The phoenix is a kind of legendary bird that lived in Arabia. According to tradition, the phoenix consumed itself by fire every five hundred years, and a young new phoenix sprang from its ashes.

Every morning, Lin Yeh wakes up at 3:30. She starts her daily routine by chanting the Mantra of Great Compassion for two or three hours, after which she works in the little garden by the community Buddhist temple. She then cleans and tidies up inside the temple before she performs her daily Buddhist rites there. In the daytime, besides doing laundry for a few families in the neighborhood and preparing her own meals, she copies the sutras in her free time. This is not an easy task for her as she has been illiterate most of her life (not uncommon among women of her generation) and only started to learn to read and write about a year ago. What is more, all her fingers have been deformed by leprosy.

It is in this community called the Lo-sheng Sanatorium, which sits quietly on a small hill secluded from the bustle of the city, that Lin Yeh has spent the last fifty-two years of her life. Now, at the age of sixty-eight, she is able to view her life here as a leper from a very different perceptive than she did when she first moved into the sanatorium. She has been invited to share her life experience at many Tzu Chi activities, and her story has inspired any number of people.

Lin Yeh entered Lo-sheng when she was sixteen. Even though fifty-two years have passed now, each time she recollects the episode, tears begin to roll down her face. She was living with her father, her stepmother and stepbrothers then. Her mother had passed away when she was still in her infancy and her grandmother had brought her up. Living under the same roof, she knew that for some reason her stepmother did not like her. Throughout her childhood, she was afraid of being deserted by her parents. During the daytime she tried to avoid her stepmother, but at night that was impossible as the whole family slept in the same room, a common situation among poor peasant families in earlier years in Taiwan. One night, young Lin Yeh overheard a conversation between her father and stepmother. Her stepmother must have thought that Lin Yeh was already asleep, for she was urging her husband to drive Lin Yeh out of the house.

That was the longest, darkest night Lin Yeh ever experienced in her whole life. Her nightmare of being driven out of the family had finally come true. She wept silently in her bed throughout the night, and by daybreak she had reached a decision. At that time, she had already been diagnosed with leprosy. That morning, she waited for her father by the road on his way to work. There she told him that she wanted to move into the Lo-sheng Sanatorium.

"But, why?" asked her father, who actually loved her very much. "I can afford to raise you."

She explained to her father that she loved him so much and she could not bear to see him torn between her and his new wife. She thought that her leaving would bring peace and harmony to his family. After listening to what she said, her father wordlessly and helplessly lowered his head.

The hard life begins

Back in the 1940s, leprosy was still one of the most feared diseases in Taiwan, and lepers were considered unclean or even sinful. The Lo-sheng Sanatorium was a sanctuary for lepers to isolate themselves from their families and the public. To Lin Yeh, a sixteen-year-old girl who had grown up in the country, the prospect of living in such a sanatorium was more than intimidating. She will never forget the day she entered Lo-sheng. "It was my uncle who brought me here," she recalled as tears streamed down her cheeks. "My father couldn't face the fact. My uncle brought me to the gate on his bicycle, and he asked me to go in by myself. As he turned and was about to leave, I was completely seized with panic." In despair, she shouted to her uncle, "When will you come to take me home again, Uncle?" "I will come to take you home when you are cured," he replied, and he then left without looking back again.

From then on Lin Yeh looked forward to that day, the day when her uncle or some other family member would come to take her home. "I waited, day after day, year after year," she wailed, "but that day never came." No one in the family ever asked her to go home, not even when she had long recovered from the disease.

In the beginning, she cried bitterly every day. At that time, the medicine that could arrest the development of leprosy had not yet been introduced into Taiwan. When there was a relapse, the pain was unbearable. The suicide rate among patients in the sanatorium was extremely high. Lin Yeh, too, thought about committing suicide. However, the encouragement and solace of some of her fellow patients saw her through. "I am so glad that I did not forsake my body then, or else I would not have had the chance to meet Master Cheng Yen later and learn to cultivate blessings and find myself again."

The Master's visit

Coming into contact with Master Cheng Yen and Tzu Chi has changed Lin Yeh's life enormously, as well as the lives of many others in the sanatorium. In the 1970s, Master Cheng Yen visited the sanatorium for the first time. "She didn't talk to us about Buddhism at all," Lin Yeh recalled. "She only came up to each patient and asked softly, 'Is there anything that I can do for you?'" They told the Master that the financial subsidies they received from the government were scarcely enough to maintain their daily subsistence, and when there was a complication in their disease and medical treatment was needed, their situation became desperate. Furthermore, there were a number of paralyzed patients who needed special nursing while the sanatorium did not provide any. Without further ado, the Master agreed to provide financial assistance to every patient in Lo-sheng and also hired special nurses to take care of the paralyzed patients. From then on, Tzu Chi volunteers began to pay regular visits to Lo-sheng.

In the beginning, the Lo-sheng patients did not feel anything special about the financial assistance from Tzu Chi, as they thought Tzu Chi was an affluent organization and its donors were all rich people. After about two years, an inadvertent discovery took them by surprise. From the list of donors printed in a Tzu Chi magazine, they discovered that the money they received monthly actually came from the regular small donations of many common people. These people must have worked and saved hard for the money that they donated. "We are indebted to too many people," said Lin Yeh. "There's no such thing as a free lunch. If we don't start paying back in this life, one way or another we still have to pay back in the next one." They told the Master that they wanted to become Tzu Chi members. "You must be prepared to do it with a sincere heart and make a long-term commitment" was the Master's reply.

"We lepers are ostracized by society," remarked Lin Yeh. "Even if we wanted to donate, no one else would accept our money. We are truly grateful to the Master, who unhesitatingly accepted us."

The Lo-sheng patients began making regular donations by economizing on small expenditures. Later, Tzu Chi started building Tzu Chi Hospital and a significant amount of money was needed to reach the estimated construction cost. Upon learning this, the Lo-sheng patients requested that Tzu Chi stop providing them with financial subsidies. Many of them also donated their life savings or raised funds from their relatives and friends.

Lin Yeh donated NT$100,000 [US$2,500]. It was her life savings, which she had earned through laundering and doing odd jobs in a nearby brick factory. She used to hide her savings under her bed, and every time she left her room she started to worry that the money would be stolen. "To me it was a big sum and I had worked hard for it for many years," she said. "Even when I was in the temple chanting 'Amitabha,' my heart was actually with the money and not the Buddha." After she had donated the money, she finally breathed a sigh of relief. She learned how good it felt to be able to let go. Now, her heart follows where she goes.

"If it were not for Tzu Chi, I would not have regained my dignity and sense of self-worth," exclaimed Lin Yeh. Being disfigured or handicapped by leprosy and facing popular misconceptions about the disease, most patients in Lo-sheng had gone through life with no sense of self-esteem. The care and giving of Tzu Chi people warmed their hearts. More importantly, through their own efforts in raising funds to help build the Tzu Chi hospital, they realized they were also capable of giving.

Coming out of her isolation

After moving into Lo-sheng when she was sixteen, Lin Yeh never left the neighborhood until almost forty years later when she learned that her father had been hospitalized with cancer. Her self-isolation was due partly to her disappointment in her family members and partly to her disfigurement. She used to hide herself whenever there were visitors in the sanatorium. The first time she descended the hill where Lo-sheng was located, she still felt uneasy facing others. In spite of this, she started commuting between the sanatorium and the hospital to take care of her father. She talked to her father about Buddhism and urged him to make donations for the construction of the Tzu Chi hospital. He had become quite wealthy due to a large compensation when his land was reclaimed by the government for urbanization, yet he refused to donate even a penny. Not only that, he scorned Lin Yeh's unrealistic efforts in raising funds when she herself was not healthy and barely scraped by financially. Lin Yeh, however, was not defeated. Eventually, she managed to raise a large sum of money from her other relatives.

Now when she speaks in public, Lin Yeh no longer feels uncomfortable. In fact, she is more than willing to share her story because she thinks that it will inspire others to fulfill their own lives. She wants to demonstrate how one can make one's life useful in spite of any handicap. When she goes on stage to tell her life story, she likes to introduce to the audience her "children" and "grandchildren"--the children she has looked after and raised in the past thirty years.

About thirty years ago, after her condition had improved, she volunteered her services to poor working couples in the neighborhood. She helped look after their children during the day when the parents were out earning a living. At one point, she was taking care of eighteen children in the sanatorium. She had to wake up at 3:30 every morning to prepare their breakfast and box lunches and to do their laundry. After these children had grown up, gotten married and had children, some of them left their children in her care again. And now they all call her "Granny." Though she never did get married, she is loved and respected by her many children and grandchildren.

Having come down a rough, bumpy road, Lin Yeh has a profound understanding of life. Her courage, diligence and perseverance outshine many healthy lives, but what is more noteworthy is her forgiving heart. She stayed by her father's sickbed until his death while her other siblings gave him no heed. When the life story of Lin Yeh spread among Tzu Chi people, one of them told the story to Lin Yeh's stepmother, without realizing who she was. The old woman was filled with guilt and repentance. She broke down in tears when she sought out Lin Yeh in Lo-sheng and asked her forgiveness. Lin Yeh told her stepmother that she had already forgiven her long ago.

"If I had not been through all these hardships, I would not have this profound understanding about the meaning of my life," said Lin Yeh. "I would not have lived this life to the fullest." In fact, she believes she should be grateful for having the disease. It has given her a different life, one like that of the phoenix which burns itself and rises again from the ashes, fresh and beautiful, for another, longer life.