The gray identification cards and the navy blue uniforms worn by the Tzu Chi commissioners, Tzu Cheng Faith Corps members and Honorary Board members testify to their affinity with the foundation and their covenant with Master Cheng Yen. For Tzu Chi people, the volunteer certification ceremony is more than just a ceremony.

To become a certified Tzu Chi volunteer is to make a lifetime commitment. Happiness becomes a synonym for hard work, contentment for fulfillment of duties. The motto for Tzu Chi people is "Just do it."

Four months ago, when the worst earthquake of the century hit Taiwan, Tzu Chi volunteers donated money and relief materials, held fund-raisers and charity auctions, transported supplies to the disaster areas, washed and cut vegetables and prepared meals, chanted sutras to soothe the souls of the dead, and built temporary houses for quake survivors. They are not professional, but they make up for their insufficiencies by working hard and paying close attention to everything they do. They don't have a lot of free time on their hands, but they are willing to dedicate their limited time to Tzu Chi because they think Tzu Chi's business is everybody's business.

Every year during the Chinese New Year celebration, new Tzu Chi commissioners, Tzu Cheng Faith Corps members and Tzu Chi Honorary Board members receive their certifications from Master Cheng Yen at the conclusion of their training. During the ceremony, the Master fastens to their lapels identification cards with lotus flower emblems. From then on, they are to take the Buddha's compassion as their own and the Master's commitment as their own as they set out on their paths to a Pure Land in their hearts.

Sharing blessings

Cheng Chun's husband owns an electric appliance store. When she joined Tzu Chi and became a trainee commissioner, she was finally lifted from the monotonous daily routine of "keeping shop, answering phone calls, and copying down customers' addresses." After the September 21 earthquake, she went to the disaster area to help prepare meals for earthquake victims. Even her husband, who was often busy delivering goods and installing air-conditioners for customers, was singled out by a Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member because of the efficiency and precision he showed in his work. The member persuaded him to join in the post-quake reconstruction work.

"Mr. Yang, will you help us build temporary houses for homeless quake survivors? I heard that you are very competent at your work. We are in short supply of manpower. Please come and join us." The volunteer's words convinced Yang. Chun was very happy when her husband finally agreed to become a Tzu Chi volunteer. It was not easy to convince him because he was not yet very enthusiastic about Tzu Chi.

"On the first day he was to go to the construction site, the Tzu Chi people were to pick him up at 3:30 in the morning, so he put on the 'blue sky and white clouds' uniform and got himself ready as early as 3," said Chun, brimming with joy. "When he came to my bedside, I was so surprised by his appearance. He looked so handsome in that uniform! Before he was to go help build the 'Great Love' houses, things kept coming up. At one moment, Tzu Chi would call to urge him to come; at another they would tell him that he didn't have to go because there was actually an oversupply of manpower. He felt a bit dispirited on account of it. But I told him that when we did volunteer work at Tzu Chi, we needed to be quick or else our work would be grabbed by other people who were eager to help. Luckily, more help was needed at the construction sites and my husband finally had a chance to go. It was great that he didn't lose the chance. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to share the happiness of helping people together!"

Chun considered it a blessing to be able to do something for the earthquake victims. Early in the morning of September 21, she went for a walk as usual. When she passed by a nearby cemetery, she started to cry over the impermanence of life. Earlier that day, she had heard that the earthquake had demolished many houses and a lot of people were buried alive. Some time later that day, when she and other hikers walked down the mountains, she heard one of them say, "Tzu Chi has mobilized a lot of people to help in the disaster areas." The mention of Tzu Chi lifted her spirits.

When Chun came home, her husband told her that some Tzu Chi volunteer had called to enlist her help in the disaster area. She took out two sets of Tzu Chi uniforms and started packing, but before she had time to finish the bus that came to pick her up was already waiting outside, blowing its horn.

The bus sped towards Puli, one of the regions worst devastated by the temblor. Chun served in the cooking team, which was responsible for preparing meals for victims and rescue workers. "My husband complains about how slow I am," she smiled. "But I worked pretty fast at the disaster area. My cooking skills seemed to have improved too. At ten o'clock that night, our feet began to ache from standing too long and our hands were stiff from holding chopsticks. In order to keep providing meals, we borrowed plastic gloves and put noodles into bowls with our hands."

Absorbed in her work, she didn't notice that an elderly couple had come up behind her. Judging from their clothes, they must have been quite well-off. She was not sure if they needed any hot food, so she asked, "Would you like to have some rice noodles?"

Accepting a bowl of noodles, the old woman burst into tears. "We're so miserable! Even if we had any money on us now, there's no place to buy food."

Chun fought back her tears, remembering the senior commissioners' advice that it was improper to shed tears before disaster victims. She could only put on a brave front and receive every victim who came to her with respect.

The next day, Chun was assigned the job of counting relief payments to be distributed to quake survivors. "We had to make sure that each relief payment was the right amount so that the commissioners in Puli could deliver them to survivors. The cash that I counted that day alone amounted to NT$2.8 million (US$93,333)! I have a niece who works as a full-time employee at Tzu Chi. At three in the morning of September 21, she had already arrived at the scene of a collapsed building in Taipei. According to her, that $2.8 million was only a small portion of all the money given to the victims."

Through the experience of helping in the quake relief effort, Chun became fully aware of the honor and sense of mission belonging to a Tzu Chi volunteer and a commissioner-to-be. What made her even happier was her husband's change of attitude. Before the earthquake, when she asked him to fill in an application form to become a trainee Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member, he had made excuses and refused. But after he came back from helping to build prefabricated houses, he asked her rather anxiously, "Where's that form you gave me?"

Rewriting his life story

"The place is completely sealed off and we can't get in. Come quickly!" After the earthquake, Peng Te-fu set out for the buildings his company was constructing to check whether anything had fallen in the earthquake. But when he saw the building across from his house belching smoke, he donned his "blue-sky-and-white-clouds" uniform and grabbed his 8 mm video camera. Thus outfitted, he turned into a Tzu Chi volunteer responsible for filming events for the foundation.

The phone call had come from Li Kui-chung, deputy commander of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps, at 2 a.m. on September 21. Thanks to his camera and a press pass, Peng was allowed to enter the collapsed Doctors' Home Building in Hsinchuang, Taipei County.

After Peng reported the conditions he witnessed in the collapsed building to Tzu Cheng Faith Corps members waiting outside the restricted area, the Corps members immediately set out to prepare hot food, blankets and clothes for quake survivors. Peng stayed on the scene to continue his filming job. In the darkness, he kept hearing explosions while firefighters were busily putting out fires. He saw a family of four trapped under walls that had tumbled down. Relief workers had to use a jackhammer to clear obstacles out of the way before they could reach the family. Peng filmed the whole rescue and then gave the footage to Tzu Chi TV to be broadcast.

The next day, he went to a hospital with a group of Tzu Chi volunteers to care for the injured and to distribute emergency relief money. On the same day, he also went to a market to help in a fund-raising activity and to record the event. While busy capturing scenes with his camera, he did not forget to call out to people to awaken the love hidden in their hearts and get them to donate. When the residents of the Doctors' Home Building moved into shelter at an army missile base, he also delivered drinking water, clothes dryers and electric fans.

On October 16, Peng, a civil engineering contractor, led a team of Tzu Chi members and seven or eight of his employees to help build "Great Love" prefabricated houses on Wenhua Road in Nantou. Before they set out, he told his workers that although they would be working for Tzu Chi for the following two days, their pay would be given to them as usual. Two days later, when they got back to Taipei, he was happy to hear that two of his workers had decided to join Tzu Chi.

"There is innate love in everyone's heart--it only needs to be inspired," Peng said. Speaking of this, he could not help thinking of his past. "I used to be a very bad person. After dropping out of high school, I joined a band of gangsters and spent my days picking fights. Once I was thrown off a bridge into a river by an enemy. Fortunately, a boatman saved my life. When I was nineteen, someone threw sulfuric acid on me. My friend went to that guy to get revenge. He hurt that person so badly that he was permanently crippled. I felt so guilty toward him that later I even went to him to ask for his forgiveness. Now, he is a Tzu Chi member too." The acid left an obvious scar on his left arm. Although it no longer hurt, his mind could not rest at ease until he had sought that man's forgiveness.

Peng used to have a hot temper. If someone's car accidentally scraped his on the road, he would immediately step out of his car to yell at or fight with the other driver. Everyone was afraid of him. But ever since he came to know Tzu Chi in 1996, he has gradually begun to mend his behavior and get along better with people.

Two years ago, Peng signed up to train as a Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member and a Tzu Chi commissioner. He became a certified Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member last year, and this year he will receive his commissioner's certification from Master Cheng Yen. For him, becoming a Tzu Chi volunteer has rewritten his life story. He cherishes the Tzu Chi badge on his uniforms. "Tzu Chi has so many missions to develop, and yet the Master is so delicate. I cannot bear seeing her shoulder such a big burden, so I put in more time and effort for Tzu Chi."

Peng is now a Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member, a trainee commissioner and a volunteer. With so many duties, how does he find time for his family and business? "Before I joined Tzu Chi, I used to tell people that I was busy, but it was just an excuse. You can tell people you are busy when you are drinking and playing cards. After I joined Tzu Chi, I cut down a great deal on my social appointments. I believe that as long as you know what the priority of your life is and arrange your life accordingly, time is not an issue."

The prodigal son

"When I was at the disaster area, a young man came to me for a tent. He said that he had an aged mother and two young sons to take care of. If he didn't get a tent, he didn't know where his family would sleep. I felt so sad because I didn't bring any tents with me and so was unable to help him there. Sometimes I still think of that young man and wonder if his family finally moved into one of the Great Love houses."

I had already passed two tissues to Yen Kuo-li, but tears still kept flowing down his face. "When I was building prefabricated houses for quake survivors, I got so tired that I really wanted to go home and rest. What kept me going throughout the whole construction process were those earthquake victims." Thinking of the victims in Puli, his eyes filled with tears again.

Having finished a year's training courses, Yen will soon become a certified member of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps. When he talked about his irresponsible youth, he cried even more bitterly. "I know I've changed. But I hurt my parents' hearts so badly in the past that I don't know if they are willing to trust me again. A Tzu Chi member told me that my mother once came secretly to the construction site in Puli to sneak a look at me from a distance..."

The 35-year-old prodigal son went on relating his story, unreservedly laying open his painful past before us. "I got addicted to gambling when I was twenty-five. Sleeping by day and gambling by night, I never knew how much I won, because once I won I would visit night clubs and dance halls and squander the money away."

"There was a year during which I didn't go home for a whole eleven months. My family was so anxious about me that they even put notices in newspapers looking for me... I got to know Tzu Chi on October 1, 1997. Since then, I have enjoyed spending time with Tzu Chi people. I was attracted by their goodness, so I made up my mind to make a clean sweep of my old bad habits and join the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps."

After going astray for almost ten years, Yen is finally mending his ways thanks to the influence and care of the Tzu Chi commissioners and the encouragement of his wife. During the past half year, he has had no formal job. In order to cut himself off from his old irresponsible ways and bad habits, he has been following other Tzu Chi volunteers around doing good deeds.

On the day the massive earthquake struck, Yen happened to be in Hualien building a bamboo teahouse for Tzu Chi. In order to join in the emergency relief effort, he and the other volunteers who were working on the teahouse rushed to central Taiwan the next day. Yen helped direct traffic in Puli and transported relief supplies to remote disaster areas. When Tzu Chi began to build prefabricated houses in Puli, he also pitched in and was among those who worked devotedly from the beginning of the construction project to the end.

In order to raise funds for Project Hope (the foundation's plan to help rebuild schools destroyed or damaged in the earthquake), Puli commissioner Shen Shun-tsung held a tea set exhibition at the Taipei World Trade Center during the New Year holiday. Yen spent six days there, from the day the exhibition site was being decorated to the end of the exhibition. After that, he went back to Hualien to continue building the unfinished teahouse. He plans to work there until the teahouse is completed.

As he continues to accumulate experiences from working as a volunteer, Yen hopes that one day he can formally register his occupation as "volunteer." This is an odd ambition for a married man, but he has his wife's full support. She told him, "Spend as much time as you like, as long as you are doing things for Tzu Chi."

As can be imagined, his family must be in pretty good financial condition for him to contribute so much of his time to volunteer work. Moreover, since Yen was once a gambler who gambled away millions of dollars in a matter of seconds, it is quite natural that his wife is happy and content as long as he is willing to learn to be a decent man.

Anyone hearing Yen's story for the first time may find the change in him abrupt and unexpected. Maybe this was why his mother, as surprised as anyone, sneaked into the Great Love construction site to look at him.

From emergency relief operations to post-quake reconstruction efforts, Yen's performance won effusive praises from Kuo Tung-cheng, deputy commander of the Central Taiwan Division of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps, and his wife Chou Hsiu-ying, a Tzu Chi commissioner. Chou talked about Yen in a sisterly tone. "Yen is sincere and hard-working. He lived at the site during the construction of the Great Love houses, and after work each day he would sort out his tools and put them away very neatly. He did a very nice job."

Having earned such approval for his change, will Yen be able to regain his parents' trust in the future? It is like a television series that is reaching its climax. I look forward to the next episode.

Always ready to help

At a charity fund-raiser for Project Hope, a Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member could be seen wielding a broom to sweep away the water that had accumulated in front of the main door and on the canvas awnings. He did his job with ease. Even when it rained harder, he was not in the least affected. He just silently did what he thought he should do.

On September 21, just after the great earthquake, newly certified Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member Shih Yi-ching drove his truck into the disaster area. He was thoroughly familiar with the route, because he often visited Nantou. When he saw the familiar but badly distorted streets, he could not believe his eyes.

"The earth seemed to have been torn open," said 57-year-old Shih. "When my truck arrived at Chushan, night had already fallen. My headlights lit up collapsed houses and badly disrupted roads. It was a really scary scene. I worried that such bad road conditions would prevent any car from going any further. I felt like I was driving headlong into hell." As it turned out, the bridge leading to Mingchien was impassable. Therefore he had to turn back to Erhshui and make a detour to reach Nantou Municipal Stadium.

At ten o'clock that night, Shih went to a funeral parlor to chant sutras to soothe the souls of those who lost their lives in the earthquake. He had never seen so many dead people at one time. Feeling deep sympathy for them, he sighed, "Poor creatures!" It was past midnight when he finished chanting the sutras, so he went back to his truck and spent the night there.

The next day, when he was transporting relief supplies to Chushan, he saw over ten dead bodies placed in a canvas shelter. "The grass there was long and untrimmed and the sun was swelteringly hot. I felt so sorry for the dead that I began to chant sutras for them. As I was doing so, an old man came to the shed. He lifted the blanket off a young man's dead body and then tenderly touched its head. But he was too sad to cry."

At that time, some Tzu Chi volunteers had arrived at the rescue scene where survivors were being pulled out of the debris and dead bodies were being excavated. Shih said that when the backhoes stopped digging, worried family members that were waiting anxiously for victims to be rescued from the rubble immediately got nervous, because it meant that more bodies had been found. What followed would be scenes of loud, uncontrollable wailing and crying. At such moments, Tzu Chi volunteers would step forward to console and comfort the bereaved.

"I tried to keep myself from crying, otherwise I would have broken down and been unable to take care of things. I saw some Tzu Chi women who failed to hold back their tears and burst out crying. We volunteers have to learn to be stronger, or else the strain will be too much for us to bear. There was one volunteer whom I admired the most. She worked in the municipal stadium from morning till night, busy arranging affairs for the deceased. She gave me a lot of courage." Shih went on to say that whenever he found that the funeral parlor in the stadium was short of pallbearers, he would immediately fill in, because it was complete chaos at the disaster area and not much professional help could be obtained.

Through his participation in the quake relief operation, Shih saw quite a few victims who accepted their fate without any complaint and cherished every blessing that came their way. Once he saw a mother with a child. Thinking that they might be in need of food, he took out some milk powder and gave it to her. But she answered, "Please save it for people who are more in need." At mealtime, he saw a well-dressed woman who received her food from the volunteers and ate like the rest of the people, in silence. These victims chose to face an inescapable natural disaster with calm poise and dignity. It was such people who most profoundly touched Shih's heart.

The medical team

When the September 21 earthquake struck Taiwan, Peng Wei-lai chanced to be in Hualien, the one area in Taiwan where earthquakes occur most frequently. After he had been shaken awake from his sleep, he found that others who were staying in the Abode of Still Thoughts had also gotten up and could not bring themselves to sleep again. Some of them worried about the safety of their family members. Half an hour later, news about the earthquake reached them and they learned that the worst-hit area was located in the central part of Taiwan.

On the following day, Peng and five other doctors, all members of the Tzu Chi International Medical Association, attended a class held for the Yi Te Association members of the Tzu Chi College of Medicine. But none of them could concentrate on the lectures, because their minds were all on the earthquake victims who might be in need of medical care.

They had a hard time getting through the morning. When noon finally arrived, the six doctors decided to fly back to Taipei immediately. They also phoned over ten nurses who were also members of the Tzu Chi International Medical Association. They decided to assemble in Taipei and then drive down together to central Taiwan.

"When we asked them to go to the disaster regions to work as volunteers, they immediately asked for leave of absence from their jobs," Peng said. "When Kao Ling-ling, a surgery nurse in Cathay General Hospital, joined us, she was still wearing a sterile gown. We six Yi Te Association members had suits on us at that time, but in order to save time, we decided against going home to get changed. Luckily, we all had our "blue-sky-and-white-clouds" uniforms in our bags!"

When the group arrived in Chungliao and saw the heartbroken earthquake victims, their eyes filled with tears. Seeing homes lying in ruins and families separated by death, Peng began to realize what tragedies the earthquake had caused.

The medical team immediately set about erecting canvas awnings under which they could provide medical care for earthquake victims. But patients who were seriously injured had mostly been sent to hospitals for treatment, and most quake survivors who were affected by minor diseases like colds or gastric ailments were too occupied obtaining tents and sleeping bags to tend to their illnesses.

Seeing this, the medical team members began to distribute the more than one hundred tents and sleeping bags they had brought along with them. At the same time, in order to keep survivors from worrying about the small amount, they explained to them that more relief items would be sent in. In addition to Tzu Chi, many individuals and organizations had also sent in relief supplies, which were all entrusted to Tzu Chi for distribution at the disaster areas. The medical team divided itself into two groups, one responsible for providing medical care, the other for dispensing relief materials and comforting quake survivors.

"When an elderly woman was delivered to the aid station, she was barely breathing," said Peng. "We didn't know whether her coma was caused by fear, cold or lack of nutrition, so the Chinese herbal doctors and Western medicine doctors in our medical team joined efforts in diagnosing and treating her. After two hours of first-aid treatment, she finally came around. This was just one urgent case that we had to deal with at the aid station." Because both water and power had been cut off at the disaster area, the medical team withdrew three days later when another group of medical professionals came to take up the job. However, Peng went back one more time.

Peng not only joined in the medical relief effort. When Tzu Chi began to build the Great Love houses for quake survivors, he also pitched in and worked for two days at a construction site in Puli. "Memory fades easily if you only hear people talk of their own experiences or see pictures of them working at the construction sites," said Peng. "So I decided to go there to get first-hand experience. It rained the day before I went to the construction site. So when I arrived, the ground was covered with thick, sticky mud which made it extremely difficult for us to walk around. But the work continued as usual. Following the orders that were given us, we laid groundwork for the construction and moved and carried steel frames where they were needed.

"I learned most from my fund-raising experiences. When Turkey was struck by a massive earthquake, I went to the streets to help raise relief money for the victims. Frankly, the amount I raised in one day was less than a day's wages. But through that experience, I learned to bow humbly to people to ask for their donations. Even if we talked to a passerby for a long time and he or she still refused to donate even NT$10 (US$0.33), we would still bow to them and say 'Thank you!' If a person has five dollars on him and does not want to make a donation, we should look on it as a natural thing, because it is his money and he has the right to decide how he is going to use it. If he donates it, it means that he has a good heart. I regard what I learned from the fund-raising campaign as a precious lesson that couldn't be learned anywhere else."

After Peng returned to Taipei from the disaster area, he received many phone calls from quake victims that he had treated. Besides thanking him, some of them asked for his medical advice regarding certain illnesses. Peng even mailed medicine to victims who thought his prescriptions effective. "I didn't consider my going to the disaster area to be any trouble at all, not to mention mailing medicine to my patients there. I even think that I have done too little. I should have done more."

Peng became a Tzu Cheng Faith Corps member last year and was certified as a Tzu Chi commissioner and Tzu Chi Honorary Board member this year. Although he is still a long way from retirement, he hopes that he can dedicate more time to Tzu Chi.

Tending his four careers

At 4 a.m. on September 21, Huang Chien-li and his wife, Hsu Mei-ying, received an urgent phone call and promptly took a taxi to Taipei Municipal Chunghsiao Hospital to help care for victims who had been wounded when the Tunghsing building collapsed. At the hospital, they discovered that many of the survivors were thinly clad, so husband and wife took turns going home to fetch clothes for people in urgent need.

Seeing a gentleman who was unable to dress himself because of a hand injury, Huang helped him put on his shirt and slacks. When he suddenly felt something damp and warm on his face, he looked up and found that the gentleman was crying because he was so moved by Huang's actions, and the tears rolling down the gentleman's cheeks were falling onto his.

As vice president and spokesman of the President Enterprises convenience store chain, Huang was busy during the days as coordinator of the quake-relief fund-raising events jointly organized by President and Tzu Chi. At night, he had to go on duty at the disaster scene of the collapsed Tunghsing building. With such a busy schedule, he still managed to go with his wife and two children six times to raise funds on the streets.

On top of his volunteer work with Tzu Chi, his business career, and his family life, Huang has one more pursuit: his studies. To keep up with the development of his company and the globalization of business, he travels south every week to Kaohsiung to study for a master's degree in marketing and circulation management.

How does he balance his time between his career, family and studies? "Tzu Chi is a career for someone with the heart for it, not someone with the time for it," says Huang. When you have the heart for it, even though you already have your hands full with your work and studies, you can always find time to do volunteer work. Therefore, when volunteer workers were badly needed for the construction of the Great Love houses, Huang put in a full day's work at the construction site, working so hard that he sprained his back.

For a class report required for his master's course, he spoke on the foundation's involvement in the September 21 earthquake rescue and relief efforts. His report moved his professor and classmates, and some were inspired to become members of Tzu Chi. Huang takes every opportunity he can to raise awareness about Tzu Chi, even during executive meetings at President Enterprises. "I hope all the executives can become Tzu Chi Honorary Board members!"

"Life is like turning on and shutting off a computer." Huang has gained new insight into the meaning of life through the September 21 earthquake. Life and death are, to him, like turning on and shutting off a computer: life ceases and then begins anew, just as a computer can be shut off and then restarted. What is important is how fully the computer is utilized while it is on. In the same way, the essence of life lies in what one does with it while it exists.

Huang sees the impermanence of life as a computer crashing without warning. In the same way that we make backup files in case the computer goes down, so we should continuously cultivate and save our blessings and wisdom to cope with the impermanence of life brought about by natural and man-made disasters.

One day in 1997, Huang heard Master Cheng Yen speak about establishing a fund for medical construction. A commissioner asked the master, "Do we have the money?" The Master replied, "The money is in everyone's pockets." This remark shook him up, and right there and then he vowed to save up one million NT dollars (US$ 330,000) to help Tzu Chi build its medical network.

Huang joined Tzu Chi in 1991 when President Enterprises cooperated with the foundation to conduct public interest activities. He became a member of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps in 1996 and a Tzu Chi commissioner in 1997. Looking back on the days when he first got married, when it was difficult even to save up a million dollars, Huang felt happy that he could now actually donate that amount of money and become a Tzu Chi Honorary Board member.

(By Huang Peng-yu, translated by Hu Tsung-hsiang)