What wisdom does your religion give on familial relationships, like between fathers and sons etc?

And that's something that can be compared across the board obviously. I'm just interested if there are any sayings/wisdom or ways in which your religion perceives familial order. Like for instance, I am one of three brothers. I don't know, not to sound too 'occult' about it, but I kind of think we are like three faces of the same man. Like we all have three separate personalities, but they form a whole or something like that. I don't know. Then there is the father and the son deal. My dad for instance is intelligent in ways opposite of me! I still feel that I don't totally grasp how he thinks, yet we are both somehow 'cut from the same stone.' Or I am cut from the stone that he his, I don't exactly know how to put it, but how then can our personalities then be so alien to each other in a sense? Maybe these are 'psychology' questions more so than religious ones, but I thought that religion, which sometimes also sees the 'hidden' connections between things might shed some light.

ideogenous_mover said:

And that's something that can be compared across the board obviously. I'm just interested if there are any sayings/wisdom or ways in which your religion perceives familial order. Like for instance, I am one of three brothers. I don't know, not to sound too 'occult' about it, but I kind of think we are like three faces of the same man. Like we all have three separate personalities, but they form a whole or something like that. I don't know. Then there is the father and the son deal. My dad for instance is intelligent in ways opposite of me! I still feel that I don't totally grasp how he thinks, yet we are both somehow 'cut from the same stone.' Or I am cut from the stone that he his, I don't exactly know how to put it, but how then can our personalities then be so alien to each other in a sense? Maybe these are 'psychology' questions more so than religious ones, but I thought that religion, which sometimes also sees the 'hidden' connections between things might shed some light.

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Familial order is the field where I most emphatically had to make my own Dharma. I think that circunstance made me particularly sensitive to the subject matter, but either way I have concluded that family is a precious thing, and that one of the consequences is that we should not hesitate to acknowledge what it is and what it is not.

Particularly, family and birth origin are often tied, but should never be confused, for they are very much different things that can not healthily substitute each other.

LuisDantas said:

Particularly, family and birth origin are often tied, but should never be confused, for they are very much different things that can not healthily substitute each other.

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That sounds like something that makes sense, yet I'm not really sure what that means.

ideogenous_mover said:

That sounds like something that makes sense, yet I'm not really sure what that means.

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Typical from me. Sorry. Let me try again, if you will.

The way I see it, birth is just a biological reality. For various reasons people are usually encouraged to see it as the substance that builds families, but a honest look shows that such is not the case.

Instead, families are built with convivence, communication, and the attainment of relationships of mutual acceptance and understanding.

Biological ties are ultimately of very minor importance there, as IMO evidenced by Judaism, which unfortunately seems to think of their very meritous boon as being a nationality as opposed to a family.

Humanity is at its best when it dares to look at its own components and take the step of faith of acknowledging and truly accepting each other. That way the true miracles are attained.

LuisDantas said:

The way I see it, birth is just a biological reality. For various reasons people are usually encouraged to see it as the substance that builds families, but a honest look shows that such is not the case.

Instead, families are built with convivence, communication, and the attainment of relationships of mutual acceptance and understanding.

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That would be a relieving notion, if it is true. However, sometimes a feel the strange thread that runs through all the people with whom I share blood, from cousin to brother, grandfather to aunt. Perhaps I come from a strange family. I don't know, but the convivence itself seems to be something which I am directed to seek elsewhere, for within the family there is a familiarity that seems to repulse us from each other - I feel that I have had deeper conversations with close friends for example than I would or could have had with a father or brother.

LuisDantas said:

Biological ties are ultimately of very minor importance there, as IMO evidenced by Judaism, which unfortunately seems to think of their very meritous boon as being a nationality as opposed to a family.

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However I was more curious about Judaism - for I assume that its view of the family is actually diametrically opposed to that of the Christian, the Christian is told to forsake their father and mother, their family, if I read the books correctly. Judaism instead may reveal the importance of not doing that, in proclaiming that irrational. I don't know which of these paths Islam subscribes to.

LuisDantas said:

Humanity is at its best when it dares to look at its own components and take the step of faith of acknowledging and truly accepting each other. That way the true miracles are attained.

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I'm tired and growing older. However, I still seek the Tao as a salvation, if I could but get under its waterfall I surely wouldn't need faith. Humanity has knots its hair, the culture has become obsessive, compulsive, neurotic and narcissistic. Humanity needs to comb its hair, and on some level I'd be better off leaving the puzzle behind, and seeking the bliss in non-philosophical thinking.

Well in terms of relationship a son is required to do honor and fear his parents. Do almost everything they tell him. Take care of them when they get old. Etc.
Younger siblings are also required to respect their elder siblings to a limited degree.

In terms of being cut from the same cloth, I've often heard something along the lines of, "the son doesn't become a thief unless the grandfather thought about it." In other words, the traits that the children exhibit can be found in the parents to some extent.

Tumah said:

Well in terms of relationship a son is required to do honor and fear his parents. Do almost everything they tell him. Take care of them when they get old. Etc.
Younger siblings are also required to respect their elder siblings to a limited degree.

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At any age? Even well into adulthood?

Tumah said:

In terms of being cut from the same cloth, I've often heard something along the lines of, "the son doesn't become a thief unless thine grandfather thought about it." In other words, the traits that the children exhibit can be found in the parents to some extent.

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Yeah, but you realize that this is no minor stipulation, at least not to someone as interested in the mystical as I can be. I mean, if my great, great grandfather, whom I have never met, shown a characteristic which I'd recognize in myself upon meeting them, I'd say that for lack of a better term something about that is downright occult. That is to say, if the characteristic is synonymous enough in him and myself but otherwise something one might consider fairly toward being idiosyncratic. It is hard to describe, perhaps instead it would be more like a feeling of deja vu.

Perhaps there is a lecture from a rabbi or other spiritualist on these sorts of connections that would interest me more, but I've yet to find it.

ideogenous_mover said:

At any age? Even well into adulthood?

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Of course. Only as the child gets older the child's realm expands beyond what the parent is able to control. So if a parent asks his 40 year old son for a drink, the son would have to get it. But if the parent says, "give your son a drink," the son would not have to do it. As well as other cases.

ideogenous_mover said:

Yeah, but you realize that this is no minor stipulation, at least not to someone as interested in the mystical as I can be. I mean, if my great, great grandfather, whom I have never met, shown a characteristic which I'd recognize in myself upon meeting them, I'd say that for lack of a better term something about that is downright occult. That is to say, if the characteristic is synonymous enough in him and myself but otherwise something one might consider fairly toward being idiosyncratic. It is hard to describe, perhaps instead it would be more like a feeling of deja vu.

Perhaps there is a lecture from a rabbi or other spiritualist on these sorts of connections that would interest me more, but I've yet to find it.

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I don't see why you would look at it as occult. I can spot these similarities in my own father. If you look at the family tree as a metaphorical tree, then whatever you find in the earlier branches, you would expect to see in the later ones too. Damage from the elements and impurities will eventually show up. As much as a person works on himself to change the character traits he was born with, that is how effective his metaphorical "cutting himself off" of the tree he will be. So if someone comes from a family of gluttons, but spends a lifetime uprooting this trait from himself, his children probably won't be gluttons, or they will be lest gluttonous than their grandparents were.

Sorry, I don't learn from online lectures, I learn from my Rabbis and Orthodox-Jewish literature. The analogy I gave earlier is said in the name of a well-known Rabbi whose name escapes me at the moment, although I can ask my Rabbi for it again in about a week and a half.

In Hinduism, it is absolutely clear. Mother is the first Goddess and father is the first God. Together they equal the whole universe. Whatever situation, whatever age, no God or Goddess will excuse a slight to parents or grandparents, other elders, brothers, sisters, any one in the close relationship elder to the person. Unconditional respect and obedience. Sage Jamdagni asked his son Lord Parashuram to behead of his mother, Paraswhuram promptly did it. Of course, he revived his mother later. (Lord Parashuram is the sixth avatara of Lord Vishnu). Lord Rama accepted a 14-year exile with out which his father's word would have been falsified, though Dasratha could not bear the separation and soon died. Lord Ganesha fought with his father Shiva, because his mother wanted that nobody should enter while she takes a bath and Shiva thought that he could be an exception. That is how Ganesha got his elephant head (Shiva beheaded Ganesha but at Parvati's request revived him, the only problem was that what was brought to him as the replacement was an elephants head). Whether the order was correct or wrong, to think that is the prerogative of the parents. The children should obey them without a squeak.

Tumah said:

As much as a person works on himself to change the character traits he was born with, that is how effective his metaphorical "cutting himself off" of the tree he will be.

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That's good, in case that needs to be done I suppose.

Aupmanyav said:

Whether the order was correct or wrong, to think that is the prerogative of the parents. The children should obey them without a squeak.

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But wait a minute, it sounds like they are disagreeing there in the examples you gave. I don't know if promptly doing the task seems like the right thing if it's only coming from one side of the puzzle. Would Parashuram have beheaded his father if his mother asked him of that first? It seems like no deal is being struck in those stories, why obey if the product of that obeying is an argument?

this is just a side point, but wisdom isnt knowledge.

WIsdom is the practical application of knowledge.

Lots of people have loads of knowledge but that does not make them wise.

Ok, point noted.

ideogenous_mover said:

I'm just interested if there are any sayings/wisdom or ways in which your religion perceives familial order.

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I'll quote some sayings here:

If man advances a little in his thinking and his aspirations become nobler, he will realize that he should strive to benefit his whole family and to protect it from harm, for he perceives that by bringing comfort and affluence to the whole family, his own felicity and prosperity will increase. Should his thinking expand even more and his aspirations grow in depth, he will realize that he should endeavor to bring blessings to the children of his country and nation and to guard them from injury

~ Baha'u'llah

(Provisional Translations, Lawh-i-Tan zu'-i Baq )


You are all, of every race and creed, members of one family. The teaching of Bahá'u'lláh constrains you to realize your brotherhood to one another.


~ Abdu'l-Baha,

Abdu'l-Baha in London, p. 66)

"You are my family" and he looked about with a smile, "my new children! if a family lives in unison, great results are obtained. Widen the circle; when a city lives in intimate accord greater results will follow, and a continent that is fully united will likewise unite all other continents. Then will be the time of the greatest results, for all the inhabitants of the earth belong to one native land."

~ Abdu'l-Baha

(, Abdu'l-Baha in London, p. 106)

"If love and agreement are manifest in a single family, that family will advance, become illumined and spiritual; but if enmity and hatred exist within it destruction and dispersion are inevitable."

~ Abdu'l-Baha

(, Baha'i World Faith - Abdu'l-Baha Section, p. 229)

ideogenous_mover said:

Would Parashuram have beheaded his father if his mother asked him of that first? It seems like no deal is being struck in those stories, why obey if the product of that obeying is an argument?

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I do not know, perhaps no, most Indians being patriarchal. But if we discuss the right and wrong of the decision, then we are disregarding the bigger experience of life of the parents. A lesser experienced person questioning the more experienced person. It could lead us to grave mistakes.