When making merit on your birthday, or visiting the temple on various occasions, in addition to bringing your parents along, if you already have children or grandchildren, bring them with you as well — regardless of their age, whether young or old, let them join in making merit alongside their parents.
By doing so, your children and grandchildren will begin accumulating merit from a very young age. Children who grow up familiar with merit-making will naturally carry that same virtue into adulthood — just as we do — and will be diligent in continuing to develop goodness throughout their lives.
This serves as a reliable assurance that, so long as they maintain this practice, they will never fall into hardship or decline, for they are continually building merit — merit that we have guided them to create from their earliest years.
This is precisely the kind of knowledge and meaningful tradition that previous generations passed down to their own children and grandchildren — and it is our responsibility to carry it forward in the same way.
19 January 2018
