20131013《人間菩提》欲除禍殃去無明To Spread Seeds of Love to Prevent Disasters
Looking around the world, we often see news of natural disasters. That is why I often remind everyone to cherish and protect our environment. Only when Mother Nature is safe and well, we can be safe and well. We should always be on alert for disasters. Only with such awareness will we remember to cherish and care for our environment. This is what I often ask of everyone.
I always talk about this in hopes that we can help reduce disasters and have more peace everywhere in the world. It will take everyone’s sincerity to make this happen.
Today is October 13. On this day in 2001, we launched our “Spread the Seeds of Love” movement to get everyone in doing good, so that disasters may cease in our world, because that year, there was the 911 tragedy in the U.S. which led to war in Afghanistan. That year, Taiwan also suffered two devastating typhoon. Typhoon Toraji and Nari, which caused considerable damage in Taiwan.
With the world afflicted by disasters, we began reaching out to communities everywhere to appeal for everyone to harbor wholesome thoughts and do good. Oct. 13 was the day we started this movement.
That day, I was at our Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital while my master Ven. Yin Shun was at the Abode, He led the cultivators at the Abode as well as our hospital volunteers in launching this movement at the Abode and simultaneously around the world.Look at the long procession of people. At that same time, Tzu Chi volunteers all across Taiwan also began going out into the community to inspire everyone to harbor love.
That day, I left Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital and traveled north in time for our first large-scale prayer ceremony held in Guandu. We invited the leaders of many religions to be a part of this ceremony. When the bell resounded there in Guandu, in the U.S., all who gathered for our services there, also began their prayer, urging everyone to harbor wholesome thoughts.
This event guided everyone to pray sincerely. We must remind ourselves to always harbor this heart of love and goodness and live by it in all we do in daily life.
As I have said before, we need to learn to overcome and put a stop to our afflictions. Only by clearing away our afflictions can our wisdom shine through. Wisdom will give us the power to relieve living beings’ suffering.
To do this, we have to purify our own heart and bring forth the great resolve to save living beings, I hope we can spread this spirit of love widely so everyone can hear of it and witness it and learn to interact with one another with love.
This is something that we urgently need to promote and spread right now because disasters are happening very frequently in our world now. We saw how two years ago, the 3.11 Earthquake in Japan damaged a nuclear power plant, which started leaking radioactive water into the sea.
Yet, some people still want to eat seafood, such as sashimi and whitebait. We should know that whitebait is not a specific species of fish. It’s a collective term for the young of various species of fish. Some people like to eat it. One spoonful of whitebait contains many small fish. So, swallowing a spoonful of it means consuming the lives of ten or twenty fish.
I used to like eating meat, especially fresh meat. When Iare seafood, I wanted it fresh. What I remember the most is a dish of deep-fried dish that’s still alive. My friend said, “Since you like fresh seafood, that’s the freshest. Seeing it, it really hit me that animals have to endure so much suffering. Why do we want to eat their flesh? It’s so painful for them.
Half of the fish is fried while the other half is still raw. Its eyes looked pleading. Its mouth was still moving. My friend said, “You’re the important guest. So, the fish head was pointed at me. When I saw it, I felt deep remorse.
After realizing how it was not right, he switched to eating vegetarian and found that his health improved. Since then, he has been promoting vegetarianism using his own personal experience. As he is a doctor, when he speaks on the health benefits, it will carry more weight with people.
However, we should learn more about healthy lifestyle habits. Besides learning this ourselves, we should also share with others that eating less meat means reaping less karmic retribution from killing.
So, I hope all of us will raise our awareness. We should find ways to guide people in the world to have love that is based on wisdom. Otherwise, with all the negative karma we keep creating, how can our negative karma be eliminated? And how are we to bear the retribution?
Indeed, humans have done many damaging things. Such damaging acts accumulated over time without us being aware of it. The bigger our population, the more negative karma we create, in terms of type, magnitude and depth.
So, collective karma is formed and shared by all. Because of this karma, our world is now in a desperate situation, like a house on fire. When Mother Nature is out of balance, we’ll hear frequent reports of disasters happening. Although we may feel very powerless to stop this, we still have to do what we can do to help because any effort will leave an impact.
But, while we do it all to save the Earth and to preserve the environment, it is also for ourselves because we’ll be reborn into this world again. This is our world.We should protect it well by reducing our unwholesome actions now. Then our future society will be better. If we don’t get to enjoy the benefits in this life, we’ll be able to in our future lives. If we don’t do it for ourselves, we should consider our children and their children. So, we should find ways to convince more people to do good and not eat meat just for its taste.
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