On the Chinese New Year's Eve of 1951, Major Chin Yi-chen was forced into retirement and moved into the Lesheng Sanatorium, a refuge for lepers. Fifty years later, he has become a real general in life for his extensive efforts to help his fellow patients and for his charity work.

It was a hot sunny day in August. The scorching sun made one impatient and impetuous. We drove past Hsinchuang in Taipei County and went uphill to a building with a rusted gate, from which passers-by kept a long distance. This was Lesheng Sanatorium, home to over four hundred lepers. Due to the quarantine policy, the patients here have been isolated from their families for decades. Lesheng Sanatorium is the only shelter for them in this world.

In the Buddhist shrine in the sanatorium, 81-year-old Chin greeted us with a placid smile. He was wearing an old undershirt and gray cotton pants yellowed with age. Leprosy had deformed four fingers of his right hand and immobilized the lower part of his left arm. Both of his eyelids were upturned because of the disease. He had also lost his eyebrows and had to lean on two canes when he walked.

Chin tried to recall the prime of his life. At the age of twenty-five, he had already been promoted to the rank of major in the army. While he was away in the military, his newly wedded wife stayed in his hometown in Wujin, Jiangsu Province, mainland China. Three years later, mainland China fell to the hands of the Communists and he came with the military to Taiwan. For over six months, he fought against the Communist invasion at Kuningtou. It was then that he began to feel that something was wrong with him. He got thirsty and tired easily. He was transferred to Keelung to work for a Navy defense construction project and had to go to the mountains to work every day. After two months of toil, his health finally collapsed.

He was diagnosed with leprosy, but he thought he would be all right after taking the medicine he obtained from the Lesheng Sanatorium. However, the quarantine policy, a legacy from the Japanese colonial days (to isolate lepers from the public), forced him into retirement on Chinese New Year's Eve in 1951. He moved into the sanatorium, pitiful and forlorn. He has lived there for more than half a century.

He was then thirty years old, at the prime of his life. But his life at Lesheng was filled with endless loneliness, sorrow, sighs and feelings of inferiority. Fellow lepers deserted by their families kept him company in the shabby wards. "For one whole year, I was in complete despair. I just didn't have the courage to commit suicide..." said Chin. Even today, half a century later, the old man's wrinkled face still quivers perceptibly as his painful past comes back to mind.

Now, several decades have passed. Chin talks about his past in an indifferent tone as if he were narrating someone else's story. "It's impossible for you to imagine how excruciating the pain is. Once I took two hundred tablets to kill the pain. There was no time to think about the side effects." As a matter of fact, all the patients at Lesheng shared the same idea: maybe they could end their lives by taking an overdose of drugs.

During the year when he "waited" to die, the fingers of his right hand started to develop necrosis and his left arm became paralyzed. One day, he received his regular veterans' pay from the army and it occurred to him: "There are at least two or three hundred people here who suffer more than I do. They have no home, no money, and they are illiterate and completely isolated from the outside world. Compared with them, what do I have to feel sad about?" Thus, he started to help other patients by writing letters for them with his crippled right hand. He also taught the illiterate to read and write. When he had time, he would make rounds in the wards and chat with other people. "Society can turn its back on us, but we still have ourselves and Lesheng," he always said in order to cheer up the other inmates. "Let's build our own sheltered paradise here."

Soon, a few patients at the sanatorium began to study Buddhist sutras, trying to take refuge and find hope in religion. Later, they thought of building a Buddhist chapel to show their appreciation for the Buddha's compassion and wisdom. It would cost them NT$30,000 [US$750]. Chin recalled that, back then, each patient received NT$0.65 [US$0.02] and 1.6 catties [1.8 lb] of rice from the government per day. (At that time, one catty of rice cost NT$1 [US$0.025] and one catty of pork cost NT$3 [US$0.075]). About a hundred Buddhist wardmates together saved over NT$6,000 [US$150] in a year.

Later, the prestigious Buddhist practitioner Li Ping-nan happened to learn about their intention. He told the story to an overseas Chinese who lived in the Philippines, who in turn donated NT$24,000 [US$600] to the sanatorium to help the patients fulfill their dream. Lesheng Sanatorium finally had its own Buddhist chapel, the Serene Lotus Shrine. Chin was elected president of the shrine and has been continuously reelected to that position for thirty-eight years.

In 1978, people from the newly established Tzu Chi Merit Association [the forerunner of the Tzu Chi Foundation] visited the sanatorium. After venerating the Buddha in the shrine, Master Cheng Yen visited every ward and held the old patients' hands. She asked Chin if there was anything that Tzu Chi could do for them. Her sincere attitude left Chin speechless. Nobody had showed such concern for Lesheng patients in many years.

In the end, Chin described to Master Cheng Yen the current situation in the sanatorium. The patients were getting too old to take care of themselves. When they were young, they could look after each other, but now they were getting on in years and some of them were even paralyzed. They were in desperate need of a care unit to accommodate twenty-one seriously ill patients who needed to be looked after by special nurses. Master Cheng Yen immediately agreed to provide them with a monthly subsidy of NT$25,000 [US$625], and she had four Tzu Chi volunteers take care of the patients.

When he talked about this particular point in the past, Chin, like an urchin caught doing mischief, blushed to admit that originally they thought that Tzu Chi was an affluent charity organization supported by millionaires, and so they took the monthly subsidies for granted. Then one day, they were taken by surprise. From the list of donors printed in the first issue of the Tzu Chi Newsletter, Chin discovered that the money they received every month actually came from regular small donations of many ordinary people. The newsletter reported, "Mr. Chang in Taichung donated NT$50 [US$1.25]; Mrs. Li in Kaohsiung donated NT$20 [US$0.50]..."

Thereafter, Chin politely declined the monthly subsidies from Tzu Chi. It was the Master's turn to get a little surprise. "We've only met people who complained to us about how small our subsidies are," she observed. "Why did you decide to turn down our help? What are you going to do about the care unit?" Chin waved his deformed right hand and said, "There must be people who are more in need than we are. I'll think of another way to finance the care unit." Soon, he started to raise funds from Lesheng patients themselves. They pooled together a fund of NT$1 million [US$25,000]. With the interests generated from the fund and other donations, the care unit, dubbed the "Rising Sun House," became self-sustaining. Some twenty years have passed and the fund still has over NT$700,000 [US$21,200] left.

In the following year, more than one hundred Lesheng Buddhists became Tzu Chi members. They regularly took out NT$100-200 [US$2.50-5.00] from their meager monthly government subsidy of NT$1,000 and donated it to Tzu Chi. Chin said that he did not think of this as charity. The lepers at the sanatorium were actually the ones who benefited from these acts, since through their giving they could attain many spiritual merits. "When lepers who have long been despised by society and who are used to begging realize that they are actually capable of giving, they are thrilled with joy."

The inferiority complex that had haunted the Lesheng patients throughout their lives suddenly disappeared when they began to reach out to help. On the day these patients became Tzu Chi members, they gathered around Chin with tears in their eyes: "We have regained our dignity."

Since then, lepers who belonged to the Serene Lotus Shrine have been fully committed to Tzu Chi activities. One of the largest campaigns was to collect funds for the Tzu Chi Hospital in Hualien. The hospital was scheduled to be inaugurated in July 1986, but in March there were still not enough funds for personnel expenses. The lepers of the Serene Lotus Shrine launched a charity sale and raised money by selling "heart lotuses" (spiritual lotus flowers in one's heart). They appealed to each patient at the sanatorium for a donation of NT$10,000 [US$250] for each "heart lotus," which they would plant in their hearts and in the Western Pure Land. In less than a month, Lesheng patients bought over a hundred "heart lotuses." These were planted in their hearts, in the Tzu Chi Hospital, and in the history of charity in Taiwan.

For the past couple of years, Chin has been organizing another campaign to help Tzu Chi build another hospital in Dalin, southern Taiwan. This time Chin adopted a "humorous" method because, he said, "Bodhisattvas are humorous by nature." Chin wrote a short poem, made copies and sent them to all the wards. Here is the literal translation of the poem:

People in Dalin have few medical facilities.
There are only four sickbeds for ten thousand people.
Critically ill patients have no place to go but Taipei or Kaohsiung.
Shouldn't we "abnormal" people give those "normal" people a hand?

The patients, long forsaken by society, went into action again. They offered to buy the cement needed for the construction of the hospital, which cost them NT$600,000 [US$20,000].

When Taiwan was shaken by a great earthquake on September 21, 1999, patients at Lesheng, isolated from the world, watched the scenes of devastation on TV. Feeling the pain of the victims, they cried along with them. Within a couple of days, they scraped together NT$1 million for Tzu Chi. As Tzu Chi continues to raise funds for Project Hope to rebuild schools in the disaster areas, Lesheng patients also regularly donate tens of thousands of dollars per month. "Every penny donated by the Lesheng patients had originally been saved to pay for their funerals," said Chin. The government now gives each of them a subsidy of NT$7,800 [US$260] per month. Putting aside NT$3,000 for living expenses, each patient has only NT$3,000 to $4,000 left. They donated the money intended for their funerals to charity because they have chosen to live for the sake of Great Love, instead of for matters after death.

Looking back, 81-year-old Chin grinned broadly. He said he was really content with his life. Were it not for leprosy and the Lesheng Sanatorium, he would not have known Buddhism and Tzu Chi. He would not have known what Great Love meant and how it felt to be able to give. He would just be a mediocre person busy getting by each day. "We sincerely ask society to accept us." Tears finally rolled down his face, but he could not wipe them away because his hands were holding his canes.

Late in the afternoon, rain began to pour down. Chin stood up to light incense sticks and begin performing the evening Buddhist rites. The couplet that hung on both sides of the Buddhist altar read: "My body is like an enlightened arhat's, and my mind is like that of Subhuti [one of the Buddha's ten leading disciples]." Leprosy changed the life of a 25-year-old army major and transformed him into a real bodhisattva. Chin's old comrades were all promoted to the rank of major general or lieutenant general in the army, but he is a real general in life.