~Facing Death and Finding Hope, by Christine Longaker

On the night of May 25, the day China Airlines flight CI-611 crashed near Penghu Island, I went with some Tzu Chi volunteers to the Taipei office of China Airlines to comfort some of the victims' relatives who had gathered there. As I moved around the office, the sight of two volunteers comforting a woman captured my attention. The volunteers listened intently to the woman, patted her shoulder, held her hands, and gently consoled her.

The woman's husband was one of the victims. He was flying to China to report for a new job after having been unemployed for a long time. Who would have predicted that he would die this way?

"Last July some Taiwanese merchants were murdered in China--my husband was one of them..." Chen Ming-hui, the volunteer sitting to the woman's right revealed her own tragic story. "I can understand how you feel now."

On May 31, I biked in the pouring rain to Ming-hui's metal recycling factory. When I arrived, I learned that Ming-hui was on her way to the Taipei Sungshan Airport to chant sutras for plane crash victims whose bodies had been transported back to Taipei from Penghu. She returned to the factory an hour later.

After her husband's death, Ming-hui saw the factory as her home--a place filled with heaps of cable cords and other recyclable metals like stainless steel, aluminum alloy and copper. Pointing to the piles, she commented on how wasteful people had become nowadays. Sometimes she even found unused things discarded. For example, a couple of days before she had come upon some brand-new cooking pots, which she immediately gave to Tzu Chi community volunteers for use.

She led me to a room where she could keep an eye on the trucks as they drove in and out of the factory. She preferred to be interviewed there.

In the early morning of July 16, 2001, some outlaws broke into a hardware factory in Canton, China, and killed two Taiwanese merchants and three local people. Ming-hui's husband was one of the victims.

When she was notified of the tragedy, one thing immediately came to her mind. More than twenty years ago, Master Cheng Yen's brother was unintentionally beaten to death in the army. The Master told her mother that since there was nothing they could do to bring their beloved one back to life, they should try to forgive the killer instead of hating him.

On the day she learned of her husband's death, Ming-hui shut down the factory and flew to Canton to identify his body. Master Cheng Yen phoned her and said, "What was done was done. You must accept it bravely. Tzu Chi people will always be with you."

"Hatred ought to be resolved and not created." Chen A-tao, her good friend at Tzu Chi, told her that if she kept wallowing in her grief, the soul of her dead husband would not rest in peace. Since the tragedy had already happened, the best way was to accept it and then let it go.

Seven days after the misfortune, Ming-hui and one of her children brought her husband's remains back to Taiwan. When she saw nearly a hundred Tzu Chi volunteers waiting for them at the airport, she could no longer suppress her emotions. She returned to the factory and found that a funeral altar had been set up by the volunteers, which touched the deepest cords in her heart.

The deaths of her husband and the other four people made front-page news in Taiwan and created a big sensation at that time. Since it involved many people and was quite a complicated issue, Ming-hui decided to keep a low profile and make the funeral as simple as possible. She did not send out obituary notices to relatives and friends. And she donated all the gift money [in Chinese tradition, gift money is given to the bereaved family at the funeral] to Tzu Chi to help victims of Typhoon Toraji.

Guests who came to give their condolences were all in tears. It was Ming-hui who comforted them. She kept telling herself not to punish herself with painful memories. It would be better to use the time to serve society.

During the course of our interview, I saw her youngest son busying himself with factory work. He was at the murder scene when his father was killed. Fortunately, he escaped tragic death himself because he was sound asleep.

"Will it make things any better if we keep hating the perpetrators?" Ming-hui asked her enraged son. She told him not to harbor hatred because it would only cause him to form bad relationships with others and plant evil seeds in his life.

She even showed leniency to the suspects in court. She said to them, "The regrettable event already happened. I won't ask for any compensation. But if you did commit the crime, I hope you will repent sincerely. Then maybe your sentence will be reduced."

It was less than a year since she became a widow, and the suspects were still filing for an appeal. But as I listened to her, I felt as if she were recalling a past event long forgotten.

During the past year, what with managing the growing business at her factory, raising her children and taking part in numerous Tzu Chi activities, she had had no time to think about her bereavement.

After the plane crash at Penghu, she went to Sungshan Airport several times to chant sutras for the dead. Looking at the caskets and the victims' families who cried so sadly, she recalled how miserable she had been when her husband died.

She thought of what the Master once taught them--that the deceased are like kites: they want to fly away, but the living keep tying them down. Thus she decisively cut the thread and sincerely prayed that the parties at both ends of the thread could have peace of mind.

There was something she really wanted to say to the families of plane crash victims whose bodies had not yet been found: "Set the kite free. Do not become obsessed with finding the body. Even if anything were to be recovered, it would most likely be only part of a body and consequently make you even more depressed. So why not just store your fond memories of the deceased in your hearts..."

She believed that if bereaved families could use the time they spent in grieving to help others, their lives would become more meaningful. She herself had transformed her sorrow into a driving force which motivated her to help others, and she had found it most useful.

The weather was sultry. A handful of workers were sorting recyclable metals in the factory. Nearby were stacks of compressed aluminum cans. Every stack weighed one hundred kilograms. Ming-hui told me that because they sold processed cans to China, she and her husband used to take turns going there.

Her children started helping with the family business as soon as they graduated from university, so Ming-hui had had more time to devote to Tzu Chi. Although she was already fifty-six years old, she was still eager to learn. She was certified as a Tzu Chi commissioner one and a half years ago. She said that she had found true happiness in Tzu Chi. In the past she believed that only money could bring happiness, but now she knew that any joy bought by monetary gain was fleeting. In addition to attending classes on calligraphy, computer, and sign language organized by the foundation, she also participated in other Tzu Chi activities. Unless the factory urgently needed her, she would not miss a Tzu Chi activity.

Because of her diligent attitude and her technical knowledge on recyclable metals, she became the deputy leader of the Tzu Chi recycling team. She also invited her employees to join in the community recycling program.

Ming-hui's daughter-in-law told me that whenever Ming-hui receives phone calls asking for her help, she stops her work immediately, changes into her Tzu Chi uniform, and is gone like a puff of smoke.

Today, Ming-hui lives a spiritually fulfilling life. She and her children often copy the texts of the Heart Sutra and the Great Compassion Mantra when they have time at night. When her husband passed away, she did not follow the tradition of burning paper money. Instead, she burned five hundred pieces of paper on which the family had copied verses from the Heart Sutra [in order to dedicate the merits thus earned to the deceased].

She told me that she never felt alone after her husband passed away, because now she was a member of the big, warm Tzu Chi family.

Her good friend, Chen A-tao, compared Ming-hui to a wildflower that blossoms luxuriantly even if no one appreciates it. Her remark made both of them laugh. Looking at them, I could enjoy the fragrance of the wildflower.