Someone asked the teacher about the blessing of "caring for one's relatives."

Caring for relatives in worldly terms aims at unity and harmony among kin, through the four bases of social solidarity: (1) giving — sharing food and belongings generously; (2) kind speech — speaking gently and politely, and even when annoyed, never cursing or gossiping cruelly; (3) helpful conduct — being useful to relatives, helping with their affairs; (4) even-mindedness — behaving appropriately toward each person according to their standing and circumstances.

Caring for relatives in Dhamma terms means encouraging them toward giving, keeping precepts, meditating, building faith, teaching them Dhamma, and even guiding them toward ordination and practice.

We need to do this because building spiritual merit depends on other people, and the people we can most easily help are our relatives — both worldly and Dhamma kin. If we don't nurture these bonds, they gradually drift apart until only a nodding acquaintance remains.

The teacher told a story of a man whose house burned down; someone brought him a boxed meal. Later, after the giver passed away and reached the inner Dhamma, he was reborn in a heavenly realm. There he found a spirit guarding his mansion, who explained that he had once been a man who went two days without food after his own house burned down, and this same giver had brought him that meal. He was deeply moved, and upon his own death, remembering that kindness, he was reborn as an attendant guarding the giver's heavenly treasures.

So we must care for our relatives — helping them, even in small ways, toward giving, precepts, and meditation — because their lives are, in a sense, in our hands: whether we help or not is up to us. Guiding them onto a wholesome path is the duty of whoever understands first, and it becomes the merit that, in a future life, brings us to be born again among relatives of right view who support each other in the Dhamma.