Date: Aug 1st,2010 (Sunday)
Lecturer: Master Zheng-Yan
Subject: Natural Disasters and Human Actions 擇處仁‧倡勤儉
Today is August 1, which makes me recall what happened in 1996.
On the night of July 31, 1996, the typhoon named Herb made landfall in Taiwan.
This typhoon brought huge devastation to Taiwan, especially to central Taiwan’s mountainous regions.
Tzu Chi volunteers risked their safety to bring aid to Wutai township.
Bridges and roads had been destroyed, and a makeshift bridge was made with bamboo poles.
It was very dangerous to travel on it.
But, in order to bring aid, they undertook the risky venture.
Seeing this, I told them that when helping others, they must also consider their own safety and wellbeing.
Seeing what they had to go though to help the disaster survivors, truly made me very worried and
concerned. That was Typhoon Herb.
Besides providing emergency aid, we also provided care and spiritual support to the survivors.
We were also worried about the children being forced to stop their schooling because they had no money for tuition.
Therefore, before the school term started, we also quickly provided tuition assistance.
Actually, a few years before Typhoon Herbert, there was Typhoon Doug which hit Taiwan in 1994, it also caused considerable devastation to Taiwan.
I also visited the disaster sites for this typhoon and walked across fractured land. I saw the damages and devastation.
While there, I encountered a young woman. She said that her plum orchard was gone.
I said, “Did the floods wash it away?”
She said, “NO.”
“My plum orchard now sits in front of another person’s house.”
“How did that happen?” I asked her.
“What about that person’s front yard?”
She replied, “It has slid into the valley bottom”.
From what she described, the land had shifted in such a way as if the mountain had twisted around.
That’s truly frightening, I remember this vividly.
We also visited some families. The fractures in their homes were very wide.
So, I thought, “This place isn’t livable”. “We must help relocate the people”.
It was truly dangerous to live there.
We started to make serious efforts to work out a relocation plan.
We contacted village, town and county officials to try to find a safe area to relocate to where we would build a village for them.
We kept searching for suitable land, but nothing worked out.
There were suitable areas for relocation, but despite our communication efforts
We were not able to procure those lands.
We tried everything, but to no avail.
Because the disaster survivors needed to be settled, in the end, we settled on an area in Cuiluan.
Though it was in the mountains, it was at least a flat piece of land.
We had little choice but to build there.
We built permanent homes for the people.
Because other people up in the mountains made a living by growing vegetables, they had cleared away trees to grow crops.
As a result, water often ran off from the land making the ground very fragile.
So, when transporting steel & other building materials up the mountain, due to the heavy weight (and poor roads) several of our trucks were overturned.
Thankfully, no one got hurt. This happened more than once.
So, the construction project was very difficult.
Every day, I worried a lot over it.
This is the only village that Tzu Chi has built up in a mountain.
Every time there are heavy winds and rains, I always think of the people there and whether they are safe.
After an earthquake, I’d think of them, too.
Every time a disaster happens, I worry about them.
When Typhoon Morakot hit last year, I wondered if the people in Guiluan were affected. Thankfully, they remained safe and well.
In a word, disasters like these really worry us. What place is safe for living? The mountains really aren’t safe.
This time, after Typhoon Morakot, we built a village in Shanlin (Kaohsiung County) and it’s very safe.
Last night, we learned that an earthquake had struck Jiaxian.
Fortunately, there was no damage or casualty reported.
All these natural disasters occurring make us very worried about living on this land.
Therefore, we humans have to respect Mother Nature and have reverence for her.
Yet, we also have to think ahead and consider how to prevent further damage to the land.
We have to decide carefully on where to live so that we can be safe.
Confucius had said that when choosing a place to live, we should choose a place that is safe and
where the residents are moral and upright. That is the wise choice.
Therefore, when choosing a place to live, we must look for a place where there are good and kind people. This is what Confucius taught us.
So, how can we have a place where the people are kind and benevolent?
By transforming people’s hearts through educating people by way of personal example.
So, we need to remind ourselves to set an example with our own conduct and also teach our children to protect the Earth.
Our Earth is being destroyed.
What is destroying our Earth? It may look as if natural disasters are causing the damage.
But is it the typhoons and floods that are causing the destruction?
On the surface, yes.
But the root cause of the destruction lies in human actions.
There’s a Taiwanese saying about frugality leading to security.
Nowadays, people usually don’t eat at home. They go to restaurants and order a lot of food.
After they finish eating, they throw away the food scarps.
How wasteful people are.
See, this is not a good habit to have.
Due to our lifestyle, we’ve become very wasteful and it becomes natural for us.
We do it without awareness and don’t examine our actions.
Our wasteful habits create a lot of garbage, pollute the air, and damage the land.
It causes a vicious cycle.
Such consequences result from the cumulative impact of our daily wasteful habits.
These habits show the corruptedness of our views and thinking because from everyone’s perspective, all this wastefulness is natural and no one examines this way of living. It has become the norm.
So, all of us have played a part in damaging the Earth. All of us have had a hand in it.
So, now, we must bear the collective consequences.
But, we should take it as a wake-up call and change our habits.
At this time, every person needs to take action.
Seeing the abnormal climate and the disasters it has wrought, we really must be on alert, and take action.
(Source: Da Ai TV 人間菩提)
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