Following her three-day stay in the Abode of Still Thoughts in Hualien, Theresa Vallese undertook another spiritual journey for the Master and her immediate supervisor, Liu King-pong. The following article is the material result of her labor. It is a reflection on her experiences at the Abode, and in the larger picture, her experience with Tzu Chi in Taiwan. Theresa worked at the Tzu Chi Cultural Center from the end of October 1995 until February 1996. She graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a BA in English in June 1995.

Descent from Taipei to Hualien

I traveled from Taipei to Hualien by train because I had been told that this was the scenic route. It proved to be so, with long stretches of sea coast and terraced rice paddies. The day was especially cold and dark, so from my window on the train, the sea looked more terrifying and ominous than the calm blue sea I would see four days later.

My journey to Hualien was an eagerly awaited one. When I edited translated articles about personal experiences at the Abode, I received impressions of a restful haven of physical beauty, where kind people helped one another. When I arrived, the volunteers, the nuns, and the people who work at the Abode every day were truly friendly and helpful. My trip to the Abode had been arranged by Miss Ho, who worked in the administrative office. After I checked in with her, she immediately sent me to lunch with one of the nuns, a tall woman with black glasses. Like all the nuns, she had a shaved head and wore the gray suit Tzu Chi nuns wear. She smiled at me and led me away to the communal dining room.

The dining room is one of my favorite places at the Abode. In the dining room, everyone sits together at round tables where volunteers and nuns have already placed plates of food and bowls of rice. Before people sit, they bow to everyone at the table to pay their respects to them. When departing, they generally bow and say "Amitabha," to invoke the name of the Buddha. They all close their eyes and put their hands together in prayer before picking up their rice bowls to eat. When they finish, they take the kettle of hot water on the table and pour some on their plates and bowls. Using this water, they rinse the extra sauces and oils in their bowls and drink it all. This is so nothing is wasted, not even the extra flavor of the oil left on the plate. When water is mixed with the oil, it tastes somewhat like light soup. For what is soup but water, oil, and flavor?

The nun brought me to my seat. When I sat down to my first lunch at the Abode, the few people remaining at the table looked up and smiled at me. As I ate, I noticed everyone watching me curiously. They smiled and told me the proper way to hold my bowl was to lay my four fingers at the base and my thumb on the rim of the bowl, to steady it. They showed me the way they held their own bowls, with their fingers together and curved to the shape of the bowl. They said it looked more orderly and attractive this way.

The Aesthetic of Living at the Abode

The more I learned about the Abode, the more I appreciated the way the nuns lived. At the Abode, I saw the nuns working hard and patiently. The Distribution Day before Lunar New Year and the Spring Cleaning Day both fell in the period of my three-day stay. On these two days, there was much work to be done. During spring cleaning, I saw a small nun in yellow rain boots treading the edges of a ditch to clean it out. The day that I arrived, Saturday, was the day before the big distribution. Nuns and volunteers were setting up and clean tables for the big lunch, washing vegetables, preparing packages that would be given to the poor, etc. That day, I washed vegetables and helped to sort beans. The beans are grown, sun-dried, and ground by the nuns into bean flour, which can be added to milk to sweeten its flavor. The nuns support themselves through the beans, and also by growing their own vegetables to eat.

Most of the work I did in the Abode was communal work. The volunteers and nuns work side by side. While picking bits of shell from the pile of beans, I listened to the conversations at the table. People asked each other about their families, and spoke in great detail about them.

The volunteers at Tzu Chi are of all different ages. Later, when I assisted in making candles, I saw young children actively helping at every stage of the process. At the beansorting table, an elderly woman was the oldest and I was the youngest. At one point, she dropped her bowl of beans. Everyone asked with concern if it was it because she was sleepy. She shook her head and bent under the table to pick up all of the beans. I tried to help her retrieve them, but she insisted on doing it herself.

Despite the large number of volunteers, most people managed to steer clear of cluttering the work areas and standing around uselessly. If there were enough volunteers in one work station, a dedicated volunteer would move on to another work station. During the distribution, I saw teams of women in Tzu Chi blue spooning food into containers that would be given out to people. Everyone kept busy by lining themselves up in an assembly line, in which one person would spoon food into boxes, another one would tie them with rubber bands. The key rule was to see where help was needed and to fill that role.

Candles are produced and sold by Tzu Chi to raise money for charity efforts, like the Disabled Children's Rehabilitation Center. They are packed in boxes that offer a variety of different colors, like pink, green, yellow, red, and blue, and are as pretty as packs of candy. The candle-making station had the heaviest flow of traffic because of the curiosity it aroused in everybody. People flowed in and out to see how candles were made, while many children stayed hoping to participate after their parents moved onto other places. Most children who came to the shack where the candles were made were unfamiliar with manual work. Many I saw were nervous and took out their feelings of awkwardness by fussing at each other and being silly. But their attraction to the candles kept them there. The nun who was in charge of making candles organized the children while fulfilling her duty at the station. She also took the young disciple assigned to trimming the wicks under her wing. The disciple was a novice and was inflamed easily by the mishaps in the candlemaking shop. The nun would cool her frustration with gentle words and instruct her not to think only herself.

The mini-community of volunteers provided guidance in candle-making for the children. One very tough woman reminded everyone to clean off flakes of wax before sending them to her to be wrapped. It was important for the children to learn the patience to continue doing something for the sake of doing it well. Satisfying their curiosity about how candles were made was not enough, nor was playing with candles. Several stayed for a long time to learn how to wick the candles properly.

Placing wicks in the large candles was the biggest challenge for learners. The outer layer is firm, but the core is full of hot liquid wax. To put the incense wick into the candle requires finding the center. Sometimes, it is easy to miss, and the incense wick comes out off-center and away from the hole that is already there for the wick. Many firstcomers make mistakes on the larger candles and burn themselves. The children who decided to stay had to practice patience learning this procedure and the other stages of the candle-making process.

The steady work and the sun in Hualien makes one feel tired during the noon hour. Many volunteers awaken at 3:50 a.m. to attend regular morning prayers that end before breakfast at 6:00 a.m. I attended morning prayers on Monday morning and I felt slightly dizzy with fatigue by 11:30 a.m.. The tiredness I felt was satisfying because I felt I had acquired it through genuine work. It differed from the tiredness I feel from working at a job, studying long nights or writing papers.

Candles Without Tears

Work continues after lunch until roughly 5:00 p.m. That is the time for evening prayers, in which the nuns, disciples, and a few volunteers chant and pray before the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin. At this time of the afternoon, the sounds of the chants and the accompanying drum beat and bell can be heard in the air. Because the air is fresh and cool, everything feels sweet and refreshing at this time.

Most people find their way to their rooms by nine and go to bed early in order to wake up in time for morning classes. Before bedtime or even dinner, one sees people washing their clothes and preparing to shower. People hang clothes outdoors to dry in the mountain air.

Because everything is thought of, life feels very complete and satisfying at the Abode. The many good things I had read when editing articles about Tzu Chi reflected the solace people take in Tzu Chi. Having been to the Abode, I feel that it is a physical refuge from the world, where people may live a life with spiritual rewards. The spiritual fulfillment that volunteers find in their work for Tzu Chi is amplified at the Abode, where all waking hours are dedicated to doing good work.