(Minghui.org)
(Continued from Part 1)
In ancient China, the crime of lacking filial piety could not be pardoned. It was also applied to kings, officials, and ordinary citizens. One example was Tai Jia, the fourth king of the Shang Dynasty, who did not respect his parents, treated people badly, and broke his own laws. Primer minister Yi Yin exiled the king to Tongong for several years. He couldn’t return as king until he changed his ways.
According to Xiao Jing (Classic of Filial Piety), when one is exceptionally filial, the divine will know it and help this person. Here are a few examples.
In the collection of Twenty-four Filial Examples, Dong Yong lived in Qiansheng (in today’s Shandong Province). After losing his mother at a young age, he moved with his father to Anlu (in today’s Hubei Province) during a time of war. When his father died, Dong was too poor to bury him, so he sold himself as a servant to a rich family in exchange for enough money for a proper burial.
Dong’s sincerity moved the divine. On his way to work in Huaiyin, Dong met a young woman who said she had no place to go and married him. Over the following month, she wove 300 bolts of brocade and used the money she earned from selling it to buy Dong’s freedom. When they passed Huaiyin on the way home, the woman said she was a celestial maiden sent by Heaven to help Dong out. With those words, she rose up and went back to the heavens. The name of Huaiyin was thus changed to Xiaogan (Moved by Filial Piety).
In the 45th year of Emperor Qianlong’s reign (1780 AD), a fire broke out on Yangmeizhuxie Street and hundreds of houses were burned to the ground. One of them miraculously remained intact, as if a line had been drawn around it to separate this house from those nearby. It turned out that a widow and her bedridden mother-in-law whom she refused to abandon lived there, another example of how a person’s exceptional filial piety could move the divine. It was recorded in Yuewei Caotang Biji (The Yuewei Cottage Notes) by scholar Ji Xiaolan.
Another example was Lü Si, a scoundrel who did many bad things before he died. His wife then dreamed that Lü should have been sent to hell for what he did, but because he was always sincerely respectful of his mother, the netherworld officials sent him back to reincarnate as a snake instead. In the dream, Lü told his wife to remarry and be respectful of her parents-in-law. Lacking filial piety is one of the worst crimes and one should be careful about it.
In traditional Chinese culture, one was encouraged to respect one’s elders as well as one’s own parents. In addition, one should treat one’s siblings well and do the same when it comes to other people. Liu Bei, founder of the State of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period of China, wrote an edict to his son when he died in 223 AD. He wrote, “Do not do bad deeds even if they are minor, and do not skip good deeds even if they are trivial. One’s virtuousness can earn the trust of others.”
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was an alumnus of Princeton University. When he spoke at the university in 2010, he recalled something his grandfather told him when he was 10. He was taking a trip with his grandparents, and his grandmother was smoking. He remembered seeing an ad that each puff would shorten one’s life by two minutes, so he said to his grandmother, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off of your life!”
Instead of praising him for being so smart, however, his grandmother started to cry. His grandfather stopped the car, pulled the boy over to one side, and said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”
Lao Zi, an ancient sage, wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Heavenly law is impartial and often rewards those who are good.” That tradition was carried on through dynasties. Emperor Yao, one of the ancient Five Emperors, chose Shun to be his successor because of his renowned filial piety and abilities. Shun’s story was also the first in the collection of Twenty-four Filial Examples. Another example was Liu Heng, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty. After the death of Empress Lu, Liu Heng was chosen as the new emperor due to his kindness.
But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done all it can to destroy that tradition. During its relentless political campaigns over the past few decades, especially the Cultural Revolution, family members have been instigated to attack each other and students were encouraged to target their teachers, leading to the chaos and moral degeneration in China today. It is time to learn from these lessons, do away with the influence of CCP ideology, and restore traditional values.