20150801倡導茹素護生靈Being Vegetarian to Safeguard All Lives
My name is Deng Nian Chun. I am six years old. am in Class Daci, and I am a veggie baby.
For the first preschool you want to, the kids there were not vegetarian?
Correct, I went to see the principal and said: “I don’t want to eat meat. I am veggie baby, so I can't eat meat.” This is a string bean.
You like so many kinds of vegetables.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and there are more. Besides those ten kids, there are more I like. Corn tastes sweet. For eggplant, I don't know why, I just tell my mom that I like to eat eggplant.
Look at Nian Chun. She is only six years old. She has been a vegetarian since she was in her mother’s womb. She always encourages people to be vegetarian. Seeing her truly brings joys to others.
Please raise your hand if you are vegetarian. Raise your hand now if you are not vegetarian. If you eat one vegetarian meal, you can mark one box. There are 108 days in the card. You mark one box for each vegetarian meal you eat.
Her plan was to give you a gift after you filled all 108 boxes. Just in case that you won’t be able to find her, she’s giving you the gift first.
If you do not mark all 108 boxes, I will ask you to return the gift.
Look at her, what a commanding presence she has. Originally, she was going for 60 people. When she reached above that target, she adopted and said, “Now I want to persuade 100 people to be vegetarian. “ Wasn’t that copying me in how I encouraged Tzu Chi Malaysia? I gave them the first goal of 300, 000 new members, and after reaching that, a new goal of 500,000 and then a million. After adding a million new members, they have to work toward the next goal of two million people.
This is what I told volunteers from Tzu Chi Malaysia hoping them to work hard in purifying people’s minds and truly looking at the world with a loving heart. Everyone has innate great virtues to empower them in cultivating and accumulating many good deeds. That is why we need to serve the people in need, listen and learn the Dharma, share the Dharma, and pass on the Dharma to spread the truth of being kind and good around the world. This only takes a transformation of thoughts.
Look at a centuries old tradition in Nepal. Four hundred years ago, a landlord had a dream. The dream indicated that if people offered animal’s blood to worship the goddess of Gadhimai that was a way to avoid disaster. As a result of this s dream, it has developed into a festival that is held every five years. It is estimated that about 300,000 animals were sacrificed at the festival.
However, we saw a piece of declaration that abolished animal sacrifices at the festival, which means that the animals are liberated from being sacrifices. This bans the mass killing of animals every five years. This declaration, a thin sheet of paper, can save over 300,000 lives every five years. It is truly meritorious! The declaration was issued on July 28.
It states that like humans, animals have flesh and blood and feel pain. So, we should have empathy for animals. However, they also know that with the festival held just last year, they have three years’ time until the next festival. With the festival held every five years, they have a little over three years to work hard in educating people to have love and compassion and to respect animals for their right to life.
Seeing this thin piece of declaration that can save the lives of animals makes me very happy. What karmic circumstances that cause them to make such a major decision? What karmic circumstances make them see the value of and respect the life of animals? Such result is truly very meritorious. Indeed, seeing this, I hope this power of love can expand and reach further and wider in this world.
This requires continuous spreading of the Dharma and sowing the seeds of love. We need to expound life’s principles and dispel people’s ignorance by shining the light of Truth into their hearts and blessing them to see the Truth, so that they will create blessings and stop harming animals in this world. It will not be hard to accomplish this as long as we’re determined to do this.
We also see the story of Mr. Huang, a recycling volunteer, who used to sell fried chicken. One time, a drunken man knocked over his vending cart and caused him to be burned by the hot oil. The injury was very painful to him. It also took him some time to heal his burn. During the recovery time, his wife asked him to watch Da Ai TV. Later on, as karmic causes and condition ripened, he kept watching the Jing Si aphorisms on TV and started developing internal conflicts.
At that time, my business was open. When I had time I would look at the Jing Si Aphorisms on Da Ai TV and read Tzu Chi Monthly Journals. To be honest, that did not make a very good scene as I kept selling fried chicken in the front while watching Jing Si Aphorisms in the back. The neighbors knew that my wife and I were in Tzu Chi training and called me brother.
Since they were very kind and gave their donations to us, we started to collect donations and raise funds for Tzu Chi from many donors. I also inspired many people to be donors who also called me brother while I was still selling fried chicken legs. I felt that scene looked very disturbing. Since I was young, I believe in being like what I want to be. My feeling is that since people are calling me brother now, Ok, I have to be a brother to live up to this term like I really mean it.
He quietly contemplated what he had done and realized that he had formed many bad karmic affinities and contributed to many people’s unhealthy body. Therefore, he was determined to close his business. Even when people expressed interest in renting his store, he turned them down. He even recycled his cooking equipment. See, he completely changed. He has become a farmer now.
He started to feel that he’s short of time. He used to feel like he needed to idle his time away. Now, he doesn’t have enough time. He does a lot of good deeds through serving in Tzu Chi’s four missions. His mother is also very happy for his change. Her friends from her temple used to question her about her son’s profession. She could only reply: “There’s nothing I can do. Let him think about it and slowly change his way.”
Now, not only did he switched to farming, became a farmer and also a vegetarian. This makes his mother very happy. Moreover, he’s also very happy for himself. He can stand up straight and beholds no regret for being a good “Tzu Chi brother”. This is from receiving the Dharma. We have to truly spread the Dharma among people so that they can be liberated from ignorance.
首頁 