In December 2004, a strong tremor caused great tidal waves throughout the Indian Ocean, which ravaged over 10 countries in South Asia and the east coast of Africa and killed at least 300,000 people. Since then Tzu Chi people have gone to the disaster-stricken areas to help the survivors by building 1,000 houses in Sri Lanka and 3,700 in Aceh. Every brick was provided by the love of Tzu Chi members around the world. In order to solicit donations, members in various countries stood for hours either in freezing cold in the northern hemisphere or under the scorching sun in the southern hemisphere. Their good deeds touched me tremendously and filled my heart with gratitude.

In November 2004, four typhoons hit the eastern Philippines. The devastating mudslides and floods that followed buried many homes and killed hundreds of people. In order to distribute relief goods and provide free medical clinics, Tzu Chi volunteers took a helicopter to enter the hardest hit zones, where transportation had been disrupted. After the roads had been opened again, our volunteers revisited the flooded areas to help local residents clean up their environment so that their lives could soon return to normal. The touching image of our volunteers helping those residents is still vivid in my mind.

Then on December 10, 2005, I received a call from Manuel Siao, director of the Tzu Chi branch in the Philippines. He told me that days of heavy rain brought by the typhoons had affected over 30,000 people in Mindoro Oriental Province, and local Tzu Chi volunteers were getting ready to go there to collect firsthand information about the damage that the typhoons had caused in order to carry out large-scale disaster relief.

The disaster area that they had chosen was located on an offshore island. Our volunteers in Manila drove two hours and then took a boat for 40 minutes to get there. No matter how far they have to go, they extend a helping hand to the suffering if there is any way to reach them.

It so happened that during the relief project, the son of Mr. Siao was about to get married. The young couple decided to cancel their wedding reception, and they donated the money intended for the banquet to the disaster relief fund. They also encouraged their relatives and friends who came to congratulate them on their wedding to help with the relief project. The young couple believed that the joy of a reception lasted only one evening, but the happiness of helping others would last a lifetime. And it was indeed a most memorable wedding. Their noble thought and unselfish giving touched me greatly.

Goodness brings blessing

Disasters that happen one after another are lessons that remind us of the fragility of life. The island of Taiwan is like a little leaf floating in a turbulent ocean. If everyone in Taiwan can put their hearts together and work together in harmony and mutual love, then the force of the good karma that they produce will push away the force of bad karma. The accrued blessing will be like a protective membrane covering Taiwan.

What brings blessing? Speaking kind words, harboring good thoughts, and doing good deeds. Tzu Chi members joyfully spread seeds of love and encourage residents in their communities to do good deeds that benefit everybody. Tzu Chi is a spiritual cultivation ground where all members can find an area in which to contribute their expertise. By utilizing their talents to help one another, they serve society and mankind.

We can take our recycling volunteers for an example: They cherish their blessings and create more blessings as they collect recyclable resources and clean up the environment. They are like bodhisattvas who take care of the earth, saving mountains, seas, and people's minds. Recycling reduces waste and improves the environment. Recycled resources can be made into other useful goods. So our volunteers are conserving resources for future generations. Not only that, the money from the sale of recycled goods covers almost one fourth of the operation costs of our Tzu Chi TV Station. Our TV station is mainly operated to spread messages of life's goodness, beauty and truth. So our volunteers engaged in recycling are actually saving people's minds.

How grateful I am to our recycling volunteers. Every little bottle or piece of cardboard they pick up might be worth only a few cents. But when put together, the revenues they earn enable Tzu Chi TV to broadcast good programs that promote the bright side of human nature around the world.

There is an 85-year-old grandmother living in Yunlin, Taiwan. Although she is very old, she has to take care of her granddaughter. Yet she still finds time to do recycling. Every day, she collects recyclables from neighbors and ties them up neatly. She lives on a very steep mountain. Unwilling to let other recycling volunteers drive up the dangerous slope to her house, she carries recyclables down the hill many times a day. She loves not just the earth, but also other volunteers. What an adorable lady she is!

It's not just old grandpas and grandmas that do recycling. Many medical professionals at our Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital are also happily involved in the recycling program. A doctor once shared with me that recycling is a form of education. After his whole family started sorting through recyclables with other volunteers, he realized how wasteful he used to be and how much garbage he had created. "Now I don't spend money so freely, so I save more money," he said. If we can cherish our blessings, then we can save money, and the money saved can be used to help many more needy people.

Recycling is a laborious task, and not many people want to do it. So all recycling volunteers are truly treasures.

Two kinds of love

People who have love create blessings. No one can live without love, but there are different kinds of love. Pure and untainted Great Love brings good fortune, while polluted small love, which is centered on only a few people in our lives, brings countless worries.

Small love is tainted by greed and excessive affection. People with such love are always worried about losing the ones they love or not completely possessing the hearts of their loved ones. Or they are very insistent about their own opinions and will not allow anyone else to take advantage of them. Consequently, they are often antagonistic towards others. On a larger scale conflicts may even happen between societies and nations. Such love brings excruciating pain.

However by simply changing the direction of that same love, harmony can be brought into our lives. If we redirect our love from a few people to all beings in the world, if we can treat all living beings as our relatives, giving them happiness as we would to our loved ones, and bringing out each other's altruism, then our society will be more harmonious and peaceful.

In Malaysia, there was a physically challenged grandmother who had been living alone for many years. She totally distrusted other people, and so she chained the front door of her house, leaving a small gap just big enough for her to get in and out. Local Tzu Chi volunteers who often visited her eventually won her trust. She showed them how to undo the chain from outside and enter her home. Now every time she hears volunteers calling her, "Grandma, we're here," she hurries to the mirror to straighten up her appearance and waits for our volunteers to take her out for a walk.

When I heard the story, I was very sad because I could imagine how lonely and helpless the old woman must have been. From video footage sent back from Malaysia, I also saw how much she trusts our volunteers, how she looks forward to their visits, and how she welcomes them into her home as if they were her own family. The volunteers are not related to her. They could just relax on their days off from work, but instead they go to see her on weekends because they know their visits make her happy. By broadening their love, they have replaced the old woman's sorrow with joy and heightened the value of their own lives.

I often see Tzu Chi volunteers around the world visiting, comforting, serving, and caring for needy people. Acts like that make the world more heartwarming. If everyone on this planet could care for each other like that, broaden the span of their love for the little circle of a few people to include many more people, and walk on the Path of the Bodhisattvas, then life would be very beautiful.

Gratitude, respect and love

I often briefly meditate in the morning. When I open my eyes again, I see that the dark sky has silently turned bright. It reminds me that time ceaselessly goes on. Without my being aware of it, everything changes subtly.

Human beings are not only unaware of the changes in nature; sometimes we are not even conscious of the changes happening in our own body. Do you know at which moments your fingernails have grown longer? Most people don't. Being unaware even of the changes that are happening in ourselves, we can hardly pay attention to and care for others and our environment. In fact, we often forget to take care of them.

Only when we humble ourselves and shrink our egoistic selves to the size of a speck of dust will we be able to unconditionally give of ourselves and thus live out the highest value and greatest meaning of our lives.

No one can eat every grain of rice in the world. Likewise, no one can help all the people in the world. You may want to love and make the world a better place to live, but the power of a single person is too lonely and weak. Only when we converge the power of many people can we do something significant. But this does not mean that we should belittle ourselves. On the contrary, we must believe that we have infinite potential and possibility. It is possible that our commitment to love the world will save countless suffering souls. We must have self-respect and self-confidence and firmly believe that everyone's humble contributions, including our own, are essential and indispensable to the group.

If you are very capable, that just means you can do a lot of things. What is more important is to always reflect on yourself and see if you have many attachments or tend to make artificial distinctions between things. Also, you should ask yourself if your wisdom life has grown today. If you spend the day bickering with others, then a day of your life is wasted. But if you use your abilities to practice the Buddha's teachings in your life and activate the innate love in other people, then you will be living out the value of that day and making use of the true capability of life.

We must speak kind words, do good deeds and, most importantly, harbor a good heart. I hope that all Tzu Chi people can always harbor gratitude, respect and love in their hearts whenever they deal with their family members, fellow volunteers, and care recipients. Our wisdom life will grow only when we treat everyone around us with gratitude, respect, and selfless Great Love.

If all people can properly do what they ought to do in life and stay healthy spiritually, then society will be harmonious. If not, they will bring chaos to their families and even to society at large. When people fail to maintain morality in their lives, they will sooner or later trigger natural or man-made disasters.

The world is full of turmoil. We need more bodhisattvas in this human world to do good deeds. May all Tzu Chi volunteers speak good words and spread the spirit of love to their neighbors every day. Let us motivate more people in our communities to help the needy. To do that, we must be humble and make ourselves bridges for others to step on in order to head toward the Path of the Bodhisattvas. Let us hold each other’s hands with care and love as we mindfully stride forward on the Path.

May all people's love be selfless and altruistic, may all people protect the earth and all living beings, and may each of us bring happiness to one another.