201500320 心靈教育‧戒慎節水Taking Care of Our Minds and Cherishing Our Resources
Life is filled with all kinds of suffering. In other words, life is suffering. Buddhist sutras teach us the reality of suffering, its cause and the way suffering can be ended. What is the cause of suffering? Think about it---With the various actions we take and the various mindsets we have, we’ve accrued many, many causes of suffering. When we accumulate so many causes of suffering, we’ll reap the fruit of suffering. That’s why life is filled with so much suffering and disasters. How can we mitigate disasters? Nature’s force is very powerful. How can it be diminished? We must start with our hearts and take good care of our body and mind in everything we do.
Lately, I’ve been speaking of Vanuatu. Seeing how a cyclone has caused such widespread devastation in Vanuatu, we’re very concerned and eager to help. Living together on this Earth, how can we not feel for the suffering? So, when people are affected by disaster, we must give rise to a kind heart and without being asked, reach out to them with love. When we see others lending a helping hand, we must praise them and be happy for them. If everyone can be like this and work together to help the suffering, we’ve taken good care of our body and mind.
Also, for all the resources we enjoy in our daily living, how can we make the best use of them? We should share what we have with the suffering. No matter where they are, we should reach out to them. I often say that we should eat only 80% full. By eating 80% full, we eat the right amount of food and we won’t be overweight. This way, we can remain fit and healthy. And by sharing the 20% of food we’ve saved with the needy, we’ll become healthy spiritually. So, it’s good for both our body and mind. If all of us can do so, won’t everyone be safe and healthy?
In our everyday life, we need to cherish our resources. We should conserve energy and reduce our carbon emissions. Many of the goods we use now are made from petroleum. That’s why we keep drilling oil. With so many people in the world, how much garbage do we throw away every day? The amount is staggering. And how much land do we have to bury the garbage, such as plastics, that we’ve disposed of? That’s why we need to collect recyclables and sort them out meticulously so they can be remade into other useful things.
In Tzu Chi, we pool the love and wisdom of people who care about the well-being of our Earth and together, we think about how we can make use of recyclables. Take plastics for example. We carefully sort them into different categories, which can only be done manually. If there are labels on plastic bags, we have to cut them out. Doing this takes time and effort. However, to make sure that the recycled plastics can be remade into quality products, we spend much time and effort doing all this work.
That’s why I am always very grateful to our recycling volunteers for cherishing our resources so much and working so hard to sort recyclables, which can then be remade into other goods. By doing so, our resources won’t decrease and we don’t need to drill so much oil. Moreover, less land will be turned into landfills and we will have more land to grow crops.
That’s why our recycling volunteers work so hard to protect the Earth and cherish resources in order to benefit humanity. They’re truly full of love. This cannot be done by a few people. It takes many people who harbor the same heart of love. All of them not only do physical recycling work, but also spiritual recycling. They harbor a pure heart free of afflictions and single-mindedly dedicate themselves to benefiting humanity during the short span of a few decades in this lifetime.
Nowadays, Nature’s elements have become imbalanced. Here in Taiwan, we’re suffering from water shortages. I saw on the news that a major reservoir in Taiwan can only supply water for another 32 days. So, people of Taiwan truly need to calm their minds and pray sincerely for the weather to be favorable.
Thirty-two days pass by very quickly. If we run out of water then how are we going to live? So we need a let everyone know about this. We must calm down and nourish our minds with the pure water of true principles. If the fields of our minds dry up, our spiritual crop of wisdom will also wither. So, we must quickly nourish our minds and work hard to cultivate the fields of our minds. All in all, we need to quickly cleanse our minds. Apart from physical recycling work, which is what we must do, we also need to quickly do inner recycling to cleanse and nourish the fields of our minds.
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