Peaceful Mind

– Numbered Discourses 2.32–41

The Chapter on the Peaceful Mind

32

“Mendicants, I will teach you the level of the untrue person and the level of the true person. Listen and apply your mind well, I will speak.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“What is the level of the untrue person? The untrue person is ungrateful and thankless, for the wicked only know how to be ungrateful and thankless. It is totally the level of an untrue person to be ungrateful and thankless. The true person is grateful and thankful, for the virtuous only know how to be grateful and thankful. It is totally the level of a true person to be grateful and thankful.”

33

“Mendicants, I say that these two individuals cannot easily be repaid. What two? Mother and father.

You would not have done enough to repay your mother and father even if you were to carry your mother around on one shoulder and your father on the other, and if you lived like this for a hundred years, and if you were to anoint, massage, bathe, and rub them; and even if they were to defecate and urinate right there.

Even if you were to establish your mother and father as supreme monarchs of this great earth, abounding in the seven treasures, you would still not have done enough to repay them. Why is that? Parents are very helpful to their children: they raise them, nurture them, and show them the world.

But you have done enough, more than enough, to repay them if you encourage, settle, and ground unfaithful parents in faith, unethical parents in ethical conduct, stingy parents in generosity, or ignorant parents in wisdom.”