The 15-story, crescent-shaped building, located on the picturesque Guandu Plain, accommodates all the communications media of the Tzu Chi Foundation, including the TV station, radio broadcasting section, Chinese and Foreign Language Publications Departments, Rhythms Magazine, etc. No wonder Master Cheng Yen refers to the new center as "the brain of Tzu Chi" since it will undertake the significant mission of promoting Tzu Chi's humanitarian spirit. The center will be a base from which to spread the foundation's messages, encouraging people to take direct action in helping the needy, cultivating the ability to appreciate and promote the glorious parts of our human nature, etc.

Master Cheng Yen has asked us to help propagate four important messages to people around the world. Firstly, we should be like a clear stream running through society to help purify people's minds. Secondly, we should be like Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva with a thousand eyes to see all the suffering beings in the world and a thousand hands to reach out and help. Thirdly, we should bring Right Thought to distracted and flustered minds. Lastly, we should be strong and solid in order to be the cornerstone for harmony in our society.

Above all, the Master urges those of us working at the new center to first put these four concepts into practice ourselves before inviting others to comply. After considering the Master's words, I feel that it is vitally important for us to do something for our society and for our world before it is too late. The world's population has long exceeded 6.5 billion, and the earth's natural resources are dangerously limited. The more people there are, the more demands we place on Mother Nature for all sorts of materials and resources. During the last few centuries, we humans have ceaselessly plundered the earth's natural resources by cutting down forests, building unnecessary tunnels and roads through mountains, extracting oil, and pumping up enormous amounts of underground water for agricultural and industrial use. It took billions of years for Mother Nature to cultivate the resources on our planet, but it has taken us humans less than two centuries to exhaust the majority of those resources. Mother Nature has fallen ill--we can see this from the many natural disasters constantly happening right in front of our eyes. What's worse is the malfunctioning of the earth's ecological readjustment system--the temperatures in many places are extremely cold in wintertime, but blazingly hot in summer.

In November 2004, when Tzu Chi members reached out to help survivors of four consecutive typhoons in the Philippines, they were horrified to find that the devastating mudslides which had killed hundreds of people were not caused solely by the typhoons. They had been set off by ruthless, illegal logging in the mountains. When the forests were gone, the soil that had once been held firmly together by the deep tree roots was also swept away. The demarcation line between man-made and natural disasters is indeed blurred.

Nature again shocked the whole world with its enormous power on December 26 of last year, when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook southeast Asia and spawned huge tsunamis. The colossal waves pounded coastal regions in 12 countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand being the worst affected. At least 250,000 people were killed. All Tzu Chi people immediately pitched in. So far, we have helped thousands of survivors by giving them food, tents, free clinics, etc. We will also build 1,000 houses in Sri Lanka, and another 3,000 houses and other infrastructure in Banda Aceh, Indonesia (please find more detailed information in this issue).

It is vital that we not underestimate the importance of caring for each other and for the world that surrounds us. Let's safeguard the earth with the humanitarian spirit that Master Cheng Yen teaches.