Buddhist practitioners at ancient Dunhuang practiced family ethics based on the basic Buddhist ethical relations. They used these principles to understand relationships between parents and children(how to be a kind father and a filial son for example), the relation between " this life" and the " after life," and were further motivated to pay debts of gratitude, which was regarded as an important part of Buddhist belief and practices. Many Dunhuang documents contain passages on how to behave filially, for children, and fatherly, for parents in certain social backgrounds. These Buddhist family values added strong local characteristics to the social atmosphere of Dunhuang and further display certain characteristics of the time.
