Life Wisdom: Planting and Harvesting a Field of Love
Volunteers, please see me as an example of someone who never wastes time but seizes every second to serve. Because I’ve been seizing time, space, and affinity, so, in half a century’s time, Tzu Chi has served in over 120 countries and regions, which is about over half of the world. All it takes is to take a step. I’m just afraid that you remain at the same spot. As long as you take a step, you can take solid steps one after another, and move along steadily.
Never mind of the progress we’ve made, we only need to focus on our steps, and make sure each one is taken solidly. When we look back, we can see the accomplishment of our past; we can also look back and see what we’ve sown. We’ll cultivate fields of blessings and reap fruits of blessings. Indeed, for the past fifty-some years, we’ve served like farmers cultivating their fields and no matter which season, we’ve sown something.
So, at the arrival of a season, be it spring, summer, fall, or winter, we plant accordingly. Whether we’ve planted rice, beans, or grain crops, they are all things we’ve grown and harvested. In the past, I’ve said that blessings cannot be prayed for with words. It is like a field, if you are lazy and you don’t make the effort to cultivate it, this field will be abandoned, with weeds taking over it. If we aspire and make the effort, naturally, on the land we’ve tilted, the seeds we plant will give rise to numerable seeds.
Tzu Chi is a big field of blessings. I hope that Tzu Chi volunteers, no matter where they are, when they think of me, they will walk diligently on the Bodhisattva Path and give of themselves to help living beings in suffering. This is how we connect our wisdom-life together life after life. With karmic seeds from the past and the affinities in this life, we want to further our karmic seeds, affinities, and fruits into our future lives and form the affinity of master and disciples for life after life. No matter who comes to or dies from the world first, we cannot foretell how long we’ll live.
Yet, it’s not important how long we live. What is important is whether we have make use of every second of our life. For every second that we do meaningful things, that’s the true length of our life because during that time, we’ve used our life to contribute to the world. This makes our life meaningful. We want to leave something meaningful in the history of our life.
Volunteers, I’m very blessed. I have so many good disciples. So, I truly hope that when I call on people, people around the world will respond. The Dharma is eternal. We must leave love for the world. There must be love among people. We are walking on the Bodhi Path to enlightenment, and we have awakened to the impermanence of the world.
Now that we already know this, we need to quickly aspire to enter the straight and broad Bodhi Path and walk the Bodhisattva Path. We need to know that life is impermanent. It’s just like now, people are anxious because Mother Nature is out of balance. The four elements are out of balance in addition to our world is having a pandemic. Pandemic is an illness. The occurrence of a pandemic should make us raise our vigilance and quickly awaken from this crisis.
Doing this leads to solutions. We need to awaken to the impermanence of life. We need to awaken and show our inclusive love by loving, protecting, and sparing animal lives. Recently, I keep saying that we need to protect lives. If we want to be healthy, we need to protect and spare animal lives so that animals may live. Humans and animals all have their own world where they live.
In the human world, there are places for the rich. There are also hell-like conditions where people live in poverty and hardship. Some have no food to eat, like hungry ghosts. There is a lot of suffering. Indeed, living in this world, we experience joy and sorrow. Some people are very rich, yet some people are truly poor. So, we need to call on the rich to help people in need.
I am truly grateful that our volunteers know to sow the seeds of blessings and shall harvest the fruits of blessings. Also, as I make an appeal, volunteers around the world respond to my call. I’d like to emphasize this again, volunteers who are currently with us online should be truly diligent and take in my words. I don’t know how many households have turn on their screens for me to enter their home and give them my blessings, expound Dharma teachings, and purify their hearts.
We have to truly seize our affinity. I’m grateful. We should always give one another encouragement as well as blessings. I now take this chance to give all volunteers around the world my blessings, in fact, I want to wish everyone in the world well. May the world be peaceful and safe, with favorable weather. Furthermore, I hope all people become awakened and see the truth, and everyone heads toward the correct and broad Bodhi Path. This is what I now hope for the most.
As longs as volunteers come together in one heart, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. With determination, we give our efforts and strength accordingly to serve. We should work together with others and unite to accomplish things.
This pandemic has impacted us in history and makes everyone in the world anxious and worried. Now Tzu Chi volunteers should quickly join together to call on everyone to adopt vegetarianism and give of themselves with their Great Love. We have to use love to eliminate disasters. Without love, we would not know to create blessings. Without blessings, disasters will keep on happening. Only when we create blessings can we eliminate disasters.
To create blessings, we have to be sincere and pious. Being sincere and pious means loving life and animals, which is to restrain from taking lives and to protect lives. So, we have to adopt vegetarianism.
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