From: ltp@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (Luat Phung)
Subject: [SOC] Bo^ng Ho^`ng Ca`i A'o or A Rose For Your Pocket (LONG!) 
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 18:07:56 GMT
Summary: English version of Bo^ng Ho^`ng Ca`i A'o by Venerable Thi'ch Nha^'t Ha.nh

Here's the English version of Bo^ng Ho^`ng Ca`i A'o, translated
from the French by Elin Sand.  Enjoy!

[posted w/o permission]
=================================================================


                       A Rose For Your Pocket

                  by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

  The thought "mother" cannot be separated from that of "love".
  Love is sweet, tender, and delicious.  Without love, a child
  cannot flower, an adult cannot mature.  Without love, we weaken,
  wither.

  The day my mother died, I made this entry in my journal:  "The
  greatest misfortune of my life has come!"  Even an old person,
  when he loses his mother, doesn't feel ready.  He too has the
  impression that he is not yet ripe, that he is suddenly alone.
  He feels as abandoned and unhappy as a young orphan.

  All songs and poems praising motherhood are beautiful,
  effortlessly beautiful.  Even song writers and poets without much
  talent seem to pour their hearts into these works, and when they
  are recited or sung, the performers also seem deeply moved,
  unless they have lost their mothers too early even to know what
  love for mother is. Writings extolling the virtues of motherhood
  have existed since the beginning of time throughout the world.

  When I was a child I heard a simple poem about losing your
  mother, and it is still very important for me.  If your mother is
  still alive, you may feel tenderness for her each time you read
  this, fearing this distant yet inevitable event.

   That year, although I was still very young
   My mother left me,
   And I realized
   That I was an orphan.
   Everyone around me was crying.
   I suffered in silence...

   Allowing the tears to flow,
   I felt my pain soften.
   Evening enveloped Mother's tomb,
   The pagoda bell rang sweetly.

   I realized that to lose your mother
   Is to lose the whole universe.

  We swim in a world of tender love for many years, and, without
  even knowing it, we are quite happy there.  Only after it is too
  late do we become aware of it.

  People in the countryside do not understand the complicated
  language of city people.  When people from the city say that
  mother is "a treasure of love," that is already too complex for
  them.  Country people in Vietnam compare their mothers to the
  finest varieties of bananas or to honey, sweet rice, or sugar
  cane.  They express their love in these simple and direct ways.
  For me, a mother is like a ba huong banana of the highest
  quality, like the best nep mot sweet rice, the most delicious mia
  lau sugar cane!

                                *****

  There are moments after a fever when you have a bitter, flat
  taste in your mouth, and nothing tastes good.  Only when your
  mother comes and tucks you in, gently pulls the covers over your
  chin, puts her hand on your burning forehead (is it really a
  hand, or is it the silk of heaven?), and gently whispers, "My
  poor darling!" do you feel restored, surrounded with the
  sweetness of maternal love.  Her love is so fragrant, like a
  banana, like sweet rice, like sugar cane.

  Father's work is enormous, as huge as a mountain.  Mother's
  devotion is overflowing, like water from a mountain spring.
  Maternal love is our first taste of love, the origin of all
  feelings of love.  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
  neighbors.  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 recognize this and pay deep honor to a maternal
  figure, the Virgin Mary, the goddess Kwan Yin.  Hardly an infant
  has opened her mouth to cry without her mother already running to
  the cradle.  Mother is a gentle and sweet spirit who makes
  unhapppiness and worries disappear.  When the word "mother" is
  uttered, already we feel our hearts overflowing with love.  From
  love, the distance to belief and action is very short.

                                *****

  In the West, we celebrate Mother's Day in May.  I am from the
  country side of Vietnam, and I had never heard of this tradition.
  One day, I was visiting the Ginza district of Tokyo with the monk
  Thien An, and we were met outside a bookstore by several Japanese
  students who were friends of his.  One discretely asked him a
  question, and then took a white carnation from her bag and pinned
  it on my robe.  I was surprised and a little embarrassed.  I had
  no idea what this gesture meant, and I didn't dare ask.  I tried
  to act natural, thinking this must be some local custom.

  When they were finished talking (I don't speak Japanese), Thien
  An and I went into the bookstore, and he told me that today was
  what is called Mother's Day.  In Japan, if your mother is still
  alive, you wear a red flower on your pocket or your lapel, proud
  that you still have your mother.  If she is no longer alive, you
  wear a white flower.  I looked at the white flower on my robe and
  suddenly I felt so unhappy.  I was as much an orphan as any other
  unhappy orphan; we orphans could no longer proudly wear red
  flowers in our buttonholes.  Those who wear white flowers suffer,
  and their thoughts cannot avoid returning to their mothers.  They
  cannot forget that she is no longer there.  Those who wear red
  flowers are so happy, knowing their mothers are still alive.
  They can try to please her before she is gone and it is too late.
  I find this a beautiful custom.  I propose that we do the same
  thing in Vietnam, and in the West as well.

  Mother is a boundless source of love, an inexhaustible treasure.
  But unfortunately, we sometimes forget.  A mother is the most
  beautiful gift life offers us.  Those of you who still have your
  mother near, please don't wait for her death to say, "My God, I
  have lived beside my mother all these years without ever looking
  closely at her.  Just brief glances, a few words exchanged---
  asking for a little pocket money or one thing or another."  You
  cuddle up to her to get warm, you sulk, you get angry with her.
  You only complicate her life, causing her to worry, undermining
  her health, making her go to sleep late and get up early.  Many
  mothers die young because of their children.  Throughout her life
  we expect her to cook, wash, and clean up after us, while we
  think only about our grades and our careers.  Our mothers no
  longer have time to look deeply at us, and we are too busy to
  look close at her.  Only when she is no longer there do we
  realize that we have never been conscious of having a mother.

  This evening, when you return from school or work or, if you live
  far away, the next time you visit your mother, you may wish to go
  into her room and, with a calm and silent smile, sit down beside
  her.  Without saying anything, make her stop working.  Then, look
  at her for a long time, look at her deeply.  Do this in order to
  see her, to realize that she is there, she is alive, beside you.
  Take her hand and ask her one short question to capture her
  attention, "Mother, do you know something?"  She will be a little
  surpriseed and will probably smile when she asks you, "What,
  dear?"  Keep looking into here eyes, smiling serenely, and say,
  "Do you know that I love you?"  Ask her as the child of your
  mother.  Your mother and you will be happy, conscious of living
  in eternal love.  Then tomorrow, when she leaves you, you will
  have no regrets.

                                *****

  In Vietnam, on the holiday of Ullambana, we listen to stories and
  legends about the bodhisattva Maudgalyayanana, and about filial
  love, the work of the father, the devotion of the mother, and the
  duty of the child.  Everyone prays for the longevity of his or
  her parents, or if they are dead, for their rebirth in the
  heavenly Pure Land.  We believe that a child without filial love
  is without worth.  But filial devotion also arises from love
  itself.  Without love, filial devotion is just artificial.  When
  love is present, that is enough, and there is no need to talk of
  obligation.  To love your mother is enough.  It is not a duty, it
  is completely natural, like drinking when you are thirsty.  Every
  child must have a mother, and it is totally natural to love her.
  The mother loves her child, and the child loves his mother.  The
  child needs his mother, and the mother needs her child.  If the
  mother doesn't need her child, nor the child his mother, then
  this is not a mother, and this is not a child.  It is a misuse of
  the words "mother" and "child".

  When I was young, one of my teachers asked me, "What do you have
  to do when you love your mother?" I told him, "I must obey her,
  help her, take care of her when she is old, and pray for her,
  keeping the ancestral altar when she has disappeared forever
  behind the mountain."  Now I know that the word "What" in his
  question was superfluous.  If you love your mother, you don't
  have to do anything.  You love her; that is enough.  To love your
  mother is not a question of morality or virtue.

  Please do not think I have written this to give a lesson in
  morality.  Loving your mother is a question of profit.  A mother
  is like a spring of pure water, like the very finest sugar cane
  or honey, the best quality sweet rice.  If you do not know how to
  profit from this, it is unfortunate for you.  I simply want to
  bring this to your attention, to help you avoid one day
  complaining that there is nothing left in life for you.  If a
  gift such as the presence of your own mother doesn't satisfy you,
  even if you are president of a large corporation of king of the
  universe, you  probably will not be satisfied.  I know that the
  Creator is not happy, for the Creator arises spontaneously and
  does not have the good fortune to have a mother.

  I would like to tell a story.  Please don't think that I am
  thoughtless.  It could have been that my sister didn't marry, and
  I didn't become a monk.  In any case, we both left our mother--
  one to lead a new life beside the man she loved, and the other to
  follow an ideal of life that he adored.  The night my sister
  married, my mother worried about a thousand and one things, and
  didn't even seem sad.  But when we sat down at the table for some
  light refreshments, while waiting for our in-laws to come for my
  sister, I saw that my mother hadn't eaten a bite.  She said, "For
  eighteen years she has eaten with us and today is her last meal
  here before going to another family's home to take her meals."
  My sister cried, her head bowing barely above her plate, and she
  said, "Mama, I won't get married."  But she married nonetheless.
  As for me, I left my mother to become a monk.  To congratulate
  those who are firmly resolved to leave their families to become
  monks, one says that they are following the way of understanding,
  but I am not proud of it.  I love my mother, but I also have an
  ideal, and to serve if I had to leave her--so much the worse for
  me.

  In life, it is often necessary to make difficult choices.  We
  cannot catch two fish at the same time, one in each hand.  It is
  difficult, because if we accept growing up, we must accept
  suffering.  I don't regret leaving my mother to become a monk,
  but I am sorry I had to make such a choice.  I didn't have the
  chance to profit fully from this precious treasure.  Each night I
  pray for my mother, but it is no longer possible for me to savor
  the excellent ba huong banana, the best quality nep mot sweet
  rice, and the delicious mia lau sugar cane.  Please don't think
  that I am suggesting that you not follow your career and remain
  home at your mother's side.  I have already said I do not want to
  give advice or lessons in morality.  I only want to remind you
  that a mother is like a banana, like good rice, like honey, like
  sugar.  She is tenderness, she is love; so you, my brothers and
  sisters, please do not forget her.  Forgetting creates an immense
  loss, and I hope you do not either through ignorance or through
  lack of attention, have to endure such a loss.  I gladly put a
  red flower, a rose, on your lapel so that you will be happy.
  That is all.

  If I were to have any advice, it would be this:  Tonight, when
  you return from school or work, or the next time you visit your
  mother, go into her room calmly, silently, with a smile, and sit
  down beside her.  Without saying anything, make her stop working,
  and look at her for a long time.  Look at her well, in order to
  see her well, in order to realize she is there, alive, sitting
  beside you.  Then take her hand and ask her this short question,
  "Mother, do you know something?"  She will be a little surprised,
  and will ask you, smiling, "What, dear?"  Continuing to look into
  her eyes with a serene smile, tell her, "Do you know that I love
  you?"  Ask her this question without waiting for an answer.  Even
  if you are thirty, forty years old, or older, ask her simply,
  because you are the child of your mother.  Your mother and you
  will both be happy, conscious of living in eternal love.  And
  tomorrow when she leaves you, you will not have any regrets.

  This is the refrain I give you to sing today.  Brothers and
  sisters, please chant it, please sing it, so that you won't live
  in indifference or forgetfulness.  This red rose, I have already
  placed it on your lapel.  Please be happy.