I have been to places ravaged by wars, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and droughts, and my ways of thinking and behavior have all changed. I feel grateful whenever I pick up a bowl of rice, and I hope every child in the world can have food to eat. When clean water flows from the faucet, I know how fortunate I am.

--Hsieh Ching-kuei
Deputy Director of the Department of Religious Affairs, Tzu Chi Foundation

I still remember that day: July 19, 1990. I was alone at home with some junk food in one hand and the remote control for my TV in the other. Suddenly, I saw a Buddhist nun, who I later found out was Master Cheng Yen, speaking in the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. I moved my seat forward. I was attracted to her soft voice and was touched by what I heard. But even though I was alone in the room, I arrogantly refused to let the tears in my eyes fall.

I heard the Master say: "When one person sees suffering, everyone will give their money or strength to help. This is 'One thousand eyes to see the suffering of the world and one thousand hands to help.' This is the manifestation of Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes..." Then I realized my cheeks were wet with tears.

I couldn't lie to myself

When I was a kid, I always aspired to be a decent man when I grew up. I really admired the spirit of self-sacrifice of Dr. Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. I believed that they were human beings and I was a human being, so I could achieve what they had achieved.

However, some of my teachers and senior relatives reminded me that when I retired at sixty with a wife, children, house, car and money, then I could be "a decent man." After pondering for a while, I felt what they said indeed made sense. After all, they were persons who really cared about me and I trusted them.

When I was in law school at National Taiwan University, I won second place in a nation-wide law debate competition. My words were as sharp as knives and I had no mercy. My opponents really hated me, but I thought that was knowledge and power. After my graduation, I went from being a deputy manager at Citibank and manager of the Royal Bank of Canada to being a financial consultant for Merrill Lynch. I became a stockbroker with a shining business record. Whether my clients bought or sold their stocks and whether they made a profit or suffered a loss, I always got my commission.

At that time, I wore pants with suspenders flown in from a famous foreign company. I also wore a fashionable jacket and sunglasses and carried an expensive attache case. Whenever I walked thus equipped in the vibrant eastern district of Taipei, I surely attracted attention from the opposite sex. I was only 165 cm tall [5'5"], but the outfits made me feel 180 cm [5'11"].

I was barely over thirty years old, but I was already making millions of dollars every year. I bought a small condominium in the exclusive Yangming Mountain area. My apartment occupied a total of only 36 square meters [389 square feet], yet I spent a total of NT$5.3 million [US$155,900] on interior decorating just so I could open the windows and tell myself that I owned this luxurious place.

However, considering the expensive food and wine and my seemingly successful career, I would ask myself from time to time, when I was alone, whether I should try so hard to keep up with the fashions, whether this was all I wanted, whether this was what I wanted to be, whether my childhood dream was only a bubble... I could lie to anyone, but not to myself.

It was not until I saw Master Cheng Yen on TV that I found where I should be heading and what I really wanted. I had always felt I was too little to do anything for society, but the Master's "one thousand eyes to see the suffering of the world, one thousand hands to help" told me otherwise. If I just did it, there would certainly be an effect, no matter how trivial the thing was.

A new life

I felt that I had found the path that I wanted to devote my whole life to. There were several times when I just sat like an idiot in a small park outside the Tzu Chi Taipei branch office and stared at the volunteers coming and leaving the place. But I never had the guts to go inside. It was the sort of eager yet fearful feeling a person has when he returns to his hometown.

After I became a Tzu Chi volunteer, it took another five years to get my father to let me resign my job as a financial consultant and become a full-time employee at the Tzu Chi Foundation.

I was the youngest child of the family. When I was born, my father was already fifty-three years old. He was born before the Republic of China was established [in 1911], when China was still ruled by an emperor. He was very good at literary stuff and could compose poems and write essays, so I respected him very much. But when I told my father, then eighty years old, that I wanted to resign from my job to become a "decent person," he shook with rage.

Our cold war went on for three months, but the Master's wise words changed me: "You must have the support of your family before you can join Tzu Chi. Your parents are living buddhas in your home. You can't wait until later to fulfill your duty of filial piety."

Thus, I told my father that I wanted to do good deeds and I wanted him to be proud of me. Nevertheless, I would wait until I had his support, and then I would quit my job and join Tzu Chi.

I waited five years for this. When my father finally realized how committed I was, his health was failing. The three-month cold war between us had become the most regrettable period of my life.

After my father's funeral, I went to the Tzu Chi Foundation in Hualien and informed the human resources department that they could just give me NT$20,000 a month [US$590] and I could come to work immediately. One month later, I received a letter from the foundation saying that I hadn't passed my English written exam.

That was a surprise to me, so I asked myself if I really wanted to do this job. Maybe I could continue with my former career, earn lots of money and donate it to Tzu Chi to do charity work. I could work, get married, have children, look after my family, do volunteer work during the weekends, etc.

I continued asking myself, but my final answer was that I wanted to go to the poorest corners of the world to help those in great need. And I wanted to spend my whole life doing this.

One year later, when I was thirty-six years old, I finally changed to a new job and became a Tzu Chi employee.

Witnessing impermanence

I didn't know why Tzu Chi wanted to do international relief work, so I asked a volunteer why Tzu Chi wanted to go overseas and help foreigners. Had Tzu Chi helped everyone in Taiwan? There might still be some old woman waiting for help by the sea or deep in the mountains in our own country. I figured this volunteer would not have thought of this question and would thus fail to convince me.

However, she immediately asked me, "Where is that old woman? Bring me to her at once!"

At that moment, I was enlightened: I, a proud member of the intelligentsia, always said how compassionate I was, but in reality I had never attempted to humble myself to look at the dark corners of this world. What was worse was that I would even dare to taunt this volunteer who visited the poor every day.

After working with Tzu Chi for five years, I began to engage in international relief.

I went to Papua New Guinea after a tsunami attack. In just twelve minutes three tidal waves wiped out over ten villages, and many people were crushed to death by fallen houses or large trees while some silently sank to the bottom of the lagoons... I saw devastation everywhere, heard the cries for help and smelled the odor of rotten corpses.

We prepared tool bags so that survivors could rebuild their homes in that "forgotten land out of the Stone Age." We carried them for fourteen hours by boat to the disaster areas and handed them over to the refugees. When our hands touched, we wanted to pass over a sense of warm care so that they wouldn't lose the courage to survive.

I went to Central America after two hurricanes devastated the region. The refugees in the shelters had no comforters to keep them warm, and whole families had to shiver together at night. Even newborn babies had no clothes; they were wrapped up with used newspaper. Clothes sent from Taiwan would provide them with timely warmth.

After witnessing so much misery, I was able to realize that the fragility and the value of life are both manifest in this impermanent universe. All we can do is grab the opportunity and give all we can.

Doing our duty

When Taiwan was struck by a devastating earthquake on September 21, 1999, I was in Turkey on behalf of Tzu Chi, supervising the construction of houses for victims who had also suffered a major earthquake one month earlier. When TV reports showed my people and my country suffering from the terrible disaster, I wondered whether I should put down my work there and head back to Taiwan with other Tzu Chi members to help my own compatriots.

Nevertheless, headquarters gave me a brief but pointed instruction: "Stick to your post and fulfill your duty." So I stayed behind with a calm mind and lived up to Tzu Chi's promises to the Turkish people.

The following day, headlines in Turkish newspapers reported the earthquake in Taiwan. The articles praised Tzu Chi, saying that the foundation's assistance to Turkey was true humanitarian aid, and that "a Taiwanese representative is here in Turkey while his heart is in Taiwan." The Turkish government dispatched a rescue team to Taiwan and saved 45-year-old Mrs. Liao.

Thirty-eight rescue teams from twenty-one countries came to Taiwan after the September 21 earthquake, but none of them spoke the language. Then why did they help Taiwan? It was because they lived up to their version of "Stick to your post and fulfill your duty." They regarded someone like Mrs. Liao as their own relative, just like I treated Turkish old folks as my own grandparents. This is the meaning of "Great mercy even to strangers and great compassion for all."

Home is where the heart is

At the beginning of 2001, a major earthquake in El Salvador destroyed the homes of tens of thousands of families. The foundation's strength and resources were limited, so it gave top priority to the hardest-hit areas that were also receiving the least amount of assistance. Tzu Chi distributed food, medicine and daily necessities, and built houses for 1,327 households.

We ran into a lot of difficulties in rebuilding their homes, but we were persistent because we knew quite well that if we had been the refugees, what we would have needed the most was to have homes at once. Because we were able to put ourselves into the refugees' shoes, the difficulties we came across didn't seem so hard anymore.

After I had been in El Salvador for two months, people asked me whether I wanted to go home. Actually, "home" was not a building to live in, but a place to rest my heart.

Aftershocks were still frequent in El Salvador, and many places were still threatened by landslides and mudflows. Many people were so afraid that they wanted to go overseas. But if I had closed my eyes and covered my ears and run away from El Salvador, I wouldn't have been at peace with myself, no matter where I went. My home was right there.

I just treated these refugees as my own relatives and did all I could do. What they needed for the moment was support and companionship, and with my presence they wouldn't feel lonely.

Interactions bring hope

Carrying Tzu Chi's blessings, I went to war-torn Kosovo and Afghanistan, hurricane-ravaged Central America, earthquake-damaged Turkey, Colombia, etc. In all these disaster areas rescue teams from different countries didn't know each other, but they were together because they cared about the refugees. And Taiwan was no longer absent from the ranks of those engaged in humanitarian aid.

Someone once asked me whether, since Tzu Chi was only a private organization and our assistance in international rescue work was very limited, all our efforts were worthwhile.

However, if this narrow-mindedness barred us from doing anything wonderful, then the noble traits of love and care in human nature would never be able to show up. So we want to do it, and that is the belief of Tzu Chi.

I always believe that all the creatures in the world are like passengers on a big boat, and that all our lives and destinies are closely intertwined. So when we know that someone is in trouble, we must help him as best we can and not just sit back and ignore him.

One thing we must contemplate is whether, when we are giving relief items to the needy, we give them out with care and respect. Do we stand together with the needy when they cry out for help? We shouldn't treat them with a condescending attitude or judge their requests from the standpoint of our own culture and values.

I have been to many countries and have seen many suffering people. I always felt close to them and didn't want to part from them, until the time I simply had to leave them behind and go to my next assignment. There were times when I couldn't communicate with the refugees in their own languages, but we would try our best to express to each other our innermost feelings through our body languages.

The earth needs love

I once saw two boys in Honduras bathing in a gutter and drinking water that was full of larvae. I have also seen bony children in an orphanage in food-scarce North Korea eating only herb gruel. In mountainous caves in Afghanistan, many fleeing single-parent families lived. The mothers always left food for their children, but when the mothers died the children wouldn't be able to live long.

Since I came back from these places, I have gradually changed my ways. I am always grateful that I have a bowl of rice to eat, because somewhere in this world a person dies from starvation every 3.6 seconds. I always hope every child in the world will have enough food to eat. I also changed my way of using water: whenever clean water flows out from the tap, I know how fortunate I am. In Ethiopia and other third-world nations, I have seen any number of women and children walk for miles to get a bottle of muddy water from a pond or a river.

Weather patterns around the world have become abnormal. Drought, earthquakes, typhoons and floods have caused grave situations that were only seen every several decades or centuries in the past. So it seems that the earth is falling apart due to the destruction created by human beings. Such serious disasters transcend all borders and races. If we are only concerned about ourselves, the deterioration of the earth will increase dramatically. But if we change our habits and unify our love from now on, we will save this planet that we call home.

When you do a good deed, when I give a smile to a person next to me, when we carry out relief efforts in North Korea or Cambodia, we will be Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva with a thousand eyes and thousand hands.