The world of Tzu Chi (Vol.109)

07 TZU CHI 109 I n 1966, Dharma Master Cheng Yen founded the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation in rural Hualien, Taiwan with five disciples. Together, they sewed infant shoes for sale to raise funds for charity. From its humble beginnings, Tzu Chi strived to provide relief from poverty and hardship, as well as emergency and disaster relief. During Tzu Chi’s early days, Master Cheng Yen would personally visit prospective care recipients with her disciples to gain abetter understandingof their backgroundand livingconditions. She insisted on ensuring Tzu Chi’s hard-earned funds were directed to only the most deserving individuals in need. The first care recipient in Tzu Chi’s history of charity work was 85-year-old Lin Zeng, an elderly woman who was estranged from her adopted children and lived alone. She was frail and weak from starvation and the biting cold weather. Tzu Chi offered her adequate monthly support by getting someone to prepare meals for her and provide assistance with her daily activities, before her demise four years later. Tzu Chi’s second care recipient, Lu Dan Gui, benefitted fromTzu Chi’s medical assistance. However, several months after undergoing an operation to treat her glaucoma, she took her own life following a heated argument with her husband. This tragic incident evoked Master ChengYen’s sympathy, and subsequently led to the conception of a more structured, comprehensive procedure of managing care recipients by introducing follow- up assessments. Now, volunteers conduct monthly visits to the care recipients’ homes to provide ongoing care and support. Even after the provision of aid has been discontinued, volunteers would continue their visits for some time to ensure that the care recipients cope well with their lives. Fifty-three years on, the spirit of charity remains the cornerstone of Tzu Chi’s missions, and Tzu Chi volunteers around the world continue to uphold it in performing their duties, reaching out to the darkest corners of society to bring hope and touch lives with compassion. The timely assistance from Tzu Chi volunteers gave care recipients Wong Tang Soong, Yoh Kim Peow and Mr Wong (who preferred to be identified by this pseudonym) a new lease of life. At the same time, the volunteers, in turn, were afforded the opportunity to earn blessings by alleviating the hardship endured by the care recipients, while gaining wisdom as home visits are insightful windows into the lives of care recipients from diverse predicaments. [Photograph by Ng Hock Thai] Serve from the Heart Ever eady to