Recent forest fires in Indonesia, only four hours away from Taiwan by plane, have caused a tremendous amount of smoke in the air over Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Indonesia. According to news reports, quite a few lives have been lost and many people have become sick by inhaling the smoke. The World Nature Foundation has declared the area an international disaster zone and has extended a helping hand to rescue victims of the disaster. Tzu Chi members in that area have also done everything they can to care for the victims. They have distributed more than ten thousand gauze masks for emergency use.

We feel very sorry for the dead and for those suffering from smoke inhalation. We also feel sad for the big forests that have been burned down. It is understood that people started the fires for their own commercial purposes. In so doing, they abused the generosity of Mother Nature without putting the negative consequences into consideration. They "drained the pond to catch the fish." As it turned out, they harmed or endangered their own lives.

The smoke can be considered as retaliation by the great earth. The fires not only harmed people, forests and the organic life chain in Indonesia, but they may also cause big changes in the global environment.

Ever since the industrial revolution, people have always treated nature as a tool. They do whatever they like for their own benefit. They have never really loved nature. Therefore, the world has been constantly damaged during the course of industrial and commercial development. It is truly a great tragedy for us to see such damage. Although environmental protection has been stressed in recent years, the notion has not yet prevailed in every part of the world, nor has it been planted deeply enough into people's minds.

Human beings exist in nature, but our existence and development must be verified by nature. While we are making use of nature to benefit our own lives, we must at the same time enrich it. Only when nature is loved and grows stronger can human lives be extended forever. If the world is continuously damaged, people will no longer be able to survive. In other words, if nature is no longer nature,?h?man beings will no longer be human beings.

The smoke from the forest fires in Southeast Asia has provided us a warning and food for thought. The damage we have caused has reached a critical point. If we don't start to love and enrich the world, we shall lose the support for our own existence.

Nature is the source of life for human beings and other animals. We must change our abusive attitude toward it and stop using it as a tool. Instead, we must love it, merge ourselves into it and recognize our close relationship with it. This way, we can learn to look at our lives through the generosity and compassion of nature.