Parents Bestowing Kindness on Their Children

Scene 16, Baodingshan, Dazu (map)

The statues illustrating parental kindness are laid out beneath a line of seven Buddhas (Shakyamuni plus six other Buddhas of the past). This relief (and the complementary filial piety relief, #18) incorporate a homiletic Confucian message about family values, under nominal Buddhist auspices. This was intended to answer Chinese Confucian critics who had censured Buddhism as indifferent, if not actually hostile, to the claims of family.