"Education is like planting trees. We have to slowly water and trim the trees with love and patience, then they will grow lush and tall. Education is unselfish giving - giving with pleasure - without asking for anything in return. It is full of love."

- Master Cheng Yen.

Graduation season falls in June, when the flaming tree flowers are in full blossom. It signifies the end of one stage and the start of another. It is also the time when Tzu Chi students begin to render their services to the world. This year, there are 271 graduates from the Tzu Chi Junior College of Nursing and eight from the Nursing Graduate School of the Tzu Chi College of Medicine.

Dr. Lee Ming-liang, president of the Tzu Chi College of Medicine, told the students that nursing work is a road paved with love and patience. On that road, nurses share the happiness and sorrow of patients and accompany them through birth, aging, sickness and death. Depression and frustration are inevitable, but the students must always remember Master Cheng Yen's conviction that a nurse is a Great Compassion Bodhisattva who delivers people from suffering upon hearing their calls for help. A nurse must learn the spirit of this great bodhisattva - to give without expecting anything in return and to serve without complaint.

"Knowledge is boundless," said Dr. Lee. "Graduation only means the completion of one phase of work. You must always be like a farmer, diligently tilling the field of your heart."

To Master Cheng Yen, students are like treasure. Chiu Yen-feng, dean of the Nursing Graduate School, calls herself "the treasurer." For two years, she has attentively observed the students' performances, concepts, behavior and expectations of their future work. Now the graduating students have their master's degrees. Dean Chiu advised them to hold to the correct directions of their lives, no matter whether they are teachers, superiors, colleagues or subordinates to others. "Never think of fame and wealth. Fame and wealth can be given to you and can also be taken away from you. If you go after fame and wealth, in the end you will only obtain worry and perplexity."

Dean Chiu tells the students to think about what contributions they can make to society and to be capable, responsible persons in any job assignment. She also encourages them to support and care for each other after graduation.

The first eight graduates from the graduate school have already had more than five years' clinical experience. In graduate school, they picked up their books again to begin another phase of study. Based on their own previous clinical interests, they selected specialized subjects and roles. They have learned a lot during the past two years. Six of the students will stay either in the Tzu Chi Junior College of Nursing or the Tzu Chi College of Medicine as instructors.

Liu Huei-ling was the first to complete her master's thesis. She chose the Graduate School of Nursing because its guiding principle is clinical bedside practice, which meets the current international educational objectives for bedside nursing. She expected that after advanced studies, she could break through the bottlenecks she had encountered in clinical practice.

Lin Shu-chuan said that in compliance with the advice and expectations of Master Cheng Yen and all the teachers, she would learn the spirit of Kuan Yin, the Great Compassion Bodhisattva, and treat her patients as she would her own relatives.

"We eight classmates are like eight seeds which have become a bowl of sweet 'eight treasure porridge' carefully cooked by the big family of Tzu Chi," said Hsieh Pei-ling. "To cook porridge, you need water, sugar and low heat. In Tzu Chi, some people are like the water which makes us soft, some people are like the sugar which makes us sweet, and some people are like the low heat which makes us useful." She promised to do her best to repay the Tzu Chi medical organization.

During the time Lin Ching-chi was taking care of cancer patients, she saw their faces getting thinner day by day and their bodies being nibbled away by cancer cells. She realized how painful it must have been for them. Therefore, she made a decision to accompany cancer patients with love till the end of their lives. Master Cheng Yen said, "Physical life is limited, but a life of wisdom is unlimited." Ms. Lin expects herself to be like Kuan Yin, the Great Compassion Bodhisattva, and redeem patients from suffering and anxiety.

Lin Fang-yi expressed her appreciation to her family, Master Cheng Yen, and all her teachers and classmates. "After graduation, I can begin to repay the Tzu Chi medical organization. I will walk every step with mindfulness. Although the academic work gave me a lot of pressure, under the care of the chairperson and with the mutual support and encouragement of my classmates, I finally passed all kinds of tests."

Chiang Ming-chu, Lee Mei-li and Lee Ju-ping will stay at the college to teach. Recalling all the events of the past, they feel warm and grateful. They encourage each other to be seeds of Tzu Chi. Wherever they are, they will always show the spirit of kindness, compassion, joy and unselfish giving.

The Meaning of Nursing

Master Cheng Yen's Advice to Students
of the Graduate School of Nursing

The road you have selected to go is the most important and also the most difficult one in life.

If you choose clinical nursing, you will have to face the four inevitable barriers of life: birth, aging, sickness and death. You must show great love, since this work is closely related to life.

If you choose education, your work is related to a life of wisdom. The students you are going to teach are young people. Some of them have already had working experience just as you have. Making their life of wisdom grow healthily is not a simple job. Education is more than just giving the students knowledge and teaching them professional skills. The most important work is to reveal their wisdom and abilities.

Ordinary people only make use of their "habitual knowledge." Once you become teachers, if you only teach the students out of habit, I must say frankly that you will not be doing anything important or worth talking about.

The most important thing in education is to provide guidance for the development of the students' personalities. If you only teach them good skills, they may not be able to get along with people after they start working. They will only know how to compete with others, and this kind of competition will never come to an end. They can never acquire a rewarding life.

I often take monkeys as examples. When the monkeys are hungry, you can hold out some food and order them to stand up or to pick up a stick. In order to survive, they have to force themselves to learn and do whatever you want them to. It is not right if a student studies only to make a living. It is also not right to work simply to earn a living.

You study nursing with the aim of alleviating people's suffering. You serve the patients because you want to extend your love, not because you want to make a living. If you engage yourselves in nursing education, you not only have to use your wisdom to teach your students good nursing skills, but you must also activate their wisdom so that they will know how to love and serve people.

The Tzu Chi world is like a human treasure-house where you can find role models suitable for yourselves. Then, whether in clinical practice or in education, you will really be able to serve people and live for service.