20140118 居安思危 心虔誠 To Wake Up and Be Prepared in Face of Nature’s Warning Signs
In China, a strong polar front is affecting Inner Mongolia with temperatures dropping to minus 46 degrees Celsius. In such freezing cold, thick icy fog significantly reduces visibility. From the news photo, we see that people outdoors had their hair and eyebrows covered in frost. Such extreme cold weather is unthinkable for us who live in Taiwan.
So, we should understand and cherish our blessings. Living in such a comfortable environment as we have in Taiwan, we should be truly grateful and cherish everything. Also, in Australia, incredibly, lightning that struck in the night sparked 256 fires. Bushfires are burning across Australia. We also saw a forest fire in California, U.S.A. How did the fire start? It’s because people had gone camping in the forest and with a careless action, a tree caught fire. The fire quickly spread and burned acres of forestland.
This fast-burning fire has firefighters working hard to contain the blaze. It’s hard, especially as California is now experiencing severe drought. Without water, how can fires be put out? Such cases of drought and wildfires as well as extreme cold weather show that our climate is going out of balance. It is truly worrying. On top of that, our Earth is already starting to show signs of water shortages. So, we should be on alert and be aware of our usage.
Humans use a lot of resources. Besides resources such as petroleum or minerals which we keep mining and depleting, even water is another resource becoming scarce. So, we’re seeing water shortages. We all need to cherish and conserve water. This is due to us being too wasteful in our lifestyle, using up too much resources. Not only are we wasting resources, we also create a lot of pollution. We should know that. Nature’s elements of earth, water, fire, and air are what sustain life on Earth.
Living in this world, without the land the earth element where are we going to live? Having the land, if we don’t have water the water element, food crops cannot grow. How can we survive without food? If there’s no wind or clean air the air element, or heat from the sun fire element, how can everything on land, including humankind, survive? It’s the presence of these four elements that provides the right conditions for life on Earth and for living creatures to thrive.
Without these four elements, life on Earth would not be possible. But now, humans have disrupted the balance of these four elements, causing extremes. In the dry season, there’s now severe drought. When it does rain, there’s too much, causing floods. In Indonesia, torrential rains in recent days have caused flooding in many areas.
The military and Tzu Chi volunteers there work together to provide aid to flood affectees. In the middle of the night, our volunteers quickly prepared the material supplies and sent out the goods around 4 A.M to the flooded area. So, our volunteers are mobilizing just as quickly as the military and rescue team and are working together with them. When our help is needed no matter what time of the day it is, we’ll act quickly because when disaster hits, people have urgent needs.
Seeing this makes my very touched. Our volunteers respond so quickly to provide timely aid because they cannot bear for people to be suffering. When a disaster happens, they’ll quickly act to help. Even if they’re notified in the middle of the night, they’ll start preparing for aid right away, not waiting for daybreak. That’s how living bodhisattvas are.
Yesterday, in Ormoc, Philippines, we held Year-end Blessings Ceremonies with over 10,00 attendees. It was very heartwarming. When presenting the song “We Are One Family” , all the attendees did all the movements and sincerely took part in the prayer. One after another, local survivors expressed their gratitude onstage.
With Tzu Chi’s cash aid, my brother can rebuild his house now. It’s all because of Tzu Chi’s help. We are very sincere in our love and they are also very sincere in their gratitude an interaction of love and gratitude. Though there’s suffering in life and though they’ve encountered such a disaster that highlights the impermanence in life where massive winds, rains, and storm surges turned their homes into broken pieces of debris in the work of an instant, yet from afar, bodhisattvas from different countries have gone there to help, comfort, and care for them.
Also, volunteers in 46 countries and regions have been fundraising to help them. So, in places far away from them, everyone is working hard to help as if there were no distance between them at all as people give so warmly and sincerely. Two days ago, our TIMA members in Taiwan and staff of our Tzu Chi hospitals went to the Philippines to hold free clinics, but they encountered many setbacks and had many challenges to overcome.
Due to inclement weather, equipment and supplies being shipped from Manila were held up. So, they had to quickly arrange for equipment to be shipped in from Cebu. But the equipment have yet to arrive again due to inclement weather. Encountering setbacks, we have to overcome them. Because of Tzu Chi volunteers’ sincerity to help, they are committed to overcoming all difficulties to fulfill their mission.
So, they’ve been working very hard the past few days I really hope that everything can turn out smoothly for them. In conclusion, when Nature is balanced, and there are no disasters, that is really a blessing for humankind.
When Nature goes out of balance, it is a big threat to human welfare. Given that catastrophic disasters have happened, we must truly wake up. If people don’t wake up, Nature’s order will keep being disrupted and humankind will face many crises, So, we must live piously, with prudent vigilance.
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