Rearing Monarchs #10:

A child’s heart towards its elders and juniors
Unification Thoughts, February 2022

Welcome back
Hello again; I hope that your January was refreshing. And of course, thank you for your continued interest in these Unification Thoughts.

If you’re joining us for the first time, the focus of this series for we Golden Agers is to look into the key role of grandparents in helping to raise our grandchildren. This article is the ninth in the series and its basic premises are from 1) the Realms of True Love—in which Father and Mother Moon introduce the fifth realm of love—and 2) the Three Great Kingships—which inspires the title of this series. If you take a look at those two links, you’ll understand the perspective of the preceding eight articles, if not the details.

Where we left off…

In the January article, we were working through the second form of education that our grandchildren need—an Education of Norm. Norms are ethical laws or social laws that govern our behavior or conduct¹.

This form of education guides a child to fulfill their second blessing and resemble HP. By doing so, they can give love and joy to HP and others, as well as experience love and joy themselves.

The closing point we had made in last month’s installment was that ethics completely depends upon order.² But before we continue, please allow me to briefly share a relevant personal experience.

In 1979, I entered the Seminary and took the optional martial arts course that Father Moon wanted us to. I simply wanted to learn self-defense, but discovered that the waters ran deeper than that. Basically, I was immersed in the time-honored teacher–student relationship, in which the art form is the medium for cultivation of the student’s character and heart.³ That began a relationship with Dr. Seuk (our grandmaster and then V.P. of UTS) that included discipline and tough workouts, but also walks and talks together on the trails of the seminary, and later, dinners and talks together during our time in the college association. My heart became such that the leader of Korean CARP once observed us at a convention and told Dr. Seuk “I don’t think Gerry is your member. I think he’s your disciple.” Dr. Seuk and I glanced at each other and quietly smiled.

I share this hoping to convey what a proper Education of Norm can feel like in practice—it’s beyond theory and intellect.

Ethics and Order

We had closed last month with this diagram about order and the family:

I’d better restate that this critical concept of order isn’t to be dismissed as simply “cultural inheritance” or “religious dogma”. Because—as Unification Thought is careful to point out—it’s not based on those; rather it’s based on natural law that’s observable in the universe.⁴

We’ve got enough now to turn to discussing the actual norms that Unification Thought explains. Let’s dive into it.

Vertical Order and Virtue

A different take on virtue

The regular notion of virtue is that it’s “conformity of one’s life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude” (dictionary.com). There’s an unspoken emphasis on will here—we strive to be virtuous because we “should”. That’s true, but Unification Thought explains that there’s a bit more to it:

“…love has twelve directions, because the person in each of the four positions has a different kind of love for each of the three object partners… Consequently, various kinds of love, with different nuances, come to appear. In order to realize these various kinds of love, various kinds of virtue are required… with each kind of love, there is a corresponding virtue….”

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 282

So in our community, virtue is more than making ourselves “conform” to principles. In their deepest sense, virtues are actually the expressions of divine love.

“Upward” expressions of love

Do you remember Section 4 in the Principle of Creation? It’s entitled Original Value and it mentions three key values in our community’s culture. Here, we’re concerned with two of them:

“In interpersonal relationships, the beauty that a subordinate returns in response to the love of a superior is called loyalty, and the beauty that children return in response to the love of their parents is called filial piety.

• Exposition of Divine Principle, p. 38, §4.3.1

Clearly then, loyalty and filial piety are important virtues for our grandchildren to learn⁵ (as we know from the emphasis on hyojeong—the heart of filial piety). The Exposition of the DP mentions filial piety three times and loyalty nine, but beyond the above quote, neither is defined any further. Looking into it, the common definition of loyalty is that it has to do with “obligations” and “faithful adherence” to leadership or a cause. And filial piety is commonly understood as a “primary duty” to parents. But for our community, a useful means for going deeper is to study the original ideograms that were translated; they can be quite revealing. Here’s the one for loyalty:

忠

The top character means “center” and the bottom one means “heart”. The idea conveyed is that one’s heart is anchored in someone or something above or higher than self. Yes, there’s an aspect of duty; but beyond that, it’s a matter of heart and love. In our community, this is toward HP, TP, Heaven, or Their ideals (e.g., Cheon Il Guk).

And here’s the ideogram for filial piety:

孝心

The character on the right is also “heart”, but the character on the left is composed of two others—the bottom one is “offspring/child” and the top one is “earth/source”, which in this context indicates “parent”. The arrangement brings to mind some movie scenes where an Asian, Eskimo, or Native American community is migrating from one place to another. In them, young persons can be seen carrying older family members on their back, sometimes exchanging quiet words of mutual gratitude and affection. Of such a relationship, Father Moon said:

“When their parents become old and senile, the sons and daughters should …possess the same heart their parents had toward them when they were little…. This is what it means to be children of filial piety. (35-241, 1970.10.19)

• Cheon Seong Gyeong 2014, Book 3, Chp. 2, §4

So filial piety is beyond a duty. It’s an expression of heart and love; it’s a grateful child’s expression of their devotion to their parents or grandparents. Remember the previous quote from the Exposition of the DP?

“In interpersonal relationships, the beauty that a subordinate returns in response to the love of a superior is called loyalty, and the beauty that children return in response to the love of their parents is called filial piety.”

• Exposition of Divine Principle, p. 38, §4.3.1

So for our grandchild to know, to feel, and to express filial piety as a natural outpouring of their heart, it must be an evoked response. On this, Unification Thought offers important, insightful guidance:

“In principle…the downward love is primary, and upward (love is) secondary. …The starting point of true love is the downward love, since the origin of true love is in God, and everything comes downward from God in the first place.”

• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 531

“Downward” expressions of love

So what is this form of love coming “downward” from a parent/grandparent that a child’s heart responds to? As depicted in this figure from Dr. Lee, it’s the parent’s heart of benevolence:⁶

The virtue of Benevolence is so important to parenting that it’s worth taking a minute to consider its original ideogram:

仁愛

The character on the left is made up the characters for “man” and “two” and it means “humane/kernel” as in the “most fundamental human attitude”. The character on the right means “to love/affection”. Put together, they indicate the essential attitude of a caring parent: heartfelt devotion to the total development and well-being of their child. This is how filial piety is evoked. Father Moon explains:

“Parents cannot teach their children filial piety just by words. They have to inspire a filial attitude within their children. The child cannot learn this overnight. It requires a long period of consistent influence. Parents should set an example in daily life that inspires their children to emulate them. They should be experts at inspiring this practice of filial piety, based on God’s Will.” (29-099, 1970.02.25)

• Cheon Seong Gyeong 2014, Book 5, Chp. 4, §2

Filial piety is to be both modeled by parents and grandparents, and inspired over a long period of time, not simply required of a child because it’s “principled”. And therein lies the importance of our benevolence. An innocent child who deeply knows that he or she is loved can respond even before he or she is old enough to understand such concepts as “vertical love” or “virtue”.

This give-and-receive relationship between a parent’s benevolence and a child’s filial piety is the basis of other vertical virtues. The “downward” virtues listed below are gathered from the Essentials of Unification Thought and New Essentials of Unification Thought books, as well as from Dr. Lee’s diagrams. Each one listed merits its own examination, but that would make this article much longer than it already is.⁷ So I’ll just suggest that, when you have a little more time, you’ll look at each one and reflect on what could happen if you intentionally worked on improving or embodying each one:

When we were little, we might have experienced these with our own folks. Otherwise, I’d guess that many of us have experienced them in Father and Mother Moon⁸, as well as in some of their disciples whom we may have been blessed to study or work with.

And at the bottom of the above diagram, there’s a list of some of the “upward” filial virtues that we hope a beloved child/grandchild will learn and know in their heart. Moved by our benevolent love, he or she could feel “I don’t yet understand why I’m being asked this, but because of the respect and trust that’s in my heart, I can obey; I want to give that to my grandpa/grandma….” So that, in their purest, truest form, these virtues are expressions of filial love.

*In case you could meet Rev. Won Pil Kim, you’d know that his heart belonged to Father Moon. That wasn’t because of duty; it was because his heart had simply been won by love.

Conclusion, for now, again ;-)

I’ve tried to simplify and condense, so we’re nearly halfway through with this Education of Norm. Next time we’ll look into horizontal order and its virtues. To close this article, I’d like to share one last story related to the educational relationship between elders and youngers (i.e., “rearing monarchs”).

I know of a martial arts instructor who was walking with a friend down a bustling city thoroughfare, in the middle of a business day. They were in conversation when they heard repeated, insistent shouts. They paused the conversation and joined other curious pedestrians looking about to see what was happening. Then the instructor and his friend spotted two of his students across the avenue, on the other side of all the automobile traffic, shouting “Teacher! Teacher!” and waving their arms to catch his attention. Once they succeeded, the students snapped straight as is the custom in the training hall. They dropped their hands smartly to their sides, bowed and shouted Tongilmoo Dō’s salute: “Chun! Hyo!” (loyalty, filial piety). Then they straightened up and waved again, grinning proudly. The instructor and his friend laughed in recognition and waved back at the students, while surrounding pedestrians looked on at this unabashed public demonstration of (vertical) connectedness. Later on, the instructor could reflect that he owed this precious experience (of his students’ loyalty) to his own teachers—including those from martial arts⁹ —through whom he had experienced and learned benevolence.