The Difficulty of Repaying the Profound Kindness of Parents Sutra
When we are born, we may know only that the warmth of our mother and father is there to comfort us. When we grow as children, we may know only that our parents are there to guide and encourage us. When we become teenagers, we may think that our parents are there only to discipline us. When we become adults, we may think that our parents are irrelevant—what could they possibly know about our careers, our love lives, and our daily existence in this world?
Often, it is not until something stops and reminds us that we realize our parents endured great pain and sacrifice to keep us healthy, feed and clothe us, educate us, and raise us into adulthood. That “something” may be the death of a parent, or it may be when we have our own children.
The Difficulty of Repaying the Profound Kindness of Parents Sutra serves as another kind of reminder that we all owe a great deal to our parents. Best of all, it demonstrates a way to show our appreciation for them and to repay their kindness.
The sutra presents the teachings of the Buddha to his great disciple, Ananda, and “a gathering of monks numbering two thousand five hundred, and bodhisattvas and great bodhisattvas numbering thirty-eight thousand in all” in Jeta Grove in the city of Sravasti.