Hòa Hảo Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of the Buddha. It is so named because it was established in Hòa Hảo village, Châu Ðốc Province in Âu Lạc (Vietnam). The two words “Hòa Hảo” also connote harmony and goodness. It was founded by Prophet Huỳnh Phú Sổ in 1939. At a young age, Prophet Huỳnh Phú Sổ went into the sacred mountains of Thất Sơn and Tà Lơn and studied under a teacher who imparted to him the knowledge and the ability to cure all illnesses. He attained enlightenment after a period of time.

When he emerged from these holy mountains, Prophet Huỳnh Phú Sổ began to heal people through the use of simple herbs, water, and acupuncture. He also composed six scriptures and hundreds of verses and prose of transcendental values. His style of writing is comprehensive, concise and very appealing, but easy to understand. Today we present excerpts of the teachings of Prophet Huỳnh Phú Sổ.

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Thank you, peace-loving viewers, for your cheerful company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants, right after Noteworthy News. May Heaven grace your life with an abundance of kindness and mercy.

On the Four Debts of Gratitude We can read in an ancient book as follows: in thousands of Buddhist books of prayers, filial piety is always taught first. Now that we have taken refuge in Buddhism and practice it at home, let us try our best to obey our Master in observing filial piety. Our Buddha of Tây An used to advise us that to keep filial piety, there are Four Debts of Gratitude we must strive to comply with: be thankful to our ancestors and parents; be thankful to our country; be thankful to the Three Treasures – Buddha, Dharma (true teaching), Sangha (assembly of monks); be thankful to our fellow countrymen and to humankind.

Be Thankful to Our Ancestors and Parents We were born with a body to be active from our childhood to adulthood, with a given wisdom and knowledge. Do we know how much our parents have suffered during all those years? Our ancestors gave birth to our parents, therefore, we must be grateful to our ancestors as we are towards our parents. To show our gratitude to our parents, we must obey the right lessons they teach us and must not be a bother to them.

If our parents did anything wrong or acted against moral laws, we should do our best to advise and prevent them from doing so. We should also support them, keep them from hunger and sickness, we should bring accord among brothers and sisters and happiness to our family so as to please our parents. Pray for our parents to enjoy happiness and longevity. When they die, pray for their souls to be freed from sufferings in the Buddha Land. To show our gratitude towards our ancestors, let us not do anything wicked or shameful to our family’s name. Moreover, if our ancestors had done anything wrong and left a legacy of suffering to their descendants, we should dedicate ourselves to act in compliance with the moral principles to restore our ancestors’ honor.

Be Thankful to Our Country We come into the world, thanks to our ancestors and our parents, but we owe our living to our native land. While enjoying the land and its produce, we feel it is our duty to defend our country, if we want our life to be happy and our race to survive. Let us contribute to the safeguarding of our fatherland and to make it strong and prosperous.

Let us try our best and dedicate ourselves to our country according to our ability and strength. In case we have no talent to assume important responsibilities or there is no opportunity to help our country, let us try to avoid wrongdoings that may harm the nation.

That is how we show our gratitude towards our country. Be Thankful to the Three Treasures What are the Three Treasures? They are: Buddha, the Dharma (true teaching), and the assembly of monks. A person is given life and raised to maturity, thanks to his ancestors and parents, and he owes his existence to his country – that is the physical aspect of life. In the spiritual domain, a person needs the help of the Buddha, the teachings of the Buddha, and the monks to broaden his mind.

The Buddha was the most flawless and most perfect being who was infinitely altruistic and determined to save sentient beings from misfortune and sufferings, which is why he bequeathed his teachings to the assembly of monks to disseminate them all over the world. The monks are none other than the Buddha’s great disciples. As the Buddha always guided and saved human beings from bewilderment and suffering, we must respect him, we must believe and have confidence in his world-salvation work and comply with his teachings, conveyed to us by the monks. Our ancestors had known the miracles, felt the deep love of the Buddha towards humankind.

They respected and venerated the Buddha, acted in compliance with his teachings and have cultivated themselves and strengthened our religion so as to expand it, thus building a castle of peerless and unparalleled virtue to bequeath to posterity. It is, therefore, our duty to follow our ancestors’ highest virtues, to have a clear mind so as to reach the path of liberation and help those who fall into misfortune. We must especially continue to cultivate ourselves and spread compassion and fraternity everywhere among human beings. Only then would we not be ungrateful to the Buddha and our ancestors and the magnificent work they left behind, and not feel guilty towards future generations. Be Thankful to Our Fellow Countrymen and Humankind Ever since our birth, we find ourselves depending on people around us, and as we grow up, our dependency on them grows.

We need their grains to live on, the clothes they make to keep ourselves warm, and the houses they build as shelters against weather adversities. We enjoy happiness and share misfortune with them. We are of the same culture and tradition, history, and language. Together we form a nation. Who are “they” then? They are what we call our “fellow countrymen.” We are of the same root as our fellow countrymen, having the same illustrious and heroic history, so we help each other in distress, and we have the same task of building a bright future for our country.

We have a close relationship with our fellow countrymen: we are indivisible, inseparable, and never would we be there without our fellow countrymen or vice versa. We must, therefore, do our best to help them as to show them, in some form, our gratitude for the assistance we have received from them. Aside from our fellow countrymen, there are other people in the world, those who are working hard to supply us with necessities. They are part of the human race, those who live with us on this Earth. What would become of us if there were no humankind? Would we have enough materials for our needs? Would we be able to be self-sufficient? In brief, would we be able to face, by ourselves, nature’s inclemencies, illnesses, dangers, and keep up our present living standard? Definitely not.

Our people, therefore, need humankind, i.e. other people, and we must be grateful to them. Let us think of them as we do of ourselves and of our own compatriots. Moreover, the Buddha’s mercy and compassion are expansive and deep: they are boundless, without discrimination of race, social status, and are bestowed upon all living beings. Therefore, there is no valid reason for us to do harm to other people for our own sake or for that of our fellow countrymen. On the contrary, we should have a spirit of concord, of indulgence, towards them and we should make it our duty to help them in case of distress. For the monks who have taken refuge in Buddhism, they should, in addition to their gratitude as stated above, be directly thankful to contributors who supply them with daily needs.

They depend on them for their rice, clothes, and medicine necessary for their existence. In brief, they are entirely dependent on the kindness of people for their daily living. They are deeply indebted to everyone. They should, therefore, guide humankind in the search for Truth in order to show their gratitude to the favors received. On the Three Karmas Man is subjected to the law of nature. All these laws are covered by one word: “Duty.” To fulfill human duty, one must comply with the Four Debts of Gratitude. But we must also avoid the Three Karmas (Retributions) and refrain from the Ten Evils, just like we must keep ourselves from being indebted if we want to get rich. Everyone is subject to the following Three Karmas: physical karma (sins caused by the body); verbal karma (sins caused by the tongue); and mental karma (sins caused by thoughts). These bad karmas (retributions) are caused by the following Ten Evils.

Physical karma (Retribution) is related to three evil actions: killing living beings, stealing, and lasciviousness. Verbal karma (retribution) is related to four evil actions: double tongue, abuse of power, defamation (vicious tongue), and falsehood. Mental karma (retribution) is related to three evil actions: greed, anger, and ignorance. Killing Living Beings A person at birth is a good being. But once he has to live in the world among cruel and wicked people, he is soon influenced by evil to become wicked and violent himself. Men kill each other for money, for women, for wealth and position, and out of hatred or ambition. They kill each other for the sake of a man, a group, a social class or a country.

They want to destroy humankind and think that chaos has the right to dwell with them. In a royal court, the fact that the king considers his subjects of little importance, and that the latter view their king as their enemy, has resulted in many internecine wars. Among the people, children attack their parents, servants betray their masters, pupils kill their teachers, husbands and wives harm each other, sisters and brothers fight with one another. Internecine fights break out often due to the above mentioned reasons. That is the situation of humankind among men. With animals, men are even more cruel: they kill them for food, out of superstition, or merely for the sake of killing.

We should not kill animals for ritual sacrifices. Some people believe that when they commit an offense against divinities, killing living creatures would wipe out their offense. Such a belief is wrong and superstitious, because in their metaphysical and noble position as saints and gods, there is no reason for divinities to commit any wrongdoing for the sake of personal feelings. When caught in an accident or illness, rather than taking medicine, some people would pray to the Buddha in the hope of recovering, and for this they also kill animals and call on sorcerers.

They should understand that the reason for their misfortune is a result of their sins from their previous life, when they did not repent or do good deeds. When killing animals for ritual sacrifices, they add another crime to the previous ones, which have yet to be settled. Furthermore, some people kill animals for the sake of killing: some shoot birds flying in the air and some catch fish swimming in the water. They use animals as targets for their shooting enjoyment and completely forget that animals, too, have a soul, a body, and that they also have the right to life just as human beings do. We must, therefore, show compassion towards them, especially domestic animals: buffaloes, oxen, horses, dogs, cats... Do not kill them because of their contributions to our daily activities. In brief, no killing of living creatures can be forgiven or justified.

Stealing “Extreme poverty results in robbery” is but an excuse for dishonest people. They amuse themselves in the daytime and break into houses in the night – they want to have food and clothes without having to work for them. They are residues of society who live outside the law, in hiding, disturbing the security of others, and specializing in killing and robbing honest people without paying any attention to the fact that the latter have to work hard to earn their living.

These are the “caterpillars that spoil the soup.” These criminals cause so many calamities to the hardworking and honest families. They are the cause of poverty and trouble to the happiness of humankind. Being poor, instead of working like everyone else, they commit fault after fault, crime after crime, and cause so many misfortunes to people. Although God’s net may be loosely meshed, they cannot escape it; and even though they might not be tried by human law, they will get the retribution from Heaven for their wicked deeds if they do not repent or mend their ways and improve themselves by getting rid of their fiendish habits.

Lasciviousness Of the thousands of good deeds, filial piety comes first. Of the thousands of bad deeds, lasciviousness comes first, so it is written in the history books. Through reading history books, we can see that crimes were committed everywhere – from the royal courts down to the common people, from within families to strangers. It is the source of so many distressing spectacles. The stories of Emperor Tề who married Thôi Tử’s wife, and An Lộc Sơn who committed adultery with Dương Quý Phi are good examples for posterity. There have always been instances when the rich oppressed the humble. We must also note the many cases of adultery. In order to prevent our morals from being corrupted, and to preserve the reputation of our family, we should not let ourselves be seduced by lascivious desires; rather, we should behave the way of our ancestors by always remembering our duty to Piety, Loyalty and Purity.