20140112 以善以愛為至寶 To Bring forth Everyone’s Kindness and Love
I see that our Jing Si Hall here in Qingshui has many displays that convey the renwen spirit. There’s also a Jing Si bookstore inside. The spirit and principles of our Jing Si Dharma lineage can really be felt here I am truly very grateful to have such a beautiful and stately hall for us to meet and cultivate together. If we don’t make good use of it, I will feel that we can’t justify ourselves to Mother Nature and to all our kindhearted supporters.
We should know that constructing such a building already has negative environmental impact because natural land has been developed and built on. If we had not built on it, it could have been used to plant crops. But because we have built on it, we ought to justify the need by utilizing it well. We should let this space fulfill the purpose of being a place where people can serve and grow spiritually. For that, first we need to take the Dharma into our hearts.
Coming here, we should seek the Dharma and transform ourselves. We need to first open our hearts to seek life’s truths and be inspired by the Dharma. Then, we need to really get into learning the Dharma and be mindful in listening to teachings on the Dharma. By receiving the teachings, we will come to understand life’s principles and know how we should live our lives. How long is a lifetime? Not that long.
So, we need to take hold of the Dharma and immediately use it to change our life. Don’t keep giving rise to afflictions. We should instead seize upon a wholesome thought, which when put into action, transforms ourselves and inspires others. This Jing Si Hall represents a place where people can learn about life’s correct direction. That requires people to guide others. All of you bodhisattvas here today need to be able to be a person who can show people the right path.
But to point them in the right direction, you need to walk the path yourself so you can know what is the right course. So, you need to listen to teachings on Dharma and really learn and take in the Dharma to transform yourselves so that you yourself walk on the right path. Then, having traveled down that path you can quickly tell others about it and share how to do it.
It’s like how we started Tzu Chi ‘s charity work. At the beginning, I used to personally go visit the poor, traveling to villages in the mountains or in the remote countryside. In the first month, we only had 30 donating members who donated a coin daily. With that, we started helping the poor, first one family, then two, three, five and six, slowly increasing I did the charity work myself.
Then gradually, people joined me. As more people joined me, I started to lead a large group of volunteers to do charity work in Hualien. Then, this expanded to the entire eastern Taiwan, then to northern Taiwan, and eventually to western and southern Taiwan. Every years, I would travel all around Taiwan and lead our volunteers in conducting our charity work I saw people becoming poor due to illness or vice versa. Then I saw the problem of children not being able to receive education.
I saw life’s impermanence I saw people suffer due to natural disasters, accidents, and manmade crises. In these, I witnessed the impermanence in life. The suffering I saw became deeply imprinted in my mind. By this time, the number of Tzu Chi volunteers had grown to a certain size, and I also felt that it would be better to have local Tzu Chi chapters and encourage local donating members to get involved in our charity work as Tzu Chi commissioners. Then, we’d be able to know and serve local needs better.
So, we started to have capers throughout Taiwan carrying out Tzu Chi’s charity work locally. With that, our charity work became established all around Taiwan. Next, through our charity work, I discovered the lack of medical care in eastern Taiwan. So, I embarked on our medical mission to build a hospital. It was full of difficulties. Yet, we were able to overcome the challenges and gradually turned the rough, difficult path into a smooth one.
It wasn’t easy. After that, I encountered problems with shortages of medical personnel in eastern Taiwan. To run a major hospital that can save people’s lives by providing all kinds of services and treatments is truly not easy. What we need are loving doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, etc. where to find staff? In eastern Taiwan, the majority of people were poor and old because this area lacked educational opportunities.
So, the young went elsewhere for development. Therefore, we had to shoulder the heavy burden of taking on the Education Mission to develop medical professionals. That was another set of challenges and hard work. After establishing our missions of Charity, Medicine, and Education, we felt that our society needs wholesome influences. We need to let the public see the spirit and values embedded in our charitable, medical, and educational missions.
We need to provide good role models for people to emulate in order to create a better future for our society. That’s the goal of our Renwen Mission. So, we established Da Ai TV, radio programs, and other media. It took 40 years to complete our four missions and set a firm foundation. What follows next is to spread our work internationally. Within the first ten years, our charity work reached other countries.
Since then, we’ve been carrying out our work globally. This is a brief history of more than 40 years of work by Tzu Chi. In another two months, we will enter our 49th year. After 49, it will be our 50th year soon, which is half a century. We’ll reach half a century soon. So, time enables us to develop our work. In less than half a century, we established our four missions and expanded our work to other countries. People who’d never heard of Taiwan now know of Taiwan because of Tzu Chi.
On some maps, it is difficult to find Taiwan on the map because Taiwan is too small. Though Taiwan is a small island, it is an island full of treasures its treasures are the goodness and love of its people. Taiwan has the treasure of having many people with goodness and love. We are very blessed to live in Taiwan. We should be very grateful.
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