By saying "There is mother and father," the Buddha was saying your parents are owed a specific debt of gratitude. The fact that you are a human being right now depends on the goodness of your parents.

"When the Buddha taught the teaching on karma, he mentioned, “There is mother and father” — which, of course, sounds obvious, but it was a controversial topic back in those times. By saying there is or there isn’t mother and father, you were saying whether your parents were owed any specific debt of gratitude. When they said there isn’t mother and father, they meant that human beings were just chemical elements that happened to combine and then give rise to your body and that was it. There’s no special virtue there. You don’t owe them any real debt, either because they were just material things or because what they did was totally predetermined. They had no choice in the matter.

So when the Buddha was saying there is mother and father, he was saying that you’re not just the physical body, and your parents aren’t just their physical bodies. At the same time, they did have freedom of choice: They could have aborted you; they could have abandoned you. The fact that you have a body, that you are a human being right now, depends on the goodness of your parents. Whether they were good at raising you, you still owe them a debt of gratitude.

Then there are people who raised you. Sometimes those weren’t your parents: Think of all the special kindnesses they did for you, the ways in which they went out of their way.

This is what makes human life valuable and gives nobility to human life: the fact that people have gone out of their way for one another. It should inspire us, too, to go out of our way. It feels really good when you find yourself in a position where you can give when you don’t have to. That’s something to be honored. And it’s okay to feel good about yourself in that way — not in the sense of trying to compare yourself as being better than other people, but simply that you feel good in and of yourself, that you’ve done something good for other beings when you didn’t have to. It’s a sign that you’re not a slave to material things or to your convenience."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Generosity & Gratitude"

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