of their parents. How can parents be repaid? When the parents go out and about, back and forth through the eastern and western neighborhoods to the well, the hearth, the pestle, and the mill, and do not return home immediately, \[thinking,\] 'My child is crying at home,' remembering \[the child\] they immediately come back. Seeing \[the mother\] coming from afar, the child—perhaps in the cradle, shaking its head and tossing its brow, or crawling on its belly following along—cries out toward its mother. For the sake of her child, the mother bends down, stretches out both arms, brushes away the dirt and dust, coos with her mouth, opens her robes to bare her breast, and gives it milk. The mother is delighted to see her child, and the child is joyful to see its mother. The two feelings of deep love and affection are so heavy with kindness that nothing surpasses them. At two or three years old, playfully inclined, \[the child\] begins to walk; at meal times, without the mother it knows not \[even\] its father. When the mother goes about and happens upon another's banquet, if she receives cakes or meat, she will not eat them but renounces the taste, concealing them in her bosom to bring them home and give them to her child. Nine times out of ten she obtains them, and \[the child\] is constantly joyful; but if on one occasion she fails to get any, it proudly throws a tantrum and feigns weeping. A spoiled child who is unfilial will surely undergo the five tortures; a filial child who bears no resentment will surely possess kindness and obedience. Thus \[the child\] grows up, going about with friends, combing its hair and grooming its locks, desiring fine clothes to cover its body. Tattered garments and worn-out rags the parents wear themselves; new, fine silk and padded cloth they give first to their child. Going about on official or private urgent business, their thoughts turn north and south, following their child east and west, \[though the child\] insolently climbs over their heads. Once \[the child\] seeks a wife and gets another's son or daughter, the parents are increasingly estranged. Privately in their room, \[husband and wife\] talk and take pleasure together, while the parents, advanced in years and frail in strength, from morning till evening receive not a single visit of inquiry. Or the father is left solitary or the mother a widow, guarding an empty room alone, just like guests lodging in another's house, constantly without love, and lacking even warm blankets against the cold. Bitterness, suffering, and distress befall them; in extreme old age their vitality wanes, infested with lice and nits. Night and day they do not sleep, sighing with long lamentation: 'What sin or past transgressions caused us to bear this unfilial child?' When they call out, \[the child\] glares with startled anger; returning to the wife, \[the child\] curses \[the parents\], yet bows the head and smiles at her. The wife is also unfilial, and the son again earns the five tortures; husband and wife harmoniously join in committing the five rebellious sins. When summoned at that moment or urgently sent on an errand, nine times out of ten they disobey, never complying at all, cursing in anger: 'Better that you had died early than linger stubbornly on this earth!' When the parents hear this, they weep with bitter grief, tears streaming from both eyes, weeping until their eyes are swollen: 'When you were young, without me you would not have grown; yet my bearing you was worse than not having you at all!'" The Buddha said to Ānanda: "If a good man or good woman, for the sake of their parents, can receive, uphold, read, recite, and copy even a single phrase or a single verse of this Mahāyāna Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra on the Profound Kindness of Parents, and if it passes through their ears and eyes just once, all their grave sins of the five rebellions will be completely eradicated, extinguished forever without remainder. They will constantly get to see the Buddha and hear the Dharma, and quickly attain liberation." Ānanda rose from his seat, bared his right shoulder, knelt on both knees, joined his palms, came forward and said to the Buddha: "World-Honoured One, what should this sūtra be named? How should we uphold it?" - [Previous: 1.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1.1) - [Next: 1.3](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1.3) - [Up: 1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1) ## Translations (1) - [The Sutra on the Profundity of Filial Love](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-bdk.1.2) — Keiyo Arai 2005, English ## Linked texts (1) - [父母恩重經](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887.1.2) — Classical Chinese --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.taisho.2887~en-mt.1.2) · Pramāṇa