The stage drama was started with the picture of a grateful lamb.  Do you know that the lamb kneel down when it drinks milk from its mother?  Even a lamb knows what filial is, how about us?  Another animal that represent filial is the bird, I have heard some stories saying that the birds will feed their mother when their mother gets old.

This stage drama is all about the value of “filial“.  It is the most important moral value taught by traditional Chinese teaching since thousands of years ago.

The drama began with how the mother suffers when she starts having a baby.  From the slides shown, it presented that “The suffering is merely the beginning.”

If I am not mistaken, this mother and daughter was reading “The Sutra of Filial Piety” (or translated directly from Chinese - The Deep Kindness of Parents & Difficulty in Repaying It).

You can read the English version of The Sutra of Filial Piety here.

There are 10 kindness that we owe our parents.

1.  Kindness of providing protection and care while the child is in the womb.

2.  Kindness of bearing suffering during the birth.

3.  Kindness of forgetting all the pain once the child has been born.

4.  Kindness of eating the bitter herself and saving the sweet for the child.

5.  Kindness of moving the child to a dry place and lying in the wet herself.

6.  Kindness of suckling the child at her breast, nourishing and bringing up the child.

7.  Kindness of washing away the unclean.

8.  Kindness of always thinking of the child when it has traveled far.

9.  Kindness of deep care and devotion.

10.  Kindness of ultimate pity and sympathy.

The member from TzuChi Kuching performed this meaningful drama using beautiful sign language.  They moved their hands all the time following the music and their actions are well synchronized.

Thanks to TzuChi, and I would like to share this great performance with those who missed it, and hopefully TzuChi can organize more stage drama on good values.

To be continued … …

ps:  One thing I like about the events was they did not invite some politicians or government ministers to give speech which is usually boring and time wasting, they started the evening session right away with a meaningful speech from a leader of TzuChi (an author of a book as well) with a meaningful and inspirational speech.