5Ven Master XueWu 20220223《He's the Supreme among the Enlightened, a Supreme King among the Buddhas》

So in order to repay the kindness of our mother, not only do we need to refrain from wrongdoing, we also need to prevent any wrong thoughts from arising in our mind, that your mind has to be right, righteous, clear, only then are you able to repay their kindness.
3934 With this filial piety in our mind, we have restraint in our conduct, we do not dare do something that hurts their heart and causes them to be sad.
3948 So what Buddha is trying to teach us in this is the power of filial piety, the power of love towards your parents, Mom. It stops you from doing something extreme, something bad. It helps you to have restraint.
40:14 If we go beyond that, how powerful is the virtue of filial piety? Buddha has mentioned once in the sutra: the drawing falls behind one's diligent pursuit of Bodhi. That means if you want to get full enlightenment, it's filial piety. This is how powerful it is. It usually takes a long time for normal people to be Buddha, but if you look at Amitabha Buddha, it only took him five kalpas, instead of infinite or three Big Kalpas that means it shortened the time, because Amitabha always think about all beings, he wants to build a Pure Land so that everyone can suffer less and quickly go to the Pure Land and this filial piety, this heart of love and respect towards all beings drives him to speed up his enlightenment.
4118 Also as you perfect this virtue towards your parents, towards every being, so does it drive your progression towards the perfection of Bodhi which is Buddhahood. For example, why do normal people nowadays all work so hard to make more money? Why? It is because they were driven by incentives, monetary incentives or other forms of incentives, without incentives they would not work so hard to want money in the form of prestige, especially money. Like, if I want to do business, my goal is to earn money. Same for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but the target of their incentive is filial piety, because the urge to relieve the sufferings of all beings is driven to speed up their enlightenment so that they can quickly help them, that's the intention.
4220 Buddha told us that the driving force behind our diligent pursuit of Bodhi (enlightenment) is filial piety, it nurtures us towards achieving the excellence of our Bodhi path. In other words, as we are perfecting the virtue of filial piety towards our parents, so does our progression towards the perfection of Bodhi - Buddhahood.
Amitabha Buddha is the best example. Why does the Western Pure Land outshine all other Buddha’s Pure Lands in 10 directions? All Buddhas from 10 directions are praising this (Amitabha’s) Pure Land. They all praise it to a level where they say that he's the supreme among the enlightened, a Supreme King among the Buddhas to that level according to the Infinite Life Sutra because of these achievements, because of his heart.
At our level, if we want to live a better life in the next life, next existence, we need to have huge merits, huge fortunes. How do we have a huge fortune? In Chinese, there are five categories of fortunes: (Long Life, Good Death …)（1)Longevity, 2)wealth and high position in society, 3)health and a peaceful mind, 4)virtues and 5)a Good Death） and all these fortunes come from filial piety, from a heart of love and respect towards your parents. This is true! Filial piety,, the love and respect towards elders, is the root of fortune.
4401A historical example, in the Han Dynasty, 1500 years ago, it was a very long era, about 300 to 400 years of the Dynasty's lifespan. It began when a Han Emperor wanted to fill the role of the Minister, he began by looking at the reputation of this person towards their parents, if they were being good towards their own parents, because if he or she could be loving towards people who have been kind to them. then obviously he knows how to repay kindness. They would be very loyal and very honest officials in the nation. The Han Dynasty was about 400 years in lifespan. There are very few Chinese dynasties prior to unification that lasted longer than the Han Dynasty because the Han Dynasty built its empire on the basis of filial piety.
4523 In Buddhism, this is why we have Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva as the first step, it's the first example we should learn when practicing Buddhism. It's trying to tell us Buddhism starts from filial piety and respect. Buddhism starts from appreciating the kindness shown by others, by paying them in return. Buddhism starts from respecting the teacher and their teachings. Buddhism starts from broadening the heart and mind and because of this we are able to liberate ourselves from suffering. From here we start to appreciate the compassion of Buddha. He taught us the root, the first important thing we should grasp.
4623 The spirit of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, is like what we mentioned just now, is like a big tree. Without roots, how can there be stems, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit? That's the root of our cultivation, basics of our cultivation, perfection of our practice.
So the education system represented by Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva is perfect, well-rounded. No matter the content of the teaching or the methods of teaching, the way they teach and the content they teach, it's perfect, it's well-rounded. We should know that.