Like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, Tuan Shu-hua went through devastation and struggle, but her rebirth brought her peace.

The weak candlelight provided a sense of protection against the howling wind and the beating rain of the typhoon which was roaring outside the door and windows, making the July night even darker. Usually by this time of day, Tuan Shu-hua would have drunk a whole bottle of XO brandy. However, on this particular night, she was sitting on a bed in the sleeping quarters at the Abode of Still Thoughts and telling a stranger about all the things that had happened to her during her self-imposed exile in Japan.

Shu-hua's years of excessive drinking caused her to speak disjointedly. But the kind, accepting manner of the listener made her relax and continue talking. The listener was Miss Yen Hui-mei, a devoted senior volunteer at the Tzu Chi Hospital. Watching Shu-hua's trembling fingers and listening to her stammering speech, Hui-mei asked her how she was able to make a living in Japan. "I owned a bar," replied Shu-hua. Hui-mei thought that it must take a capable businesswoman to run a bar in Japan.

The tapping outside the door, signaling that it was time to sleep, put an end to their talk. Shu-hua was surprised that they would have to go to bed so early. She was also worried that she wouldn't be able to sleep without taking her sleeping pills. But seeing other people around her slipping under their comforters, she did the same and soon fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, she woke to find herself alone in the sleeping quarters. The sunlight shone through the window screens. Outside she heard the chanting of a Buddhist sutra. She was disoriented for a moment and wondered how she had been able to sleep without her pills.

An Unhappy Marriage

At sixteen, Tuan Shu-hua left her home in the south of Taiwan and traveled alone to Taipei to look for a job. In just a few years, she owned a women's apparel business.

She met a man whom she ordinarily would not have liked. However, she believed that she owed this man a debt from a previous life and that she needed to pay him back. On their third date, she proposed. The man was startled and bewildered that a woman would propose to a man. Nevertheless , she was very attractive and he accepted her proposal.

The idea of paying back the debt held the marriage together, even though he sometimes used his fists on her. He was also a philanderer, and after their son was born he ran around even more. The loneliness of waiting for him to come home every night tormented her.

One morning Shu-hua woke up and decided that the debt had been repaid. She suddenly got up and frantically searched all his pockets for evidence of his adultery. She cried and screamed hysterically, shouting at her husband that she wanted a divorce. To him, this was just as surprising as her proposal to marry him, but he agreed to a divorce. The failure of their marriage made her sink even deeper into despair.

After signing the divorce agreement, Shu-hua immediately got a job working as a bar hostess, thinking that this would bring shame to her ex-husband. She never expected that she would pay such a high price for her decision. With her beautiful face and generous, straightforward manner, she became very popular with the clients in a just a few months. Thinking of her son's future, she turned down many propositions by clients.

Shu-hua saved all the money she had made from the long hours of drinking and cajoling with clients, always with a smile pasted on her face. At the height of her career as a hostess , she owned eight condominiums in the wealthiest part of Taipei.

Losing It All in Gambling

With such difficult living conditions and with few friends for support, Shu-hua was still able to deal smoothly with the clients she encountered while working as a hostess. But she clung to her naive belief in the goodness of people.

One time a friend urgently needed money for his business, and Shu-hua lent him a large sum. He quickly disappeared, and she went to a gambling parlor to look for him. While she was waiting, the manager of the parlor came up to her and encouraged her to try her hand at gambling. Shu-hua thought she could kill time and at the same time enjoy the taste of winning. Her skills at dealing with difficult clients at the bar were useless at the gambling table, however, and she lost money. She was too proud to be beaten and she was determined to win back what she had lost. In the end, she lost everything she had, including her condominiums.

Penniless and unable to stand the reproach of her family, Shu-hua fled to the United States, hoping to make a fresh start in a Chinese community. Her past quickly caught up with her, however, and she developed cirrhosis of the liver caused by her years of drinking. Suffering in both body and spirit, she abandoned her business dealings and returned to Taiwan. Back home, she still felt discontented. Not long after, she left with her son for Japan. But as she watched her native country grow smaller and smaller through the plane window, her heart ached.

Since her only job skills were in working in a bar, she decided that the only way she could make a living was to open her own bar. She was determined that her bar would be successful, and she insisted that the bar would not offer sexual services to customers. However, to own a business, she needed to acquire a legal status. She had entered Japan with a student visa, so she could not legally run a business.

A friend told her of a Japanese man who she thought would make a dependable husband. Shu-hua decided she would have to compromise her standards and face the reality of trying to make a living in Japan. In order to gain permanent residency and the right to work, she married the man and she and her son went to live with him.

Addiction to Sleeping Pills

The marriage just made her life even more difficult. Her husband kept asking her for money as payment for adopting her son. He was put in jail for embezzlement of public funds, and the police questioned her again and again about the crime. The numbness that alcohol provided was not enough to deal with all these problems, and she began using sleeping pills to bring her temporary refuge.

The cirrhosis of her liver got worse, and the sleeping pills also became her painkillers. Each night she swallowed more and more sleeping pills, washing them down with alcohol, hoping for some relief. All she wanted was a good night's sleep.

Because of the quantity of alcohol and drugs she consumed, Shu-hua suffered memory lapses, frequently forgetting what she had said just a minute before. When she was sober, she told herself that she must stay alive at least until her son graduated from high school. But the love she felt for her son could not overcome her loneliness and helplessness. Once she cried drunkenly to her son, telling him that if she had not had a child, her life would not have been so difficult.

Although she could not even use a calculator with her trembling hands, she still played mahjong. She had lost faith in her own life, but she could not give up gambling. The more money she made from selling alcohol , the more money she lost at the gambling table. But when a friend kidded her that she would be a gambler all her life, she became very upset. Finally opening her eyes to her addiction, she swore she would never gamble again. All the customers at her bar expected that she would soon return to her old ways, but from that day on she never gambled, no matter how much her friends pressured her.

She and her son continued this chaotic existence in Osaka for six years. Even so, she still didn't want to return to Taiwan. In 1993, one of her neighbors, Hsieh Mei-jen, who was also from Taiwan, donated *5 million [about US$50,000] to the Tzu Chi Foundation. Mei-jen had always been thrifty. Shu-hua wondered what it was about Tzu Chi that would prompt her to donate so much money.

Once when she visited the Hsiehs, she noticed a Tzu Chi pamphlet, Ten Thousand Lotus Blossoms of the Heart, which aroused her curiosity. Mei-jen often shared with her lines from Master Cheng's Still Thoughts. Shu-hua decided to return to Taiwan to see for herself what Tzu Chi was about.

The Abode of Still Thoughts

This decision brought Shu-hua to the Abode of Still Thoughts in Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan, where she had her first good night's sleep in over seventeen years without the aid of alcohol or sleeping pills. The schedule at the Abode of Still Thoughts was always the same. After the 4:00 morning prayers, the nuns and the visitors went into the dining room to have breakfast.

As soon as Shu-hua finished her breakfast, Yen Hui-mei, who had talked with her the previous evening, came over and told her that she could volunteer at the hospital. Shu-hua's mind was still preoccupied with the memory of the swirling wind and beating rain of the night before. She looked at Hui-mei blankly, not knowing how to respond.

Seeing the leaves strewn on the ground, Shu-hua vaguely remembered arriving at the Abode of Still Thoughts in the middle of the typhoon. The nuns and novices were busy making candles and hadn't noticed that they had a visitor in such weather. She was a little disappointed at being thus ignored , so she went and sat alone in the lobby. All of a sudden, she heard a kind voice behind her: "If the train isn't running, you'll have to stay."

Turning around, she met Master Cheng Yen's kind eyes. She looked at the Master for a long while and then her eyes became blurred with tears. That voice, that person, was like an old friend for whom she had been searching for so long. She was so nervous that she could not say a word.

Shu-hua uneasily asked Hui-mei what a volunteer in the hospital did. "Look after the patients," Hui-mei told her. Hui-mei was so persistent that Shu-hua found it hard to say no. The hard work and unselfish giving demanded of a volunteer, going from one ward to another, almost made Shu-hua give up. However, Hui-mei encouraged her step by step. Shu-hua could not help but work attentively for the whole month.

Her mind, though, was still in a fog most of the time. She almost hypnotically followed Hui-mei to the hospital to do volunteer work, others to the dining room to eat, or the nuns to the workroom to make candles. Her hands still trembled and her speech was still not very clear. But she kept repeating to herself that now she could sleep without the aid of sleeping pills, and nothing else was more important.

Getting Out of the Bar Business

Shu-hua announced to her business partner in Japan that she wanted to quit the business. Her partner couldn't understand how one trip to Taiwan could create such a big change in her. Shu-hua told her that she was going to work for Tzu Chi. If her partner wanted to run the business , she could have it . Her partner had only joined the business to have something to do in her spare time, so seeing the change in Shu-hua, she had no interest in running the bar either.

Shu-hua thus closed the bar and donated all her savings to Tzu Chi. She went from being the owner of a trendy bar to a common laborer, loading and unloading cargo weighing over a hundred kilograms [220 lb.]. She was used to working at night and sleeping during the day. Adjusting to the change was difficult. Frequently after coming home from work, she would fall into bed, unable to move. Often when she carried heavy loads on her shoulders, she chanted the holy name of the Great Compassion Bodhisattva to give her strength so that she wouldn't fall down. Thick calluses grew on her tender hands.

One day she saw a job advertised at a supermarket. Immediately she applied for the job, reasoning that since the supermarket was close to her home, she could work two shifts and make more money to donate to Tzu Chi.

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