In the blink of an eye, four months have flown by since the great tsunami ravaged many nations in South Asia. But to the people in the disaster areas, each passing day must have felt like a year. Having lost their loved ones, will their traumatized minds ever recover? When will the long and difficult path of reconstruction end?

From the day Tzu Chi volunteers entered the affected areas, our efforts in comforting survivors and giving them our shoulders to lean on have never ceased. In order to keep the survivors company, Tzu Chi volunteers have taken turns visiting disaster areas, continuously passing the baton down to successive groups of volunteers in a never-ending relay of love.

I am grateful to all Tzu Chi volunteers. Wherever disasters occur, Tzu Chi volunteers immediately combine their love and their resources to help the suffering. In Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia, Tzu Chi members have kindly and mindfully committed themselves to giving help. Although each step of this relief path has consumed time and energy, our volunteers never fail to seize every opportunity to continuously give Great Love.

Healing body and mind

After the tsunamis first struck, many countries in South Asia were in dire need of help, none more so than Indonesia and Sri Lanka. They suffered the most deaths and the heaviest casualties, and they were in imminent danger of raging epidemics.

At a Tzu Chi branch office in Indonesia, local volunteers quickly mobilized to provide assistance to tsunami survivors in that country. Unfortunately, no such branch office or volunteers existed in Sri Lanka. We had to contact many parties until we finally found a channel through which we could give help. At last, a medical team of doctors and nurses from our hospitals was ready to depart. Deputy Superintendent Wang Li-hsin of Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center said to me, "Master, my specialty is in infectious diseases, so I must go to Sri Lanka."

At that time, little was known about the exact situation in Sri Lanka, so I was very concerned about the safety of the medical teams. Yet, at the same time, I was full of gratitude that Dr. Wang would lead the first team into dangerous zones to offer medical services to disaster victims. Since that first medical group departed on Dec. 29, 2004, eight more medical teams have gone to hold free clinics, distribute relief items, and visit survivors.

This group of doctors and nurses not only mindfully treated the sick and wounded. While survivors waited for medical treatment, our volunteers tried to cheer them up by singing Tzu Chi songs and performing short plays, so that the survivors could temporarily forget their agony and enjoy a short moment of relaxation. More importantly, each volunteer kindly provided a listening ear as victims vented their sorrow by recounting the terrible ordeals they had experienced.

Through actions such as these, Tzu Chi's loving care became known to many. Numerous people traveled great distances to our free clinics because they wanted to be treated by Tzu Chi doctors who not only addressed physical ailments, but also consoled their traumatized emotions and feelings--a remedy they sought the most.

The lengths that Tzu Chi volunteers will go to carry love and compassion to those in need can be illustrated by the story of a 14-year-old girl at one of the free clinics. Dr. Lin Chin-lon, a renowned cardiologist and superintendent of our Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, diagnosed the girl with congenital heart disease. Because the free clinic lacked the appropriate equipment to treat the condition, Dr. Lin advised the girl to quickly have a further examination in a larger, better equipped hospital. The girl’s mother expressed her intention to save her child, but she sadly confessed that her family could not afford the additional medical care.

Later, when Dr. Lin and Tzu Chi volunteers visited the girl in her home, they saw with their own eyes just how poor the family of seven really was. The whole family lived in a roofless house of only seven square meters (76 square feet). The walls of the home were in such bad shape that they could not even block the wind. The volunteers could not bear to see the family living in such misery. Dr. Lin suggested that everyone help clean up the house and set up a tent. With everybody's cooperation, the family had a brand new home in just a few hours.

After Dr. Lin's medical group returned to Taiwan, the next medical team took over the case and brought the girl to a large hospital in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Indeed, there was a hole in her heart that required immediate surgery to repair. Our volunteers gently encouraged and comforted the girl, and they themselves paid for all of the necessary medical fees. On March 1, the girl underwent successful surgery to repair her defective heart. She remarked that had she not met the Tzu Chi doctors and volunteers, she might already have died.

Our volunteers in Sri Lanka helped more than the tsunami survivors. They welcomed all in need, whoever came to them. They spoke gentle words to soothe their troubled minds and tried their best to solve their problems. Only when the misery of the people had been alleviated and their troubles resolved did our dedicated Tzu Chi volunteers stop worrying.

Our medical professionals demonstrated the spirit of Great Love by combining their medical specialties with charity work in Sri Lanka. It was their hope that while the suffering ones might be physically poor and sick, they might still be mentally happy. They prayed that victims of tsunamis could walk with confidence on the long and rugged path to a brighter future. The Tzu Chi doctors are truly conscientious doctors who heal patients' bodies and minds.

Sowing seeds of love

When we saw news footage of survivors tearfully sharing the heart-wrenching pain of losing their family members, we shed tears with them. When the survivors finally smiled in the arms of our volunteers upon receiving relief materials and a shelter, we smiled with them too. For our volunteers who had given their shoulders to cling to, the sufferers had grown to be like family members. Even after returning to Taiwan, their hearts were still with those they had helped.

I was relieved to learn that the sincere love of Tzu Chi volunteers inspired some Sri Lankans to serve the needy. For example, when Tzu Chi first set up a free clinic in Sri Lanka, we needed all the assistance we could get, including an interpretation service. After learning of our dire need for interpreters, a group of local youth volunteered to help. All of them were tsunami victims; some had even lost family members. But in spite of their own hardships, they were touched by the Tzu Chi volunteers who came from afar to serve the needs of the victims. These young people became our volunteer interpreters.

Innate goodness lies within all of us. With a little inspiration, the seeds of love hidden in our hearts will germinate. Consider this example: among all the kind young people helping in Sri Lanka, there was a young man that came from a well-to-do family. He had prepared to study in Japan this year; in fact, his parents had already paid US$6,000 in tuition for him. But after engaging in charity work with us, he postponed his study plans and decided instead to stay and serve his countrymen by working with Tzu Chi on reconstruction projects. His parents thought that it was very good that their son had such a bodhisattva heart, and they made an altruistic resolution: they approved of his decision to postpone his studies, even at the expense of US$6,000.

The purity, honesty, and selflessness of these young persons touched me tremendously. Accompanying Tzu Chi volunteers to the shelters of tsunami survivors, they saw that the victims suffered not only from the effects of the tsunami, but also from poverty, illness, and a myriad of other miseries. Their compassion was kindled and they bravely shoulder even greater responsibilities.

In this world, countless people tormented by poverty or illness need a helping hand. Tzu Chi members alone will not be able to go to every place to save all the needy. We must spread the seeds of love wherever we can. Then we must nurture the seeds so that they will grow into big trees. Then those trees will continue to produce new seeds of love and spread them even farther.

Transplanting love

Love intrinsically transcends national borders. Over a century ago, missionaries came across the oceans to Taiwan. Some of them were conscientious doctors who unselfishly dedicated themselves to protect lives and encourage love.

On March 5, 2005, the new Emergent and Serious Diseases Building of our Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center was inaugurated. Amidst the crowd of visitors, I saw Father Antonio Didone, ex-superintendent of St. Mary's Hospital in Luodong, Ilan County. Smiling broadly in his wheelchair, the Italian priest watched Tzu Chi people performing to entertain the visitors. He looked so compassionate and adorable.

Father Didone was assigned to Taiwan over forty years ago by the Catholic Order of the Ministers of the Sick. In the beginning, he supervised a hospital on Penghu Island. Later, he was transferred to St. Mary's Hospital.

While serving in Luodong, he witnessed how poor the medical standards were in eastern Taiwan and how many impoverished patients there were. He saw that ill children had to be sent to far-off Taipei for better treatment. The eight-hour trip exacted a heavy toll on the sick children. More often than not, poor families could not afford the transportation and medical expenses.

Realizing how scarce pediatric services were, Father Didone returned to Italy at the age of forty to study pediatric medicine. Four years later, he returned to Taiwan to save the lives of countless children. Many parents of the children he treated still went back to see him years later. Although Father Didone was a pediatrician, even some adult patients wanted treatment from him when they felt uncomfortable.

Father Didone is 72 years old this year. During his more than 40 years of service in Taiwan, he has treated countless patients. He really has dedicated his whole life to medical service in Taiwan. In recent years, as his aging body gradually fell sick, many persons concerned about his well-being gave him much care in return. This is an ideal example of the reciprocity of love and help in human relationships.

A sapling, even if transplanted from somewhere else, will grow into a flourishing tree with sufficient sunlight and rainwater. Human values are exactly the same. As Father Didone did with his life, we should transplant ourselves and help wherever we are needed, letting our love deeply take root. The seeds of love we sow and nurture will one day grow into big trees that will offer nice shade and comfort for people.

There is a story in a Buddhist sutra. One day, the Buddha's lay disciple Vimalakirti was sick. Manjusri Bodhisattva went to visit the venerable spiritual cultivator and asked him why he fell ill. Vimalakirti replied, "I'm sick because many livings beings are sick."

The cause of Vimalakirti's illness was his great compassion, for he could not bear to see so many people fall sick. This is similar to when a child falls sick; the parents' health also deteriorates from intense worry. "When you suffer, I feel the sorrow; when you hurt, I feel the pain." Such is the way all bodhisattvas feel. When bodhisattvas learn that living beings are suffering, no matter how far away they might be, they immediately feel the pain and rush to the rescue. Only when the suffering of living beings ends can the suffering of the bodhisattvas cease.

Everything in this world is interdependent and intertwined. There are mountains, plains, and oceans, but they are merely geographic features of this one planet. Living under the same sky, people should not differentiate and separate themselves from each other. Instead we should put our hearts close to one another and care about each other.

Distance cannot disconnect hearts. May the compassion in each of our hearts converge into a vast ocean of love, which can then be given without end to every suffering being in the world!