Travelling around the world, people regconize that no one can be compared with mother. Mother is always the one who care about you and protect you. We owe our mothers a great debt of gratitude, so it is hard to return it. Therefore, every 7th month of lunar calendar comes, it is time for everyone to memorize and recall the huge gratitude of parents and wish them plenty of health and happiness.
Any individual carrying the blood of Vietnamese people can fully comprehense that Vu Lan celebration is such a significant, holy and meaningful celebration in a year. That is why many days before the date of the ceremony but in every houses, people are excited to welcome this day.
Vu Lan celebration oiginated from a Buddist story that is about an outstandingly talented disciple of the Buddha, named Muc Lien Kien who had great power and infinite wizardry. One day, when he was using his infinite ability to watch around the world, he suddenly saw his mother – Mrs Thanh De suffering from damnation. Getting to know that, the filial son used his wizardry to bring some food for his mother, however because of her greed, cruelty, and deception, the food turned into burning coal. Muc Lien Kien told the story with the Buddist and wished the Buddist to give him a guidance. Touching with the filial affection of the disciple, the Buddist told his disciple that on every 15
th day of the 7
th month in lunar calendar, invite monks to pray for his mother with devotion to lessen the punishment for her.
Since then, every 15
th day of 7
th month, people get together to pagoda to pray for their parents and grand parents. This is also the occasion for people to commemorate the merits and affections granted by the parents and express their filial duties to them. The month of Vu Lan celebration is the time for returning the gratitudes. How can we list out the countless laboration of mother through 9 months of pregnant and years of working and nuturing for us to become adults. For your lifetime, you can never return all the gratitudes for us. Each year when the month of Vu Lan celebration, it is the chance for reviewing what we have done over the year and what we could do to requite for parents.
At Vu Lan celebration day, when visiting a pagoda, you can feel the atmosphere of the celebration day. The monks in pagodas will intoduce you the origin and meaning of this honorable day, through the stories, you will have chances to experience different feelings of commemoration, of heartfelt emotions, and sympathy, then finally, you will wish for your parents to be always healthy or pray for them to reincarnate soon if they passed away.
In this honorable day, it is a certainty that people will join a ceremony where those whose parents are alive are given a red rose, while those whose parents passed away are given a white rose sticked on their chest. No one in the world can negate the mighty and countless gratitude of parents, therefore this is the most touching moment of the ceremony. A number of people are sympathetic because their mothers are still alive so that they realize how happy they are to have motherand father while the others are left in breathless with poignant regret for never seeing their parents and never have chance to complete their filial duty with their parents.
Perhaps, for foreigners, this honorable celebration is something new and vague, however, for Vietnamese people, this is conclusively a sympathetic and affectional occasion, and is the chance for them to return their filial affection and duty to their parents. Therefore, these days, families will prepare a feast to worship for their ancestors and chances for people to go to pagodas. Besides, many people are on their vegetarian diet these days, moreover, they also send the best wishes and sincere thanks to their parents and sometime the meaningful gifts are given to those who gave birth to them.
Since forefarthers’ ages, four elements of personality, gratitude, morality and prestige have always been highly evaluated, therefore, as being the posterity, we should be respectful and gratified our parents. Father and mother gave us the body, while the country gave us a place to live and to grow up. That is why we should appreciate that, and every month of Vu Lan comes, it is the time for you to express and deliver our concern and sincerity to the parents.
The sky is immense and mountains are high, however, no one can measure how high and how immense the heart of mother is. Warm milk from her breast feeding us since we were born, the meals she prepared for us and the nights she cared for our sleeping, all these could hardly be measured or counted. Thus, Vu Lan celebration day is the unmissable day for any one to express and deliver the heartfelt and sincere thanks to the birth gavers. Personality of each person is evaluated through their filial affection and duties for their parents, so there is no reason for you to not send her a sincere thank at least.