20131205志工連心運悲智To Use Wisdom and Compassion to Give Aid with the Right Balance
We need to care for this devastated land with love. Toward the people living there, we need to gently care for them so that as they are recovering from trauma, their hearts can be warmed and their pain and suffering can be eased.
This is what our Tzu Chi volunteers are doing. Volunteers from d=eight countries have already mobilized and gone to the disaster area to give their love and help the survivors. Every day, what worries me most is giving aid with the right balance that will encourage them not to become dependent on aid and can inspire their love and goodness so they can have renewed hope and boosted morale to rebuild. So, we need to use both wisdom and compassion.
The basis of our great compassion comes from being in touch with Truth. Having this great compassion, we will know and understand our connection with the world and all in it. We are one collective whole. So, others are ourselves and we love all.
When others are in pain, we feel for them deeply and cannot bear for them to continue suffering. Now, this devastated land is staring to recover little by little. I thought, “This is the end of the world”. We have no one to turn to, no food and no work. It’s when you showed up that we finally found hope.
We also saw that in Tunga, our volunteers had been holding a large scale distribution the whole day yesterday. We clearly calculated the amount of cash aid based on the number of people in each family. The survivors also received a letter. When they read the letter, they were very grateful.
The letter helped to comfort them. I read it and I cried because our town got selected by Tzu Chi as the place for aid Tzu Chi comes to help us in our hardest time. In addition, our shelter design team also went to the Philippines to help build the temporary classrooms.
Yesterday, it was very hot, 35 degrees Celsius. They had to work in this hot weather to set up the temporary classrooms. Upon arriving at an unfamiliar place, they need to determine how many classrooms they can build there. Based on our experience, we found that this field has very solid soil structure. We can build a total of nine temporary classrooms, around the flagpole stand.
Their work is very hard. Yet, every time I asked them how they were, they’d say, “Although the work is hard,” “we are very happy”. I asked them, “How come?” They replied, “Seeing more and more survivors back to their normal lives gives us heartfelt joy”.
See, this is how living bodhisattvas care deeply about the people in suffering. As long as the people in need are alleviated of their suffering so their hearts can settle down and they are able to have a simple shelter to shield them from natural elements the, I believe that as long as their sense of hope returns, they will find plenty of strength to start anew.
In all my years of disaster aid experience, I’ve never seen such a massive disaster. I feel such sorrow and heartache for them. So, we follow Master’s guidance, which is to help survivors heal from this disaster. This is why our aspiration in cultivation is to benefit all living beings.
So, our cultivation and striving for enlightenment comes from helping others to awaken which requires our own cultivation where we work on growing in wisdom-life and putting wisdom to use to benefit others. We see how our volunteers there are working to benefit people. Now, the debris in the disaster areas is slowly being cleared away.
In the vast area of destruction, we can see, from the air, how roads are being cleared and reopened. Local stores are gradually opening for business. So, the cleanup areas for our cash-for-work program are slowly reducing in size as we see the streets becoming clean now.
As they cleared away the debris, the sadness and pain of the survivors slowly turned into happiness and hope. It’s like they now see the sun and clear blue sky. Just like the survivors’ feelings, we also feel there’s a lot of hope.
In the disaster area, to be able to guide and inspire they locals to be happy and have them work harmoniously together with gratitude is truly not easy. I’m very touched by this and really commend our relief team for the work they’re doing there.
All in all, while our volunteers are working hard at the front line, volunteers worldwide in both hemispheres are raising funds despite the winter cold or summer heat. They’re practicing the way of Bodhisattvas.
Early in the morning, they went to the market to fundraise. At noon time, they went to schools. In the evening, they went to the night market. They also solicit donations from business stores in public areas. Even a dialysis patient expressed his wish to help out.
Although it’s only one or two ringgits, they say if they collect from many people the little bit of money we give will slowly accumulate to a great amount. Even though we have an illness, we have people helping us. Though we live a hard life, there are people worse off than us.
So, rich and poor alike are all bringing out their love. This is the reason Tzu Chi volunteers go out to do street fundraising and why they bow to passersby wherever they are to appeal for donations. When people show them a bad attitude, they will still thank them. This is our cultivation where we train ourselves not to lost our love no matter what we encounter.
So, those on the front line focus on the relief work to relieve survivors’ suffering while volunteers across the world who are of different ethnicities, speak different languages, and have different faiths are all uniting in the effort to inspire love and pool together donations.
There are many, many touching stories from this. So, I say that even though the weather is so cold, people’s hearts are nevertheless very warm, be it in the UK, France, Germany, Canada, U.S., or other countries such as those in Africa. Across the five continents, Tzu Chi volunteers are all mobilizing in this campaign to inspire love.
There are many touching things and there are countless people I must thank as everyone is like a seed inspiring countless people’s love. I’m most grateful for everyone’s giving.
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