20141101見證慈悲跨宗教 The Everlasting Presence of Compassion
Life is full of impermanence. Yet, we humans continue to indulge ourselves in pleasure and do things to damage the Earth. As a result, Mother Nature becomes very ill with disasters happening all the time, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, torrential rain, drought, heat waves, and hurricanes. Indeed, we see news of disasters and it destruction every day.
However, we also see heartwarming news every day around the world i the service provided by living bodhisattvas. With winter coming soon, Tzu Chi volunteers are preparing winter aid for people living in hardship in remote areas in China by visiting the families to find out their needs. In Fujian Province, local government officials took Tzu Chi volunteers to visit residents in the impoverished areas.
We found many families in need, such as elderly who live in extreme poverty and isolation, grandparents raise the grandchild alone, and children who are deprived of education due to poverty. When volunteers visit the students who receive Tzu Chi scholarship, they found extreme poverty in the student’s family background. When volunteers went for home visits they brought gifts for these families.
Volunteers treated the elderly or head of households like their own family, developing a close relationship with them. No matter how far they have to travel or how impassable the roads may seem, volunteers never give up.
Besides Fujian, Tzu Chi volunteers in other province have begun to prepare for winter aid distribution. Every family visited by Tzu Chi volunteers felt very touched and warm at hearts. For these impoverished families, our sincere love and care and genuine feeling for them have deeply touched and imprinted in their hearts, so when they see Tzu Chi volunteers visiting them, they welcomed them like seeing their family members coming home.
Living bodhisattvas make this possible. On the other hand, Tzu Chi’s Education MIssion is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. One of the events is a Tzu Chi forum where we invite speakers from the Philippine to present their disaster relief and recovery experience fr0m Typhoon Haiyan Yolanda, which made landfall in Leyte province on Nov, 8, 2013 and devastated the Cities of Tacloban and Ormoc.
When the local government was about to abandon those cities, Tzu Chi volunteers went there to help and initiated a cleanup program with cash aid for the survivors. Since the disaster last year, Tzu Chi volunteers presence has always been there Tzu chi provided more than just disaster relief to the local residents. Long-term service program are implemented there to put their minds at ease. Transitional classrooms were quickly built to get the students back to schools for their education.
Tzu Chi is now building housing for the survivors. Volunteers are still there to help and also to inspire love and to encourage the locals to reach out and help the people in hardship. Though they may still struggle with poverty, we guide them, step by step, on developing spiritual riches in their hearts so they learn to help others with joy.
This is how Tzu Chi motivated the disaster survivors in Tacloban and Ormic after the typhoon. Tzu Chi also inspired them to improve their lifestyle to be healthier. We inspire love in their hearts and they start to take care of people around them. Yesterday, a priest from St. Nino Church Tacloban came to visit me.
During the Typhoon Haiyan Yolanda disaster relief in Tacloban this church served as an assembly place for Tzu Chi’s clean up driven. In fact, this church was also heavily damaged in the disaster.
As people in the Philippines are mostly Catholics, at a time when they are suffering the most, they need a religious faith to rely on, to give them support, so Tzu Chi offered to help repair this church so that the people in Tacloban can have their church back for their spiritual healing. For this reason, we wanted to help with its repair.
Monsignor Opiniano from the church came yesterday to express his gratitude to Tzu Chi for helping them. I told him that Tzu Chi volunteers from over 40 countries and regions worked together to help the Haiyan (Yolanda) survivors. I also hope that all religions serve the purpose of providing a spiritual support for people and to guide people with love so that they can walk on a correct, bright path in life.
He agrees with my view and believes that different religions should work together. He hopes that the repair can be completed by Christmas for the church to reopen its door to serve all the people in Tacloban. Yesterday volunteers and guest from the Philippines gave talks at the forum in Tzu Chi University, which described the impermanence in life how a super typhoon destroyed the city of Tacloban and how after Tzu Chi volunteers went to help Tacloban is revitalized and functioning now.
This is all due to causes and effects. Actually, this disaster is an accumulated result of damage humans have done to the Earth, which caused global climate change. To address the root causes we need to discipline our life style by reduce our wasteful consumption and our demand of luxury items, and stop polluting our environment. If we can all do that, global warming will naturally stop from worsening.
If people still focus enjoying themselves and continue to create pollution, global warming will intensity Earth will sustain more damages, which will lead to a catastrophic future for mankind.
In summary, we need to protect the Earth well for our future generations and also for ourselves when we return to this world in our future lives.
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