“Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life. Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbours. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion. Mother is the foundation of all love, and many religious traditions recognise this and pay deep honour to a maternal figure, the Virgin Mary, the goddess Kwan Yin.”
Excerpt from “A Rose For Your Pocket,” by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
Dear Friends,
In the Buddhist tradition, we choose the full moon day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar, to show love and respect to both of our parents who gave us the precious gift of life.
Our Beloved Teacher, Thay, wrote “A Rose for your Pocket,” an elegant and moving prose poem in 1962.
Below is one of Thay’s responses to an interview in 2008 by Chúc Phúc – Quảng Kiến (on behalf of the Buddhist journal, Giác Ngộ Monthly Journal) on A Rose For Your Pocket:
Quảng Kiến: As someone who cares very much for the younger generation in Vietnam in particular and young people around the world in general, what message would you like to share with the youth?
Thầy: The Rose Ceremony is not just for us to remember the kindness and love of our parents. We must know how to practice looking deeply. That is to say, we must practice meditation and reflection in our daily life. We must recognize all the talents, virtues, and beauty we have received from our mother and father. Then you can see that your parents are not outside of you, but are within you. We are the continuation of our father, we are the continuation of our mother, and we bring them with us into the future. We must know how to smile for our mother, breathe for father and walk for both. Continuing our parents beautifully is the most concrete way we can express our love and gratitude.
If you ever have difficulties with your parents, please do not think that they don’t love you. Maybe some mistakes or difficulties in their past created layers of suffering that weighed down and obscured that love. We know if anything did happen to us, our parents would cry all their tears. And if something happened to our mother or father, we would also cry until our eyes turn red. We should recognize that they themselves must have had a lot of suffering and difficulties. They suffer, and haven’t been able to transform that suffering, so they transmit that suffering to their children. We are no different. We suffer because of misunderstandings, because of anger; and as a result, we may also have accidentally spoken unkind words or reacted unkindly to our mother and father.
Each party shares a part of the responsibility. Seeing the suffering of our parents, we find a way to help them. We must know how to express our deep regret, and apologize for the times when we were unable to help them, but instead we made them suffer more. We can use the method of deep listening and loving speech to restore communication, to rebuild our relationship. I have many disciples who have been able to do that, Vietnamese as well as non-Vietnamese.
There are young people who are not yet so skillful and have committed suicide as an act of desperation, but also an act of punishment. Punishing the people who made them suffer – in this case, those who gave them this life. We were born to love, not to punish. To die like that is to fail in this purpose of loving; it is a great sadness.
If you are a practitioner of the Buddha’s teachings, you must know that the teachings have the power to transform garbage into flowers; to turn afflictions into Bodhi (awakening); to bring to life the source of love, even from the dead corpse of hatred. Our parents are Buddhas. Don’t go looking for the Buddha anywhere else. If you can say something or do anything to make your mother happy, to make your father happy, do it right away, don’t wait until tomorrow, or I’m afraid it could be too late. Read “A Rose For Your Pocket,” to remember exactly that.
If you are wearing a white flower [to remember a deceased parent], contemplate that your mother and father are still in you and present in every cell of your body. Raise your hand and look at it. You will see that this hand of yours is also the hand of your father and mother. In your hand, there are the hands of your parents. Now place that hand on your forehead, gently, lovingly. You will see that it is your mother’s hand, your father’s hand, that is resting on your forehead. Isn’t it wonderful?
Chúc Phúc – Quảng Kiến (Giác Ngộ Monthly Journal 2008)
To read the full interview please visit:
To read A Rose For Your Pocket, please click on the button:
We warmly invite you to join us in our Rose Ceremony on August 23, 2026.
The program for our Rose Ceremony is as follows:
8:30 am Walking meditation
9:45 am Dharma Talk
11:30 am Rose Ceremony
1:00 pm Picnic Lunch
Please pre-register here.
We look forward to seeing you!
