20130521--Persevering in Giving with Love恆持善念結好緣
Every day, we pray for a world free of disasters. But looking around the world, we see
disasters occur one after another. So, to have peace and safety throughout the
world is easier said than done. The only way is for everyone to keep a peaceful
and harmonious mind and persevere in giving of themselves with love.
Indeed, we should persist in giving with love. Yesterday morning, we heard. Asst, Supt.
Chien of our hospital in Dalin share with us a story about our volunteer, Mr.
Zou I’m sure those who were present have all been deeply touched.
In fact, everyone can be like Mr. Zou. It’s just that most of us lack perseverance.
Ever since the construction of our hospital in Dalin began, Mr. Zou has been
brewing herbal tea for our construction workers. Up to this day, rain or shine,
he still gets up early and goes to our hospital every day to brew tea for
everyone who goes to our hospital.
His wife also helps him with the work. She works so hard that she injured her spine
and had an operation. But, all she said was that she was grateful that there’s a
Tzu Chi Hospital there. She never complained that all her illness, hunched back,
pain, etc. was caused by the hard work of brewing tea. She is very understanding
and grateful.
I do it because I’m still able. I’m free early in the morning anyway I
treat it as an exercise.
Do your children tell you to quit?
Not at all. They encourage us to keep doing it. As long as people like the tea,
we’ll continue to prepare it for everyone.
To make the herbal tea, this elderly couple get up at 3 a.m. every morning and
start making preparations to brew tea for the staff and patients in our hospital.
See how they’ve formed good affinities with everyone. One time, his house was on
fire, burning down everything that he had put in much hard work to earn.
But, at daybreak the next day, he still went to the hospital to brew tea as if
nothing had happened. When asked about the house, he said, “That’s not
important” “There are so many people in the hospital” “waiting for me to serve,”
“so I have to come”
What he does seems like a simple task that everyone can do, but it is truly not easy
to persist doing it every day for so many years.
When Master was about to leave, she asked me to help keep an eye on the conslruction
work here I gave her my word.
That’s how I started to help and I was happy doing it. When I take time to brew tea and
everyone likes it, I’m also very happy.
In all, it’s something everyone can do, but it’s not easy to keep up. It looks
simple and doesn’t seem to take much effort, but see how he has been doing it
for such a long time. It is also thanks to him that our hospital in Dalin was
able to be built.
At the time, I encountered many difficulties and was under a great deal of
pressure. So, I tried to talk everyone into foregoing the idea of building a
hospital by saying, “We need 20 hectares of land,” “but
we only have 18” “That’s not enough to build dorms, etc.”
I said that to convince everyone to give up. But when Mr. Zou heard me say that we
were still short of 4,000 square meters of land, he was not daunted. So, he
said, “I’ll see what I can do”. Then, he visited the owner of the land we needed
and bought it for Tzu Chi so we could have 20 hectares to build the hospital.
That is how our hospital in Dalin came into being and is now safeguarding the lives
and health of people in that area. He has truly done a lot for Tzu Chi.
We really need to be grateful to him.
Brewing tea for people is not a difficult task. Everyone can do it. But Mr. Zou does it
every day for so many years even when his house was burned down. It’s truly
moving to see.
Over the last few days, it’s been raining heavily across Taiwan, especially in the
central and southern parts of Taiwan.
Take a mountainous area in Kaohsiung for example. Several houses were destroyed and
more than 100 people were evacuated. The images of people fleeing for safety are
truly very frightening to see.
We also see that in the U.S., at least 16 tornadoes struck Texas last week, causing
severe damage Tzu Chi volunteers in Texas immediately mobilized to survey the
disaster situation and give out aid.
See how they opened their arms to embrace those affected and brought them comfort
and timely aid, including cash cards and blankets.
Indeed, this is how we can seize time to give of ourselves and bring value to our lives.
We must also do our part to bring peace to the world.
Only then are we living out the value of our lives. It is my earnest hope that
everyone can be safe and well and there’ll be peace and harmony in the world.
This is what we need to pray for.
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