The
Ungrateful Sons
ONCE THERE WAS AN OLD MAN who was very well off,
and when his four sons got married, he gave each of them a generous portion of
his wealth as a wedding present.
Then his
wife died, and although his sons affectionately looked after him after that,
they did so with a devious ulterior motive: they wanted to possess the rest of
his fortune. And they finally succeeded, leaving their aging father with hardly
a cent left to his name.
Unable to
manage by himself, the father went to stay at his eldest son’s home. Not more
than a few days later, however, he was driven out by his nagging
daughter-in--law who did not want to have anything to do with an unwelcome
“burden” in her household. To add insult to injury, his ungrateful son raised
no objection to his wife’s doing. The poor old man was to receive the same mean
hospitality at the house of each of his other three sons.
Helpless
and miserable, the father went to seek solace and advice from the Buddha, with
nothing but a staff and a bowl that he could call his own. After the old man
recounted how his sons had mistreated him, the Buddha told him how to go about
teaching his greedy and ungrateful sons a lesson. The Buddha instructed him to
say the following words whenever he found himself in a crowd of people: “My
greedy sons are deceitful and unkind. They call me father but do not understand
the meaning of the word. Now that I have given them all of my wealth, they have
let their wives drive me out of their houses and treat me like a beggar. Alas,
I can depend more on this old and crooked staff of mine than I can on my own
four sons!”
As advised by the Buddha, the old man went about announcing the cause of his wretched condition whenever he came across an assembly of
people. Then one day he came upon a crowd in which his ungrateful sons were also present. When he had finished his plaintive announcement, the people listening to him were filled with pity. Their pity. however, turned into rage once they realized that the
very sons the old man was
complaining about were among them. The Sons had to flee for their lives.
When they were sure they were out of danger. the sons
sat
down and discussed their poor father’s situation. They ashamed admitted
that they indeed had been ungrateful and disloyal to a father who had always been but good and generous to them. Filled with remorse, they
went to look for their father, and finding him, asked for his forgiveness. They also
promised
that they would look after him and respect and honor him as a father should he.
They also
warned their wives to take good care of their father or else
they would be in great trouble indeed.
One
day. the eldest son invited the Buddha to his house
for a meal at which time the Buddha gave a sermon on the merits that one gains by tending to the welfare of one’s parents. He included
in his sermon the story of Dhanapala, an
elephant who cared so much for his
parents that when he got caught. was unable to ear because he was so worried about them.
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