Master's Teachings
"As
inhabitants of the earth, we are nourished and sustained by Mother
Earth who provides us our food and all the resources for life. If she
is healthy and well, we will be healthy and well. Our fates are
intertwined." —Dharma Master Cheng Yen
A paddy field. (Photo by Hsu Cheng-yu; date: 2012/05/15; location: Hualien, Taiwan)
In Malaysia there’s a family of four who, for over 30 years,
used to run a noodle shop selling meat noodles. They turned to
vegetarianism and switched to selling vegetarian food, despite a decline
of earnings as well as customers. In Taiwan, a volunteer who was
running a very lucrative business selling disposable tableware closed it
down, forgoing the profit. What made these people change?
These
are people who love the environment and Mother Nature. They're making
adjustments to their lives so they can better protect the Earth. This
is because they understand how our life is connected to Mother Nature
and how our daily lifestyle impacts the environment—something that
Dharma Master Cheng Yen often tells us. Below is a summary of the
connections and impacts that Dharma Master Cheng Yen has spoken about,
which can open our eyes to why it is important to care for our planet,
our home.
Mudslide triggered by the Typhoon Saola. (Photo by Lin Yen-huang; date: 2012/08/09; location: location: Hualien County, Taiwan)
Beautiful planet undergoing destructionOur
Earth is a very beautiful planet. Among all the planets in the
universe, the Earth is the loveliest, with mountains, oceans, and all
manner of environments, each a home to many kinds of creatures. Mother
Earth sustains all life on it, including us humans. She provides all
the food we eat and the material goods we use.
But her health is
declining and she's losing her ability to protect and provide for the
creatures living on the land. Natural disasters, such as floods,
mudslides, wildfires, drought, and earthquakes, cause damage to the
Earth. Crops are destroyed as a result of drought or flooding, leading
to food shortages and famine. People lose their lives and their homes
as a result of natural disasters. Mother Nature can no longer provide a
safe environment for us to live in.
Global warming is causing
natural disasters to happen more frequently. The rising of the Earth's
temperature has disrupted the order of Nature, resulting in abnormal
climates and natural disasters. The increasing global temperature is
caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trapping the Earth's heat.
Despite the call by the United Nations to industrialized nations to cut
down on their greenhouse gas emissions, in the past few years, we've
seen a continued increase of greenhouse gases. If this goes on, our
planet will continue undergoing destruction, jeopardizing the lives of
all creatures, including us humans.
What can we do to help?
Did
you know that eating meat contributes to over half of the greenhouse
gases? World Watch Institute has reported that 51% of greenhouse gases
are attributed to livestock and their byproducts1. If we can cut down
on our meat consumption, we can help reduce the problem. Mother Earth
supports a very large human population of seven billion. Imagine how
much food we have to eat every day. For example, a whole chicken can be
eaten in just one meal, but it takes months to raise. Imagine how many
animals need to be raised in order to feed people.
Raising animals,
such as chickens, pigs, and cows, produces wastes, such as excrement and
methane gas. Scientific research has found that methane is much more
potent in warming our planet than carbon dioxide. Due to the increase
in human population, meat consumption has increased five-fold in the
past 50 years, and so, the amount of greenhouse gases has also greatly
increased. This is why scientists are telling us that the quickest way
to mitigate global warming is to eat vegetarian.
Eating Vegetarian
For
a long time, Dharma Master Cheng Yen has been urging people to eat
vegetarian. By not eating meat, it helps nurture kindness and
compassion in our heart, as we don't take the lives of animals.
Vegetarian food is also good for our health. And now scientists are
telling us that eating vegetarian can save the Earth. By eating
vegetarian, our demand for meat will decrease. Hence, farms won't need
to raise so many livestock. When the number of livestock is reduced,
greenhouse gases associated with raising animals will also reduce.
Therefore, to help our planet and the whole of mankind, it's necessary
that we eat vegetarian and encourage other people to do it too.
Tzu
Chi volunteers share the concept of being 80% full and using the 20% to
help others. They prepare delicious vegetarian dishes for the guests.
(Photo by Ueno Kouzi; date: 2012/03/13; location: Tzu Chi Foundation,
Japan Branch)
The family in Malaysia that turned vegetarian and
stopped selling beef noodles did so after watching Da Ai TV, Tzu Chi’s
TV channel. It broadcasts many programs on environmental protection,
vegetarianism, and protecting the life of animals. Through Da Ai TV,
they learned the harm of killing animals, eating meat, and its negative
impact on the environment. So they turned to eating vegetarian and
courageously made the switch to selling vegetarian food even though it
hurt their business. But they insist on doing it because it gives them
peace of mind in knowing that they're no longer doing harm to the
animals and the Earth.
Here is another example. There are two Tzu Chi volunteers who became vegetarian after taking part in
the sutra adaptation of the Water Repentance Text
last year. This was an activity Tzu Chi held last year which required
participants to eat vegetarian for at least 108 days. The two Tzu Chi
volunteers who participated were husband and wife. The husband was very
keen on eating vegetarian, but the wife was very resistant to it.
Despite her objection, he took the initiative to eat vegetarian anyway.
To get his wife to follow suit, he went to learn vegetarian cooking and
started cooking for her every day so that she would not have any chance
to cook and eat meat. The wife, meanwhile, was learning about the harm
of eating meat through the sutra adaptation activity and has become
repentant of eating meat and the harms she has done to animals. After
much struggle to overcome her initial resistance, she finally became a
vegetarian. Now, the whole family, including the children, is
vegetarian.
It's not hard to eat vegetarian. Once we make the
switch and get used to our new eating habit, it can go a long way toward
protecting our environment and caring for the Earth.
Human consumption, the burden of Mother Earth
Cars,
computers, houses, and clothing, are some of the things that we use
every day. We drive around in a car to get us to where we need to go.
We use computers for work. We live in a house to shelter us from the
elements, and we have to wear clothes every day. All these require
natural resources: fuels for the car, various metals for computer parts,
brick or concrete for houses, and synthetic fibers for cloth.
The
Earth provides the resources for us to transform into these various
material goods. With our growing population, she's trying very hard to
support us.
There's only one Earth and her resources are limited.
Inasmuch as she tries to provide us what we need, her resources are
dwindling. The Earth is also becoming more and more polluted.
Take
oil or petroleum for example. Our demand for oil keeps on increasing,
so we keep pumping it out of the earth. The process of refining oil and
then making products derived from oil, such as synthetic fibers,
releases a lot of pollutants into the atmosphere, land, and water.
The
houses we live in also come at the expense of pollution. Many houses
are made from bricks and concrete. To make bricks and concrete, we mine
for clay and various types of rocks. The process of making them
involves very hot kilns which produce air pollution. After excavating
clay and rocks, we leave permanent tunnels or holes in the mountains.
The mountains cannot regrow, so the tunnels won’t fill themselves again
with the same clay or rocks that were excavated. It's the same with
metals, such as gold, iron, and copper. Metals ores excavated from the
earth are processed to obtain these metals. During the process, toxic
waste is generated.
Many of the material goods that we enjoy in
our daily life come at the expense of environmental damage and
pollution. As the human population grows, the demand for resources
becomes greater, and we also create more pollution. If we continue with
our current lifestyle of consumption, and continue over-extracting
materials, the Earth's resources will be depleted within 30 years2. If
we deplete all the available resources now, we won't have resources left
for our children or our future generations to use.
Developing a Heart of Appreciation and RecyclingThe
Earth provides so much to us, from food and housing to all the material
goods that we use. How can we help her and minimize the harms we're
doing to her? One very tangible way that Dharma Master Cheng Yen tells
us we can help is by doing recycling. By recycling what we would
otherwise simply throw out with the garbage, we can reduce the need to
extract new raw materials from the Earth and better protect the Earth
from being damaged. When recyclable materials are sorted by type, they
can serve as raw materials to be remade into new products.
Recycle plastic bottles. (Photo by Yu Hsi-chang)
In
many countries, Tzu Chi has recycling programs to educate people about
environmental protection and encourage them do recycling by saving
items such as cans, plastic bottles, and cartons, and keeping them
clean. By keeping the recyclables clean and already sorted, it makes
the recycling easier for volunteers and also saves water in cleaning.
In
the programs, we share with people how to develop a heart of
appreciation when using things in our daily life through cherishing what
we have. Take drinking juice for example. When we hold a bottle of
juice in our hand, let’s think about how much labor and effort went into
producing it. First, farmers need to grow fruit trees, and they need
to take care of them by applying fertilizers and tending to them.
Mother Nature, with her sunlight, water, soil, and air, makes the trees
grow and produce fruits. When the fruits are ripe, workers harvest and
process them. Drivers then transport the juices to the supermarket to
be put on the shelves. So much effort went in so that we may enjoy the
juice, we should be grateful and appreciate it.
After we finish
drinking, there'll be some drops left at the bottom of the container.
To cherish those drops of juice, we can pour some water in it, shake it a
little bit to rinse the few drops, and drink the liquid. That way, we
won't waste any drops of juice that so many people worked hard to
provide. Also, by rinsing the container with water, it keeps the
container clean so that it won't attract ants, flies, or cockroaches to
our home. We can do this not just for juice containers, but for milk
cartons and other things that can be recycled.
When the
recyclables are brought to the recycling stations, our recycling
volunteers sort them by their material type. If the recyclables are
dirty, they have to be cleaned before being sorted. Take a PET bottle
for example, the volunteers separate the cap and its plastic ring from
the bottle, then take off the label wrapping, leaving the bottle as
clean and free from impurities as possible. By keeping the recyclables
clean and sorting them in detail, they can be turned into high quality
products. For example, recycled PET bottles can be turned into fabrics,
which are then made into clothing and blankets. It takes 70 PET
bottles to make one blanket. We then distribute these blankets to
people in need around the world, such as disaster survivors and the
poor. Instead of obtaining raw materials to make the blankets, through
recycling, we are able to turn "garbage" into valuable resources and
reuse them to make useful products for people.
Many residents in
the community take part in our recycling effort. When they participate
and personally get involved in doing recycling, they see for themselves
firsthand how much waste we generate, how many things we throw away, and
how much we are consuming.
Mr. Chen is a recycling volunteer in
Taiwan who used to run a wholesale business providing disposable
tableware and plastic bags. In 1990, there was an increase in demand
for disposable tableware in Taiwan due to people using it to prevent
contracting hepatitis B when eating out. Mr. Chen's business bloomed.
Later
he came into contact with Tzu Chi and got involved in recycling work.
He would help transport recyclables to the recycling station and sort
them out. After doing this, he came to realize that the disposable
tableware his business provided end up in the garbage after use. As Tzu
Chi was promoting environmental protection by cutting down on the use
of disposables, his business was doing the exact opposite. He felt very
bad.
As he still needed to support his family and it was hard
for him to switch, he continued to run the business. Many years later,
in 1997, when his financial situation became more stable, he finally was
able to fulfill his wish to close his disposable tableware business of
26 years. Knowing how important recycling is to protecting the Earth,
he helped set up a recycling station in his community five years later
and worked there every day.
Many people who volunteer at the
recycling stations have similar experiences to Mr. Chen. After
participating in recycling work, they come to examine their lifestyle,
begin to cut down on their consumption, and buy only the things they
need. They also cherish material goods by using them for as long as
possible instead of pursuing the latest fashion by throwing things out
and replacing them with a newer model. They come to appreciate the
goods they’re using and appreciate the Earth for providing them with the
materials that make their life comfortable. They become more aware of
the need to protect the environment and take actions to protect it.
Since
Tzu Chi started its recycling work in 1990, many people have joined our
effort in protecting the environment. As of 2011, we have over 100,000
recycling volunteers in 15 countries and regions working to protect the
environment.
Conserving Water and ElectricityIn addition to recycling to conserve resources, we can also cherish other resources, such as water and electricity.
With
the damage done to the environment, Nature's capacity to retain water
is becoming diminished. Water isn't going into rivers and many are
drying up. When it doesn't rain, we may face a water crisis. Though
many people have turned to using groundwater, over-pumping of
groundwater has already caused land to sink. As there are so many
people who need to use water in this world and water resources are
limited, if every one of us can use less water, the limited water
resources can last longer.
There's one volunteer who did just
this. In her home, she keeps many basins and buckets, which she uses to
collect used water. She saves the water from washing vegetables and
reuses it to water plants. She also saves the cleaner, non-soapy water
from the shower and uses it again to flush the toilet and mop the floor.
When it rains, she collects rain water and uses it to do everyday jobs
too. By doing this she is able to cut down water consumption for her
family of five by more than half. We can also do the same in our homes
by reusing water wherever possible.
We can also save on
electricity. Besides the environmental reasons for conserving, do you
know how much labor and human effort is involved in bringing electricity
to us? To have this electricity, workers have to set up transmission
towers to transmit electricity from the power plant to where it's
needed. They also need to maintain them. When there's a problem with a
tower, technicians have to go up to fix it, climbing very high and
risking their lives. They do it so that our lives won't be affected by
the loss of electrical power. We can show our appreciation by turning
off lights and electrical products when they are not in use to save
electricity. It's even better if we can pull out the plugs as well so
that no electricity is drawn at all. These are some ways in which we
can cherish electricity and be grateful for it.
Caring for the Earth
We
all live on the same planet, so we all share the same resources.
Depletion of the Earth's resources will impact the whole humanity, our
collective quality of life, and our own collective resources. Let us do
something for Mother Earth. If we change our consumerist lifestyle and
become more environmentally friendly, we can improve the condition of
our environment. By not eating meat and eating vegetarian, we can help
to reduce greenhouse gases. By reducing our consumption and doing
recycling, we can help reduce pollution, conserve resources, and prevent
mountains from being destroyed. Conserving electricity and water also
helps prolong these resources.
Dharma Master Cheng Yen often
says that "grains of rice can fill up a basket and drops of water can
form a river." When we switch to eco-friendly living habits, we reduce
our part in the harm done to the Earth. Our eco-friendly living habits
may seem insignificant in tackling the planet's environmental problem,
but when one person changes to an eco-friendly lifestyle, that's one
person protecting the Earth. When two, three, five, a hundred, or a
hundred thousand people switch to an eco-friendly lifestyle, that's a
hundred thousand people protecting the Earth. When more and more people
switch to eco-friendly living habits, our collective efforts can
protect our planet. One person alone cannot do this; it takes the joint
efforts of all people. When everyone switches to eco-friendly living
habits we can really curb pollution, mitigate global warming, and save
the Earth's resources. As inhabitants of the Earth, let us protect her
so that she can remain safe and well. Only when our planet is well can
we humankind be safe and well. To give back to the Earth for all that
she has provided to us, let us all take care of our planet together.
Source: http://tw.tzuchi.org
