20150729際遇不同續造福 Taking Good Care of Our Minds and Counting Our Blessings
Seeing how manmade disasters have affected innocent children, my heart truly aches for them. Due to the Syrian Civil War, nearly 2 million people have fled to Turkey. Among them, many are young children who have to work to support their families.
On the news, we saw a Syrian boy in Turkey selling tissues on the street and being pulled aside and beaten up by a restaurant manager. He was hit so hard that he passed out. Why did this happen?
These children had a home in Syria. Why did they have to flee their country with their parents, become refugees in Turkey, and even have to work to support their families? I really don’t understand why. It makes me feel that the reason why there’s so much suffering in the world is all because people’s minds have become imbalanced.
Indeed, everything originates from our minds. At my Dharma talk this morning I also spoke of our minds. How are we to walk our path in life? Do we choose to follow the Hinayana or Mahayana path? Do we only cultivate ourselves or also work to benefit others?
Can we let unwholesome thoughts arise in our minds and bring disasters to the world? All this depends on our minds. Seeing the Syrian boy my heart pains unbearably, I truly can’t bear to see what has happened to him. How we can help him?
Our Tzu Chi volunteer in Turkey, Mr. Hu. has worked with the local education agency to help the Syrian children to study in Turkey. Despite their effort, we still see many Syrian children who are not able to go to school. See how the boy still has to sell tissues and got beaten up like that.
Compared with him, those who are able to study in Turkey with the help of many people are truly blessed. See how happy they are and how they beam with beautiful smiles.
They are all children from Syria. But some have to work to make a living while others can get the help they need and go to school. We also see Chile. Due to a wide gap between the rich and the poor in Chile, there are many people in need there. In 2010, after a massive-earthquake, Tzu Chi volunteers went there to help, thus starting Tzu Chi’s work in Chile.
For five years, our volunteers there have been helping a home for people with cerebral palsy. As the home had limited space, our volunteers donated a warehouse to them. They also helped install glass walls in the corridor of the home to turn it into an indoor space. They did this be because there is a huge temperature difference between day and night there.
So, they installed these glass walls in the corridor so people at the home can open them to get fresh air and close them when it is cold but still enjoy the sunshine. Our volunteers there include doctors and businesspeople and they have been working closely together to help the home.
As our U.S. volunteers have been supporting our volunteers in Chile not long ago, they flew to Chile and went with our volunteers there to visit the home on July 19 and bring love and warmth to the residents there. They also donated old computers to people in need.
They collected old computers from others, took out and reassembled useable parts from these computers, and donated the computers they assembled to people in need.
I’m grateful to Tzu Chi for providing these recycled computers to us. After repairing them, we can give them to people in a poor community to help them learn and study so they can find better jobs and improve their lives.
Tzu Chi is a very good group. The volunteers teach us to recycle and share with us how eating vegetarian can help save our Earth. They also gave us computers so we can do better in our studies. Thank you, Tzu Chi!
I’ve planned to help people in the poor community for two years but we don’t have any computers. So, I’m very grateful to Tzu Chi for bringing us these computers today. It’s not about the computers, but about the meaning behind this as many families will be helped because of this.
The rich replace their computers when they’re still good while the poor are happy to have recycled computers to use. See how different people’s lives are! Our volunteers not only bring them material aid but also love. They’ve also inspired many local businesspeople to give with love so they can help more people in need. In this world, we really need more love.
We also see blessed children in Indonesia. Our Tzu Chi secondary school in Indonesia has opened. The children attending this school are truly very blessed. They were really born with blessings. In comparison, Syrian children have led a hard life. They were born in Syrian, and they have no control over their circumstances.
They are all children, but their opportunity to receive an education is far from the same. And see how those at the home for cerebral palsy in Chile were born with their conditions. See, why are people’s lives so different from each other? Look at children in Syria, Chile and Indonesia. They are all children of the world.
But why are their lives so different? Buddhist teachings speak of the law of karma. For the children in the audience today, are you blessed? You really are. So, please take good care of your minds. Given the opportunity you have, you should count your blessings and study hard.
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