Meanings of The Ceremony of Rose being Pinned on Your Pocket
On the occasion of Vu Lan of Filial Piety, we celebrate the Rose Ceremony together to express the profound meanings of the grateful merit of birth, nurturing, and teaching of our parents. In this festival, if you have enough parents, you get a red rose, if you lose your mother or father, and vice versa, you get a pink rose, if you lose both parents, you can get a white rose on the chest of your shirt. The white color represents purity and mourning, in the filial Vu Lan season, the mourning is mentioned.
If you are a monastic, you will get a yellow rose on your turmeric robe. The yellow color represents relaxation, equanimity, freedom, no ties, attachments, and entanglements. The rose symbolizes love of couple, love of marriage, love of parents, love of teachers and students, love of the Three Jewels, etc.
Love manifests more or less depending on how you use and behave appropriately different objects and contexts in your life.
The purpose of this great Ceremony is to remind us to remember the love of parents, grandparents, spiritual and bloodline ancestors; this love is the most basic and solid foundation to help us nurture and develop the love for homeland and country later on.
Wanting to do this well, in the family, as a filial son or daughter, you skillfully respect and serve your parents both physically and mentally, especially in the spiritual aspect by advising your parents to be vegetarian to maintain health, to foster loving-kindness, compassion, to avoid evil, and to do good. When your parents have not taken refuge in the Three Jewels and the Five Ethical Trainings, you are the person with duty to invite your parents to take refuge in the Buddha Jewel, the Dharma Jewel, and the Sangha Jewel. The three noblest and marvelous refugees not only make the most solid spiritual support, but also make the lamp of insight illuminate living beings in life.
Once your parents have good conditions in contact with Buddhism; the path of awakening, enlightenment, peacefulness, happiness, and peace for the many all over the planet, then you are the true continuation of your parents, grandparents, ancestors, teachers, Patriarchs, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, etc. According to the tenets of interrelationships, when you look deeply at them, you find yourself present in them, and they are present in you.
During this year’s filial Vu Lan season, we would like to offer red, pink, white, and yellow roses to all those whose parents are still alive or dead in the world.
Namo Buddhaya
Namo Dharmaya
Namo Sanghaya.
By Ven. Thích Trừng Sỹ
Please enjoy the Vietnamese article via link below.
