How one family copes with the meaning of Vu Lan

Friday, August 26, 2005 By Nguyen-Khoa Thai-Anh



As customary every year, on the day of the full moon in the seventh lunar month, Vietnamese - particularly Buddhists regulars - commemorate thev festival of Vu Lan. This year, it falls on Aug. 30. And this Wandering Souls Day is an important day in Vietnamese culture for it denotes - most importantly- the love and sacrifice offsprings have for their parents.

As the story goes, a long time ago, there was a devout disciple of Buddha, a dutiful son named M?c Liên who learned of his mother's punishment in hell to pay for her sinful and cruel ways when she was alive. He begged for her release from torture.

Seeing that M?c Liên led an exemplary life, Buddha gave him a magic staff and asked if he would go liberate his mom. The child's love for her burned so brightly in his heart that he forgot about his own safety, braving all nine levels of the gates of hell, and with his cane, battled his way to where she was trapped, finally bringing her out of damnation.

Today, how many of us are satisfied with the way we treat our parent? Are we rather tormented because our actions toward our mothers and fathers are less than loving, or we are so engrossed in our own affairs that we tend to be less patient with them? As Vietnamese are becoming more and more comfortable in their American life, they tend to treat their parents as separate and
equal beings, capable of self sufficiency living on government handouts or from their own savings that they don't need our attention or company.

My mother is 83 this year. Her mind is still sharp, but her physical health has taken a downhill turn. She walks gingerly, with measured steps and she often needs a helping hand. Her doctor prefers her to use a walker, but she doesn't heed his advice.

"I'm not used to a cane, it may cause more unbalance," she countered.

But the more plausible reason, I surmise, is that she doesn't want to look frail although she doesn't mind leaning on us. That would show that we care, and as her children, we are still taking care of her.

I'm afraid the issue of filial pity in America has lost its original import. And for that matter I'm not so sure if the love and care of one's parents can survive the onslaught of capitalism in Vi?t Nam, under the shadow of the new socialism. In this new age, the race for materialism or physical acquisition often relegates cultural precepts and morality to a lesser plane.

Elsewhere outside the home country, in Europe, in Australia, and in America, for example, the breakup of the family unit (or extended family unit) and the upward social mobility and the young peoples' personal push for privacy, separate and independent living is de rigueur. It has forced great change in how one is connected with his orher parents emotionally and physically. The
new lifestyle did not just happen overnight, but it has necessitated people's adjustment in their traditional values and practice.

In November, when my mother shall reach her 83rd birthday, we will try to organize a party with the debut of her poetry CD. Perhaps the thing she needs the most is not our gifts of material comfort or even our own fleeting company, but to know that we appreciate what she has given to us spiritually over the years.

Did we understand her and the social message she has tried to impart to us, something akin to a biological or genetic inheritance?

I still remember how devastated she felt when she had to sell the house she shared with my younger sister for 13 years.

I remember when I was alone with her a few years back and she told me: "I want to give the house to one of you." She said this as she paused to take a sip from her teacup.

"I want to give it to you to make a family cultural center or some kind of nonprofit Vietnamese clearinghouse."

"No Mom, no Mom," I gently shook my head, repeating the mantra, knowing I would have to continue the payments and pay my younger sister her fair share in the equity in addition to my mortgage in the Bay Area. That was our parent's living legacy, her very circuitous thinking, not totally undoable but very unrealistic given her children's different lives and circumstances.

In the end, the house was sold and so ended her dream of our using it for a family meeting place or cultural center. Now she lives in a mobile home, and my other sister is taking care of her, but soon that arrangement will terminate. My sisters have their lives to live, and we, the male family members, feel our very inadequacy in terms of her physical care. Maybe she would understand, but she still thinks about her unfinished social legacy.

A Vietnamese maxim explains that the love between parents and their children goes one way from the parents to the children and not the other way around. Now, I'm still pondering that truism.

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