20150403 ~ 跨海醫療‧大地環保Safeguarding Lives and Sowing Blessings for Our World
Yesterday, the twins from the Philippines were brought to the Abode. They’ll be discharged from our hospital in Hualien soon. When they first came to Taiwan, they were conjoined at the bosom and shared a liver. Seeing how heavy it was for their mother to carry them, our Dr. Chang took the twins from their mother. Holding them in his arms, he realized how hard it was for their mother. From that moment on, our medical team began to do all they can to help the twins.
The medical team was consisted of doctors from several departments. Since the twins arrived at our hospital, they’d been simulating how best it was to conduct the separation operation on them. What they did for the twins was indeed very touching. The twins are over one year old. After the operation, they’re now learning to walk. I’m sure there’s no problem for them to walk, but we still need to contact a local hospital in the Philippines and ask them to help train them to walk after they go back to the Philippines.
Yesterday, I found that the twins have very different personality. One is shy and always clings to her mother. The other is more outgoing. Although they were conjoined twins, they have different characters. This shows that they had developed different habitual tendencies in their past lives, and that’s why they have different aptitude even though they’re twins. So, in this lifetime, we must work hard to nurture good habitual tendencies so that in our future lives, we won’t bring bad habitual tendencies with us, but only true principles which will point out the correct path for us to walk.
Yesterday, a young man from Malaysia also came with the twins. His father is a mason and suffers from kidney failure. So, he’s been receiving free treatment at our dialysis center in Penang. His mother works at our kindergarten there. This young man suffers from ankylosing spondylitis. As his condition kept deteriorating, he came to our hospital in Hualien for treatment. I’m grateful to our medical team for performing two joint replacement surgeries for him. He can walk now, but he still needs to practice more. He said that after he returns to Malaysia, he’ll serve as our recycling volunteer and take part in Tzu Chi’s work to help others.
Seeing cases like this, I’m very grateful---When I was building our hospital in Hualien, Mr. Hong Lao-dian, Mr. Cao Zhong-zhi, and Professor Chen Can-hui were all very supportive. Mr. Hong donated money to build the ICU while Mr. Cao donated two medical elevators to our hospital. They’d really done a lot to support the hospital. I told them that apart from building the hospital, we also need facilities for doctors to do research. So, they started to solicit donations from people. To thank those who donated NT$1 million to us, I invited to become our honorary board members.
There are truly many things to recount. With time, we can serve as living bodhisattvas to benefit others and bring love and warmth to the world. This is how we can make use of time to sow blessings for our world. However, if we have unwholesome emotions, they’ll also accumulate through time to bring disasters to the world. Yesterday, a group of Somali militants burst into a university in Kenya and shot many students to death. They did this because they want to take retribution against Kenya for sending its troops to Somalia.
See how unwholesome emotions, when building up through time, can grow into resentment and hatred bit by bit, bringing about such a horrible and deadly attack. Seeing that, my heart pains so much. So, everything that happens in the world starts with a thought arising in people’s minds. And see how the population in the world has kept increasing. With that, the amount of garbage also increases, which has become an issue of great concern in our time.
Take Russia for example. Moscow is now troubled by overflowing landfills, many of which were built in the 1980s. As the waste disposal systems cannot keep up with the increasing garbage, many illegal landfills have appeared. Seeing how serious the garbage problem in Russia is, I really think that we should let more people understand the importance of cherishing our resources and recycling them. This is the awareness we should raise among people. So, we should work harder. We’re not doing enough, we need to examine our efforts.
However, I’m truly very grateful to our recycling volunteers, especially our elderly volunteers. Were it not for their hard work, how could we possibly learn so much from recycling work? So, I’m indeed very grateful to our volunteers for doing recycling to care for our Earth. Taiwan is a small island, but we hope to set an example and inspire more people to recycle. There’s still much work waiting for us to do. Please do not think that this is trivial. Recycling is an important work that everyone cannot overlook.
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