Ordaining as a Monk to Repay One's Father's Kindness

During the Tang Dynasty, there was a man surnamed Xie whose father earned his living by fishing. One day while out fishing, he accidentally fell into the water and drowned. After his father's death, Xie pondered: "My father accrued heavy killing karma from his work, so he must have been reborn in the three lower realms. I need to help him eradicate his karmic obstacles." To this end, he left the home life—shaved his head to become a monk—and took the dharma name Shibei. He undertook this renunciation out of a single heartfelt desire to repay his father's kindness, and practiced with extreme diligence, undertaking the rigorous dhuta ascetic practices.

At the time, he was a fellow practitioner with Chan Master Xuefeng Cun. Seeing how strictly he adhered to these ascetic disciplines, Chan Master Xuefeng called him a "dhuta practitioner". The term "dhuta" refers to the twelve ascetic practices practiced by Mahākāśyapa.

One day, as Master Shibei traveled with his alms bowl and travel belongings to visit other teachers for guidance, a sharp stone cut his foot, drawing blood. In that instant, he experienced a sudden, complete awakening. This was the fated moment of karmic affinity the Chan tradition describes: a great awakening. He awakened to his original true nature, the state that existed before his parents were born. This realization generated immeasurable merit. Later, his father appeared to him in a dream to express his gratitude: "Thanks to the merit of your renunciation and your awakening to the true nature of mind, I have been reborn in the heavenly realms. I came especially to share this news with you."

See, this is the power of repaying a father's kindness through renunciation! Some say that leaving the home life means one is unfilial, but they fail to realize that the filial piety taught in Buddhism far surpasses that of worldly life.

The Sutra of the Causes and Conditions of the Wise and the Foolish teaches: Take one hundred blind people, and a skilled physician who can cure all one hundred and restore their sight. Then take one hundred people sentenced to the punishment of having their eyes gouged out, and one person with the power to intervene, who saves all one hundred from this sentence so they do not lose their eyes. You may assume the merit of these two people is immeasurable, but it cannot compare to the merit of allowing others to leave the home life, or of choosing to renounce the world oneself. This is why the sutras state: "For even one day and one night of leaving the home life, one will not fall into the three lower realms for twenty eons."

This is why we must respect all monastics: those who are able to leave the home life have accumulated good roots of merit over countless lifetimes and eons. If a son's renunciation can lead to his parents' rebirth in the heavenly realms, what reason is there to doubt this? The ancient saying "when one son leaves the home life, seven generations of ancestors ascend to the heavens" has been passed down since ancient times, and it is completely true.

But this merit only comes from genuine renunciation: one must not only leave the home life in body, but also leave the home life in mind, to attain such merit.