In memory of my mother

June 28 is the memorial day of my mother. On this date in 2002, she left this world. Every year when June arrives, bits and pieces of memory about mother and me arise. This year I like to commemorate her by writing some of her stories prior to her memorial day.

Mother was the second daughter of my maternal grandparents who rented my paternal grandfather’s land to plant crops to feed their family. At the age of 10, she obeyed her parents’ command, walked into Chen family as a fostered child daughter-in-law. That was a smart idea my paternal grandfather proposed. He knew my mother’s natural father was a modest and honest farmer, he believed descendants of good people would be nice for his son, my father. So he said to my grandma that he wanted to get that girl, my mother, into Chen family to be trained well before she was officially married to his son.

Buying fostered child daughter-in-law was a common practice found among rich families of my grandparent’s era. So my mother, at the age of 10, carried a simple pack of belongings, holding the sad emotion of leaving her own family, though poor, with her mother’s company, walked from her village for 3 miles to Chen family in the town. She told me late in her life that from time to time she resented her mother being so cruel selling her for the survival of the family.

Before she was officially put together with my father at age 18, she was trained to be a good wife. As a 10 year old child, her first mission was to look after my great grandmother. She shared a bed with my great grandmother. She walked alongside of her grandmother wherever she went. Before long, her responsibility extended to include cooking for this big family of about 20 people including grandfather’s team of carpenters. She was meant to get up before four o’clock in the morning to start cooking breakfast and boiling hot water while everyone was still sleeping. She recalled the hardship of that cooking task, in the winter time to a child using the very conventional olden day kitchen facilities. She had to be standing on a short stool so as to be high enough to work on the stove. It was even harder for her to get up in the morning when there was a cold blitz. She cherished her grandmother’s kindness. She said that often her grandmother woke up seeing her struggling to get up, pulled her back to the warm bed, asked her to sleep for a little longer and she would remain awake in order to wake her up for her cooking tasks.

Part of my grandfather’s training plan for his fostered daughter-in-law was sending her to school which was my mother’s dream. So she was taken into grade four skipping the first three years for a normal child because of her height and maturity. Though she was excited about being given the opportunity to go to school, this unusual class placement was a great challenge to her. She got to work harder to catch up. My grandfather spared some of his working time everyday to teach her learn new words. Soon my mother caught up with the other students despite her big load of household tasks, and became the top few students of the class. Composition was her strength. One of her writings was put on the bulletin board to be shown to the whole school.

Mother graduated from school with excellent marks. She begged for further schooling. Her teacher came to visit my grandparents hoping to make them agree with her request to go to high school. My grandfather agreed, however, grandmother thought a daughter-in-law with high school certificate would be arrogant and uneasy to be disciplined, so she rejected her request. My mother was very obedient, she just accepted the reality.

As originally planned, she was married to my father at the age of 18. Their first child was a boy. Unfortunately this boy, my eldest brother, died at very young age in a catastrophic earthquake occurred in middle part of Taiwan. This tragedy hurt her deeply. But fate didn’t just stop fighting against her. Before me, there were two of her children, a boy and a girl, died during their babyhood. They were said to be very cute and healthy. The whole family pampered them very much. But a sudden attack of fever lasting a few days and they were gone. My mother later recalled this heart breaking experiences, still felt the hurt vividly in her mind.

Before I was born, there was no son to carry on Chen’s name. My mother was very worried about the gender of the baby in her pregnancy in 1950. Her anxiety about whether the coming baby would be a son or a daughter was especially high because my grandma was very frail then and kept telling my mother that her soul would never be consoled if this time was not a boy. Mother relieved upon giving birth to me, a boy, and the midwife held me to show to my grandmother in her bed. Three days after my birth grandma died with her wish for a grandson fulfilled.

With 6 children to feed, mum and dad got to work very hard. Dad worked as a technician for a timber mill in a neighbouring town, and mum got to pick up the load of running a grocery shop and getting the household chores done at the same time. I often saw mother panting and sweating all day rushing around with the things to do. Once I remembered in a summer evening when I was about 6 of age, there were the three daughters of our neighbour gathered at our kitchen, and I heard they were saying, “we come to watch Obasang (auntie, in Japanese) having her dinner.” In my mind, I wondered what was my mum’s eating her meal of any special? Then I saw my mother rushed back home from our shop, sweating. She greeted these three girls knowing they came to watch her performing of eating a meal. Silently she picked up a bowl, filled it with rice porridge, picked up chopsticks, shovelled a big mouthful of the thickened porridge then picked up bit of side dish and put it into her mouth to chew, and then gulped them down. With 3 repeats of the same movements, the bowl was emptied. Within about 3 minutes, mum had done her meal with her back soaked by sweat. The process was watched amazingly by these audiences. One of the girls commented, “It is an enjoyment watching Obasang eating her meal. The meal seems to be delicious from the way Obasang eats.” And of course, mum smiled at them silently after the meal and rushed out to look after our shop.

Since mother started learning how to cook from 10 years old, she was good at cooking. She could make a good meal in less than one hour including preparation, cooking and tidy-up. The dishes she made were of the class of a restaurant. But of course, we could only get the chance to enjoy mum’s delicious dishes on special occasions such as New Year’s Eve and traditional festivals. Although mum was capable of making delicious food, she actually dreaded any big day on which she was supposed to do fancy cooking apart from looking after her shop. On any of that kind of big days, she got to get up even earlier to organise everything for the shop first. Then, she left the shop to my 3rd sister to look after while she rushed to the market to shop all the cooking material. Then, she needed to wash, peel, cut, chop, marinate, pre-process all by her alone to get all the material ready for making various kind of yummy dishes. At the end of the cooking and worshiping ritual, she always exhausted and could only lay on the bed for a short while before going to our shop to close it for the day.

Her life was a bit relieved after my father decided to get our shop sold, and shifted to live in Taipei from Ching Shui. My father was employed as office assistant in my big brother-in-law’s company. This job did not earn him enough income to support us, so my mother offered to serve as the company’s cook taking care of the 3 meals a day for the office employees. This supplemented the family’s income.

Mother’s life was noticeably improved after I had graduated and fulfilled my 2 year term of military service and got a job. This period began in 1975 when Taiwan economy grew rapidly. Mum had opportunities joining in tours to quite a few touring destinations in Taiwan. But she did not want to just let me carry the burden alone; she sought for casual job available in our community. There was an umbrella manufacturing factory in our community. They needed more hands to sew the fabric onto the umbrella skeleton. That was not a laborious job, but was rather tedious and required great patience to do it. She persuaded my father to take part in this simple but tedious job. So they started sewing umbrellas.

They started early in the morning no matter it was summer or winter. Sometimes it was so cold in winter morning, and yet she already started sewing the umbrella before dawn. A few times I asked her why not sleep-in a bit. She said to me, “You will know an elderly cannot sleep long when you are at my age.” Sometimes, I stood at her back and gave her a massage over the neck and shoulders, and I could feel this small offering brought her great happiness.

In January 1989, father died at age 74. To my mother, father’s death must have triggered her box of memories as he was the one she had known of since age 10. They had woven their memories over 63 years of time together despite the fact that there was more bitterness than joy.

In April 1990, I accompanied mum to visit 4th sister in Canberra who immigrated to Australia in 1989. That was mum’s first time ever travelled overseas. Upon seeing each other at sister’s front yard, this pair of mother and daughter hugged each other tightly bawling loudly. The emotion erupted like a collapsing dam. To mum, she was just recovering from the loss of her closest man, and to my sister, she was adjusting to a totally new life in a new country. Both of them had tried so hard to compress their emotion to prevent it from eruption, and now it had got its breaking point.

Mother had great impression on the living quality of western country on this trip to Australia. And this could be related to our decision of immigrating to New Zealand in 1992.

Socialable as mother was, she soon had very good interaction with many of the new Taiwanese immigrant families. She attended the local primary school activity, too. Once my son’s school invited all the grannies of their school students to take part in their teaching activity. Each of the invited grannies was to tell the students in their group about what kind of games they played at school when they were young. My mother had no English, however, she bravely entered the classroom together with many English speaking grannies. Sitting on the low stools in a circle with the students of their group, they began their activity. I saw mum from outside the classroom smiling all the time; sometimes looked at the children, sometimes looked out the window seeking me. She told me later that she felt a bit nervous but could feel the friendliness from other grannies and the children.

To an elderly like mum, living in a culturally new country is a torture, and I could only appreciate it myself a few years after our arrival. There were a lot of mental sufferings such as loneliness, frustration, isolation, nervousness and etc. But all are too late. There was no go-back; my children had been accustomed to local life style. I felt sorry for mum. And it could be due to these sufferings, mum devoted her time in practice Buddhist cultivation when we were out at work and her grand children were in school.

She had a counter brought from Taiwan. When she chanted Amitofo (Buddha name) for a whole round of her chanting beads she recorded 1 into the counter. Thus she went on chanting, chanting, chanting till the time we all came back from work and school. Then she called us into her room one by one. She then stood beside us, holding her chanting bead ring and lightly stoking over our back, murmuring her pray and transferring her merit gained from the chanting to us. I later realised that the so called Buddhist retreat in a monastery is similar to what mum had been doing during that period of time. They practice isolation, silence, mindfulness, all as what mum did.
In July 2001 when mother was 86, her weakening kidney made her frail and her doctor sent her to stay in North Shore Hospital for one week for a thorough test. Coincidentally my work was very busy with a lot of incoming stock, so I could not take a whole week leave for mum’s companionship during her hospital check-up. I had to be in and out of her ward and my work when nessary. She could manage to be in hospital by herself in the day time, but was scared of being there without having me beside her in the night time. So the night shift nurse was kind enough to get me a lying chair to sleep by her bed. Mum’s high social skill astonished me when one day I dropped in from work seeing her talking to the resident of her neighbouring bed, a local Kiwi, by means of body language.

The result of the check-up indicated that mum’s kidneys were beyond the effect of medication available, and doctor thought that her condition was not suitable to apply urine analysis treatment as well. Then she was discharged from the hospital with new prescription of antibiotic for keeping her chronic kidney inflammation under control.

Mother’s fragility was getting worse by month after her last hospital stay. Walking from her room to our dining room could take ages to complete, so I requested a wheel chair from the hospital to move her around in the house. This was about the last 3 months of her life time when she became bed bound. The last month saw her losing her appetite. I asked her if there was any pain or discomfort, and she said no pain except being weak. To a devoted Buddhist, having no pain and discomfort and being conscious at the last stage of life is a great blessing.

On the 28th June 2002, I was preparing to go to work. Though knowing mum was very weak and had had no appetite for food for 3 days, I thought this was another day of saying good bye to her and would be seeing her in bed when I got home from work. I waved her good bye before going to work and she pulled her left hand out of the duvet, smiled and said in her mouth “good bye.”

When I was at work that day, I had an impulse of writing a fax to Dr, Alex Chan, her doctor. In the message I told him that mother had been very frail in the past 2 weeks and it seemed that her life was to come to the end any time. And I begged if he could make a home visit of her on that day? But I did not receive his reply before I was off the day.

When I got home and entered mum’s room, we exchanged greetings and then I proceeded with the routine of catheterisation to empty her bladder. Half way in the process, I suddenly heard mum breathed heavily and then all became silent. I raised my head and realised that mum had just passed away. In panic I rang her doctor at the clinic. There was no answer. So I rang his home. A lady answered my call in English, seemingly the doctor’s house keeper. I requested to speak to Dr. Chan; she declined. So before she hung up, I hurriedly said to her that because my mother was dying I needed to talk to her doctor. Still, she wouldn’t pass the phone on, instead she said to me that if mother was dying then I should call 111 for ambulance but not doctor.

I went back to mum’s room making sure the Amitofo music was still on. Beside this, my brain seemed to be blank; didn’t know what to do next. About 10 minutes after the phone, I heard a car driving up the driveway and parked by the door. It was Dr. Chan. He must have figured out, from the phone and the fax message sent to his clinic, that my mother was dying. He had no obligation with my request for home visit whatsoever, but he came. I was very grateful to what he did to my mother. After some checks, he proved her death. Upon hearing this announcement, tears came out of my eyes, and I knelt down before mum. Doctor held me up and asked me to get mum’s death certificate from his clinic next day, then I saw him off.

We followed the tradition of Pure Land sect of Buddhism to keep mum’s body undisturbed for at least 8 hours. During this period we played the Amitofo music non-stop to remind her soul of focusing on the goal of shifting to the Blissful World of Amitofo.

The funeral agent was called in the next morning to sort out the detailed arrangement of the funeral.

Our friend David Huang helped to invite whoever knew my mother to attend the funeral. My boss, Thomas Chiu, was invited by me to deliver a speech about my mother. Two of my colleagues, Mark and Dennis came to pay their condolences, too. Many of mum’s friends turned up. Mrs. Jean Huang presented a pair of flower bunches to pay her respect and condolences. My 4th sister and her daughter Meiling flew from Sydney to attend the funeral. I asked the funeral hall host to play the Amitofo music as the background sound throughout the event. The funeral was simple but very solemn.

As mum had mentioned to 4th sister once in their meeting that she wished to be cremated and her remain be kept in Fo Guang Shan Temple in Sydney. She had this wish because my 4th sister's huband, died two years earlier from liver cancer, was buried in Sydney and his soul plaque was kept in that temple, too. So sister arranged a Buddhist ceremony in the temple on August 3, and I flew from Auckland on the same day with the box of mum’s remain. We went to the temple directly from airport.

The solemn Buddhist ceremony began as soon as mum’s remain was placed on the altar by Buddha’s statues. The chanting of sutra, smell of incense, and the atmosphere in the hall triggered my sadness that my tears streamed down even after the rituals were finished. And then mum’s remain is stored in the pagoda where solemn Buddhist music and worships are presented twice daily to remind the souls of continuing practice in order to achieve complete liberation.

Almost 6 years after mother left this world, I write about her life briefly hoping my descendants whoever reads her stories will be touched by my mother’s decent spirit and endeavour to learn her virtues.

Reflexology

Reflexology is a technique of healing by means of massaging the reflection spots on the foot sole of the ailing part of the body. The reflection spot of an ailing part is usually tender when right pressure is applied on it, and is normally not feeling that tenderness if its corresponding part of the body is just fine.

I learned this technique from an elderly, Lee Ching Zheng, in Taiwan. Mr. Lee was an enthusiast of reflexology. He learned it from self-taught by carefully studying books published by a catholic priest, Fr. Joseph Wu, in 1980’s. He claimed that his mother-in-law had had spinal stenosis for a long time and required injection from the pharmacy almost daily. But since he started applying reflexology on her, she stopped going to the pharmacy for injection.

In 1985, Mr. Lee was keen to teach me this technique when he knew that my wife had been infertile since our marriage 8 years ago. Besides the free one-on-one lesson, he presented free tool, the massager made of wood for applying strength on the reflection spots on the foot sole.

Through consistent practice of this technique for sometime, I became quite experienced, and I extended my service to cover all of my family members. Sore tooth, headache from cold, stomach ache, sore knee and etc were treated and the feedback were encouraging. Two years later, my wife was pregnant. Although we had tried other alternative remedies such as herb, acupuncture and Fensui at the same period of time, we believed reflexology had played a big part in my wife’s pregnancy.

Then in 1992, we emmigrated to New Zealand. One day in April 1992, I came across a piece of advertisement about tuition for reflexology on the newspaper. I thought reflexology is a thing only believed in the Oriental, but why it appeared in the newspaper of a western country. I was also surprised to know from the advertisement that the tutor was called Suzanne, a German nurse. Being curious to see if it is the same technique I had learned from Mr. Lee, I enrolled on this 3 day course to be held in Mt Eden Intermediate School.

On the day the course started, I entered the classroom and found that I was one of the only two Asians in the class, the rest of the class of 15 were Europeans. Then I realized natural healing technique is also believed by westners.

In the three day class, we were asked to practice hands-on to each other. When Suzanne asked us to find our own partner, I found that I seemed to be the most popular in the class because many of them came to ask me to be their partner. Once I was working with Shirley who was president of a speech club in Ponsonby. Her enthusiasm in learning this technique impressed me very much. The stuff we learned from the course was the same as I had learned from Mr. Lee in Taiwan.

Life of an immigrant is busy and stressful. And it is especially so if you are from non-English speaking country. During this time, I had made acquaint with a Korean whom I called Ajoxi. He lived in the same suburb where I lived, so from time to time he walked to my place after dinner, and we usually had chat in the garden. From our talk, I could tell he was worrying something. Finally he told me he worried about his health because he constantly felt soreness somewhere in his abdomen. He did even grab my hand to touch that spot. I encouraged him to consult with his family doctor but he seemed to be reluctant to do so. Then I told him that I had learned a technique called reflexology. I also told him how it worked and if it did not work on him it at least harmed him nothing. So we did a few sessions. And one day I received his call, “hi, Dr. Chen, the problem in my abdomen is gone. From now on I should call you doctor Chen.”

Dr. Chen!? I felt being flattered yet there was a feeling of joy inside me upon hearing Ajoxi’s remark in the phone. A feeling of being helpful that was all because of my reflexology teachers – Mr. Lee and Suzanne.

Visit to Chicago

This picture brings up my memory about my involvement in the press installation during the years from 1986 to 1991 when working for Young Wei Industrial Co. in Taiwan. The surrounding of this press in the picture is pretty oily and messy, however, it is very typical to most of the pressrooms I had been to in the 5 or so years. The smell of ink, lubricant oil, and all sorts of chemical required in the production of newspapers are so unforgettable to me. From picture I can tell it is the Urbanite press of Goss International.

During that period of time, we had installed about 10 new presses and relocated 10 old ones. Each of these presses was composed of at least 10 printing units, folder, reel stands and press control panel. With so much technical stuff in one thing, each of the jobs requires teams of mechanics, electricians, plumbers, riggers, and experienced press erecter. The press erecter supervises the overall installation to make sure every detail of the jobs done by various teams is up to the required standard. And my job was like a coordinator, translator, and casual helper. Most of the time on the site, I was everywhere with the foreign technician and erecter from the manufacturer.

Sometimes there were technicians and engineers from two or more different press component manufacturers, and I was required by them at the same time to do translation up or under the press. Sometimes there were dispute on a job between the supervisor and the mechanic or the riggers, and a lot of swear words were in the exchanges of conversation, so I had to be careful and skilful with my translation. The technique I used from time to time in making all the parties happy again was softening the offensive part of the conversation, and bought them a beer after work.

Once we won a sales contract for two Metroliner presses from China Times, one of the largest newspapers in Taiwan. This machine is double the size of Urbanite press, and its production is completely controlled by central computer system. According to the contract, the supplier was supposed to run a two week training course for the customer’s press crews in the class at their headquarter in Chicago. My boss wanted me to attend the training to gain knowledge about this huge machine so as to be able to help in the installation more efficiently.

So in early November 1989, I flew with the customer’s press crews to Chicago for the training class. That was my first time ever to a western country. I was very excited in seeing the super nation of the world. What impressed me was the size of beef steak we were treated in the dinner on the first night of our arrival. It was as big as three pieces of normal steak sold in Taiwan. And the salad bowl was as big as the cooking pot. Gee, I thought our host was playing jokes with us by ordering this super size of dinner. Turning around to look other tables, they all had the same size of steak. I used to be a big eater, and don’t like to waste food, but that was the first time I left half of the steak and salad unfinished.

It was also giving me a chance to meet with people whom I had had frequent fax exchanges with. Rick Kordas was the one I sent fax to almost everyday when I was not at the installation site. He was a graduate of Chicago University. At the time of my visit, he had just bought a house for his family of six. Both he and his wife were working, a busy family. He offered to take us out for dinner every night, but I courteously declined considering his family life after work.

It was an intensive course covering everything of operation and maintenance. Though we could not digest everything fed to us, we were familiar with every component of the machine to an extent after the training. We only needed to review the manuals and more hands-on to be able to run the machine. On the last day of the course, the tutor, whose name has been forgotten, presented each of us a certificate of complete of training. On the next day, I flew back to Taiwan while the customer’s group carried on their extra week long visit to LA.

The shipment of machine arrived early next year, and we had a period of six months of time being very busy in setting up the machine. Although my school study was not in the areas of mechanic and electronic, I had learned quite a lot through this five year period of time working with the technicians and press crews. This extra learned knowledge has enabled me to repair our family appliances such as clothes dryer, lawn mower, stove, audio, and etc.

This has been something I haven’t had a chance to share with my children who have become too busy with their own study or career when I have time to tell them some stories as a retired fellow. So I post this past experience of mine on the web hoping one day my children will read their dad’s story of learning from involving.

What has gone wrong?

The last weekend of January was not so peaceful in Auckland. Two lives were killed. One young man was stabbed to death by a robber when he was working in his father’s dairy shop. Another young man was caught tagging on the fence by the property’s owner. The owner chased the young man with a knife and killed him.

This two homicide cases shocked the nation. Although statistics indicates January is usually the peak of homicide crime because of the scorching heat and the bills to be paid after the Christmas holiday, both are factors trigging the anger, but two lives killed in one day in the same district of the city is something shocking the society. What has gone wrong?

In the following couple of days, topics about this two cases were hot in the talk-back radio shows. All sorts of ideas were raised up by the audiences calling in. Politicians gave opinions and preventative remedies. Ideas such as keeping students at school until 18 of age; provision of skill training or apprenticeship and so on were heard here and there. The ideas discussed were like trying to revive a dying tree by working on its branches and leaves while the real problem in its root was totally overlooked. Instant cure of a problem seems to be a most welcomed approach.

However, the problem will be just getting worse if its root, the lack of moral education, is not taken care of. Without moral education, the value of matters will be confused, and people feel it is ok to do whatever they like. The moral education taught by sages in olden days has been discontinued since long time ago. Nowadays, moral education is rarely seen. What is everywhere on TV and all kinds of media are topics relating to craving, hatred,violence, sexual stimulus. How can a safe society be maintained if there are so many negative things around.

It is said that in order to prove that people can be taught with good values, Master Chin Kung, has started his experiment on transforming a small town in China, called Tangchi, into a model town by delivering the teachings of ancient sages. The outcome of this experiment is profound. The following web page has detailed report on this educational project. http://www.radio86.co.uk/china-insight/from-chinese-media/5030/peace-at-home-peace-in-the-world

Amitofo

The eighty four thousand ways

It is said that the first sermon Buddha gave after his enlightenment is about the four truths he rediscovered in his 9 years of quest of ending the suffering of all sentient beings. The first truth states that life is full of suffering. The second is that the cause of suffering is craving. The third states that the suffering can be eliminated. The fourth says the answer to the elimination of suffering is the Eight Fold Paths. I learned this teaching from Rev. Kusula’s pod casts in his website: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/dharmatalks.html

Many of my friends don’t agree with this concept that life is full suffering. They think their life, though is not perfect, is not bad either. They have money in their account. They travel overseas now and then. Their children have above average school performance. Their marriage relationship is quite ok. They seem to be satisfied with everything in their life. So they say “don’t just look at the dark side of life, mate!”. What they say are not wrong, but we all forget that one day we will face death. This is the most difficult thing to deal with, not to say all the troubles along the route.

It is right that we should not only look at the dark side of life. But it is true that besides the happy things there are sad things waiting for the right time and place to visit us. When this happens, suffering arises. And if we are not trained to deal with it, we suffer .

I know a friend whose son was a top student in high school. Not only that, he was a filial son to his parents. A brilliant future seemed to be guaranteed to him. One night when he was studying at home, he suddenly felt headache in agony. So his father called up ambulance to rush him to hospital, and they followed it in their car. As soon as they had parked the car and walked into the ward, their son was announced dead.

A friend of mine had an enviable family. His marriage was the model to every one of us. No one ever had seen them saying any harsh word to each other. Their children are all grown up and are very nice to them. Who knows one day when he was standing in the back yard he fell down to ground and died on the same day. Aged 55.

Another story was about someone I had met once long time ago. Wealthy and healthy he was, his family never thought that one day in his regular swimming session he would die from heart attack upon jumping into the water. Aged 45.

Not just that someone we love dies will cause us suffering, the less serious incidents can bring us all sorts of negative feelings, too. Have a visit to the hospital and you will be reminded of the world of suffering. Any part of our body goes wrong will make us suffer from annoying discomfort to as serious as experiencing the process of death depending on how bad our physical problems is. Mental health problems can drive people mad too. Even everyday living is full of unpleasant incidents. Divorce, domestic violence, extra-marital affairs, drug addiction, alcoholism, and etc you name it, Google search proves it.

Man! No one can be guaranteed to be free from one or the other of these problems. And according to Buddha’s teaching, the suffering caused by any of these problems originates from our craving, hatred and ignorance, the so called “three poisons” in Buddhism.

About 2500 years ago, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, like every one of us in this world, experienced the suffering as well. He determined to find the cause and solution to being free from suffering. He found The Four Noble Truth mentioned above.

The fourth truth is about The Eightfold Paths: 1) Right understanding 2) Right thought 3) Right speech 4) Right actions 5) Right livelihood 6) Right effort 7) Right mindfulness 8) Right concentration.

Although by following the eight paths the elimination of suffering is guaranteed. But because every one of us is unique, so each of us needs to find a most suitable way to get rid of the three poisons and fulfil the paths, thus Buddha taught eighty four thousand ways for us to choose from.

By chance, I viewed a video tape of Dharma talk by Master Chin Kung in year 2000. That tape is titled “Get to know Buddhism”. From this video I was introduced the method of chanting Amitofo as the most suitable way to me to reach the ultimate goal of Nivana.

I have got the method, but it is up to me to practice the way consistently in order to attain a true happiness. Suffering might not disappear immediately; I know at least no more new bad karma is to be entered to my merit account.

My other antiques

This electric shaver has been with me in the past 23 years. Almost everyday in the morning, it kissed me good bye on my beard growing area and made me ready to work. Its brand name is Mr. Jelmi of a Hitachi product. Loyally it served me for about 22 years till 2006 when its blades became too blunt to do a good job. Despite this fact, its heart is still energetic when the power is turned on.

During its 22 year long service, it also served my son, Chenny, when he found his beard began to ruin his appearance in 2005. I happily passed this shaver down to my next generation wondering how much longer time it will serve for Chenny. However, within a couple of months, he returned it to me saying the blades could not effectively cut his beard any more. Indeed it couldn’t do a reasonably good job for him because his rather softer beard required a new shaver with sharp blades. So I got it back to continue its daily task for me till it really had to be discharged from service in 2006 when I was also forced to retire due to health problem in the same year. What a coincidence! It is now sitting on the corner of the desk watching me writing its story.

It was purchased when I stopped by Hong Kong to visit a printing ink supplier on a business trip in 1984. Hong Kong was called the shopper’s paradise by Taiwanese in 80’s and 90’s because its free port status. All the commodities imported were free of tariff. My first overseas business trip was to Singapore to visit a printing plate manufacturer in 1984. According to our itinerary, we would be visiting another supplier in Hong Kong on our way home from Singapore, so we planned to save as much money as possible for shopping in Hong Kong.

In a shop in the busiest area in Hong Kong, my attention was also drawn by this Casio pocket calculator. It is as slim as 2mm thick, and it was at an amazing cheap price compared to the price sold in Taiwan. So I bought about 20 pieces of it for giving away to my colleagues and friends as gift.

I kept one for myself. It helped me sorting out numbers in my daily customer service responsibility till 1992 when I emigrated to New Zealand. And it carried on its service for me in the new land for another 6 years till 1998 when the company, which I worked for, purchased Microsoft Office Suite, then I gradually gave the number matters to the Excel program rather than this pocket calculator. Although it is no longer needed, it is still kept carefully by me in my working bag. And amazingly, its solar powering is still working well.

This is the lap top computer which my ex-colleague calls it “the never dying thing”. Why is such a unique name given to it? Because my friend, being very knowledgeable on electronic products, has anticipated frequent technical problems from it since it was turning to be 4 years old in 2005. Quite often he would ask me how my lap top was working for me, and all the answer he got was always good. So once in the phone conversation, this “the never dying thing” slipped out of his mouth when he was told that it was running well.

It was a second-hand goods purchased in 2003 when I was just employed as program adviser helping new immigrants to learn about New Zealand. This job required me to have a computer for communication with head office from home. So during the period from 2003 to 2006, this little thing had helped me recording notes about each student on my list and handling e-mail exchanges with the head office, students and other colleagues.

Sometimes I felt that it helped me to make a living and enabled me to send my youngest child into university. Now I use it to contact friends in the world by e-mails, know what’s happening from the web, do research on Buddhism studies and so on.

I hope this little thing will really be a “never dying thing” as my friend calls it.

Portrait of my sisters

Seated first from right is my dajie, eldest sister born in 1935, 16 years older than me. Dajie is tall. She is about 165 cm, a height that made her outstanding among our neighbours. After all, there were rarely girls found over 155 cm due to poor nutrition in her days. Although she is tall, she runs rather slowly. Once our father recounted his own witness of dajie’s slowness in race competition in a sport event, “I went to see her in the race competition thinking she would win at least for the top three places because she had legs far longer than other contestants. But I surprised to see that she was the slowest runner.”

Dajie has a good temperament. Whenever she argued with her siblings or friends, she argued with a smiling face. This is an obvious difference from every one of her siblings because we are generally short tempered.

Eventually the fact that dajie was adopted from a neighbour revealed. She was the second last daughter of that neighbour who had too many children and found hard to raise up them all. My mother then just lost a son from an acute infection and was in deep sorrow. My grandmum suggested that she should adopt dajie to ease the sadness. That was how dajie was adopted.

Dajie died at the age of 58 from gall-bladder tumour. She married to Yan family and bore 3 children, two sons and one daughter.

First from right is erjie, the second elder sister, 13 years older than me. Erjie married to a school teacher who later promoted to be in charge of the teachers team. To our family, she married to a decent social status.

It is said that erjie was very beautiful when she was young. That was how she attracted Lee family’s attention and soon the match-maker came on behalf of Lee family to offer their proposal. Admiring the bridegroom’s occupation, my parents nodded their heads.

Erjie also went through a period of hardship as many other housewives of her day after marriage. She bore Lee family 4 children, 3 sons and 1 daughter.

Erjie is quite generous. Each time when mum or dad visited her, she always bought them good food and inserted some tea money into their pockets prior to parting. Mum likes to tease dad’s frequent visit to erjie because of erjie’s generosity. Dad always argues that it is from his love.

Standing at the centre is my sanjie, the third elder sister, 9 years older than me. She learned to become a seamstress from a cousin when she was at her late 10s and early 20s.

Sanjie has a good virtue of perseverance. She helps educating us this value by telling stories or giving lengthy lectures on this virtue. She helps tutoring on our school homework. She is very strict that she doesn’t worry tearing off the part of our poorly done work and asks to do it over again. For many times, she did this to sijie, my 4th elder sister, and that made her cry madly.

She married to Liao family and bore them two sons and two daughters of twin. Because of her always emphasising good value to her children, all of them are quite successful in their careers especially the 2nd son being a vet and the 3rd daughter possessing a master degree in the horticultural art.

With her seamstress skill and her strong belief of perseverance, she had successfully overcome the hardest period of life when all the 4 children were in various stages of schooling.


Standing at the centre is sijie, the 4th elder sister, 6 years older than me. Sijie is the most sociable child among us. I remembered she always had someone to talk to wherever she went when we were small. And pretty often, she brought her classmate home, even stayed overnight at our place.

Sijie was very attractive. When she was dating with her husband before their marriage, the young man was in mad love with her that he not only often treated sijie the Taipei delicacy food, Yaroubian (鴨肉扁), a kind of roasted and smoked duck, but also bribed the family members by giving a big pack of Yaroubian. Though as a matter of fact, he was still struggling with his knitting garment business when he was dating with sijie.

After they married, sijie helped his business booming by working as his accountant, quality controller, cooker for the team of workers and etc. that was indeed a tremendous load to her.

She bore 3 children for the Lin family, two sons and one daughter. They made quite a fortune yet lead a no-frill life style. In 1989, they immigrated to Australia. Now sijie is living with her 3rd son, a baker, in Sydney with the eldest son and daughter working in Taiwan.

Sijie is a devoted Buddhist. Her husband died in 1999 from liver cancer. With the supportive fellow Buddhists’ chanting and counselling, her husband passed away peacefully.

This is xiaomei, younger sister, 2 years younger than me. Like me, xiaomei is rather shy and introvert. Perhaps our age is close that we find we have similar way of thinking about life.

Xiaomei married to Ye family at 30 years of age, quite late comparing to all her friends. This must be something to do with her commitment to looking after our parents. In our tradition, looking after parents is the responsibility of the son. I am the only son of the family so I am supposed to pick up this duty. But before I stabilized after my 2 year military service and 3 year period of career exploring, xiaomei shared the duty without complaint at all. To her willingness in looking after my aging parents while I was away in other towns, I am so grateful to her.

Like sanjie, xiaomei also possesses the perseverance virtue. She bore two children for the Ye family, one boy and one girl. And she educated them to become decent people in the society. In order to reduce the financial load of parents, both children do part time job during holidays while most of the university students are enjoying their fun activities.

Xiaomei is also a devoted Buddhist. When our father died, she was the one able to cite a praying mantra everyday for father for the 7 periods of 7, ie 49 days hoping to help father’s spirit to return to Amitabha’s pure land. She is indeed a filial daughter to my parent and a respectful sister to me.

Amitofo!

Toastmaster

This certificate makes me recall the one year time during 1995 when I was a member of Glenfield Toastmaster, one of the many clubs under the Toastmaster International. It is a non-profit educational organization aiming at improving the communication, public speaking and leadership skills of its members. It is commonly known as speech club. When one is fear of speaking publicly or talking to a small group of people formally, he is most likely to be referred to the speech club.

To the majority of people, public speech might be one of their most scared challenges, and I am not the exception. It is even worse to me, because not only that I am scared of public speech, I am supposed to be speaking in English, my second language. Being a new immigrant in the English speaking New Zealand in 1992, I realized that if I want to make life easier in this new land, I have to overcome the speech phobia, especially the English one.

One day in 1995 when I and my wife shopped at the Milford Bin-Inn, this kind couple who ran the shop, Ron and Margaret, chatted with me about issues an immigrant might have. Ron and Margaret were immigrants, too. They were from England a few years earlier than me. Ron soon spotted my concern about how to improve communication and public speaking with my not-so-good English. He introduced me to Margaret, and asked her how they could help me in this regard.

Margaret was a speech club enthusiast. She told me she would suggest me to visit the Glenfield Toastmaster meeting on the coming Wednesday evening. They met twice a month. As a club visitor, I would not be assigned with a role to practice. I was only supposed to watch how the meeting going, how each assigned role fulfil their task. She would meet me there if I would like to have a try. I was eager to upgrade my ability of spoken language. So I said yes to her with slight reluctance.

On the appointed time, I appeared at the entrance of the community centre where Toastmasters met. I could hear people chatting in one of the rooms. That must be the meeting room. I walked nervously toward that direction. Soon I saw a brightly illuminated room with a reception table by the door. There were already some members being busy with preparation for the meeting. Standing behind the table was Margaret. I relieved a little bit upon seeing her. She told me her assigned role that night was the receptionist. After having signed on the attendance sheet and got the program leaflet, I was seated at the back row so that I could watch how the whole meeting underwent.

I could not recall the details of the meeting. Generally I felt everything there was performed formally. The receptionist, the meeting conductor, the topic presenter, the time keeper, the tea server and the volunteer who tidied up the kitchen, all these roles worked closely in accordance with the agenda of that night. The meeting went energetically and smoothly. Some members were already very eloquent speakers. Humorous words flowed on and on like the everlasting clean mountain spring. Most of the speakers experienced freezing somewhere, and their face turned red, but immediately, they were supported by lot of hints from the members in the audience, thus the speech carried on and the embarrassment disappeared. The atmosphere was very friendly.

During the tea break, some members approached me about my feeling of the program. I held a glass of juice in one hand and a cookie in the other, and told them what I felt, and they seemed to understand what I had said. Instantly I felt I was part of the new country, I was ok to become a member. That night, I felt I was like a Member of Parliament attending a conference.

I enrolled as a member after two more visits to the meeting. Before long, I received a bulky manual and my name badge sent from the headquarter in US. Wow! How cool it is! But the challenge had just begun after receipt of the manual; I was supposed to present my first speech of 5 minutes long on introducing myself sometime in the first month following receipt of the manual.

I spent a lot of time after work to prepare and rehearse the speech. The day approached rather swift, ready or not, I had to stand behind a lectern to present my speech on the scheduled date. Now, recollecting these bits and pieces of memory, I am surprised to see what kind of huge stress I had once been able to bear when I was younger. Obviously, power of resisting stress reduces as we age.

The title of my ‘Ice breaking’ speech, meaning a new Toastmaster’s first speech, was no longer in my memory, but it focused on describing my personal traits. My heart thumping wildly and my body as hot as a fire ball when the meeting conductor announced my presentation and invited me to the lectern. I inhaled deep breath, put my speech notes on the lectern, and scanned the audience with big smile as that was suggested in the manual. Oh! Dear me! Those staring eyes from audience frightened me, yet I made myself calm to start my speech.

“Madam Chair, fellow Toastmasters…” I began with a formal greeting followed by strings and strings of words that seemed just going through without any flavour. Then when it came to a stage where I stated about how I was nicknamed as ‘saint’, I said to the audience: “because one of my first names is ‘sen’ which sounds so similar to ‘saint’, and also because of the fact that I behave like a monk, so one day during a period break at school, one of my classmates suddenly called me ‘saint’, and this has become my nickname since then.” I continued “but fellow Toastmasters, please don’t regard me as a saint because I am not deserved to this title ….” Waaahahahaha! There was a long and thunderous laughter erupted among the audience. Time was almost up, so I made a conclusion and bowed down, finding a great relief inside me.

During the tea break that night, many fellow members approached me to congratulate and give comments. “Morris you did very well. I love the bit when you said ‘please don’t regard me as a saint’…” One gentleman who worked for Fisher & Pakel commented so. The meeting conductor of that night even commented at the end of the meeting saying “Morris is the star of tonight”. Not just these compliments, the club awarded me a plaque to mark my success in the first speech. Wow! What a great encouragement they had given me.

I had played the roles as a receptionist, topic presenter, tea server and time keeper during the one year time. Then, I found my commitment to my work, family, voluntary job was increasing so I talked to Margaret about my situation and quit this lovely program.

I am grateful to all the fellow members because of their friendly support. I am also grateful to Margaret and Ron. Without their mentorship, I will never be able to go through the one year time and have learned so much.

Volunteer

This picture shows all the Chinese volunteers of Auckland Lifeline gathered together in their annual meeting in September 2001.

Auckland Lifeline commenced its service in 1965 providing telephone and face-to-face counselling to the public. When people are overwhelmed by any sort of difficulty and feel it hard to talk with anyone they know, then, talking to a trained and experienced counsellor through a telephone may be a good choice. The Chinese community in New Zealand began to increase rapidly in late 80’s. So in 1992, Auckland Lifeline set up Chinese Line to cater the needs of Chinese speaking immigrants.

I brought my whole family to New Zealand in 1992. Soon after I had settled the major issues such as driving licence, schooling for my children, getting familiar with local customaries, I found that there were anxiety and worries within me. In where I was from, these would not be much of concern, because you have close friends there to help and everything is just too familiar to you. But living in a new country is another story. Everything you encounter is new. You are supposed to deal with all the new things with your inefficient English. At times, I felt these challenges were too much for me. But immigration is a one way route. You have to just move forward.

One day, a fellow Taiwanese immigrant living on the same road, whose name was William Chen, asked me if I would be interested in working as a volunteer for Chinese Line. He was already a volunteer of that team, but they needed a lot more to fill up the roster. Thinking that we are in the same boat and we should help one another, I decided to enrol on the training program and become a telephone counsellor.

The training started in July 1994 in a sunny winter day. Four new volunteers of us were accompanied by two senior volunteers working with the trainer, an old English lady called Joyce. The training would be running in three consecutive weekends. That was the first time in my life I was taught the skill of how to listen carefully, how to establish rapport, how to correctly reflect the caller’s feeling, and how to help the caller to sort their problems out.

On the second day of the training, we underwent practice of self awareness. Each one of us including the trainer was supposed to draw pictures or symbols representing our own story in each stage of life either up or down on paper. We called this picture our life map. After everyone had finished the drawing, we took turn to present our story of happiness or sadness to the whole group. This activity is designed to help bringing us to face the unhappy or traumatised past under a caring and supportive environment.

When it was the youngest trainee’s turn to present her life map, she stuck at a point where her unhappy past must be too awful to her that she burst into cry uncontrollably. So she was allowed to do her presentation again in the next session. But the same problem occurred to her in the second attempt, and the trainer could not but explained to her that she should seek for professional assistance before she could help others. So she was dismissed on that day. That was the first time I saw a person collapsed mentally, and I wondered how many were out there in need of caring support.

The training was completed in the third weekend. We were made familiar with the telephone room and other facilities in the building before we left. Then, after having attended another three meetings we were officially placed by the telephone to take calls.

Time flies. I could not count how many nights after a day’s work I drove to fulfil my roster. Sometimes I was on duty by my own for the three hour duty, but most of the times I had a colleague, who took calls of Cantonese speakers, working together, so we could chat when there was no call.

Although it was quite a big load to me as a father, husband, son, and worker and in addition, a lifeline volunteer, I felt meaningful and so I had worked for this organization for ten years till October 2005 when my driving ability was reduced due to my illness.

I am no longer able to travel to Lifeline by car to refresh the friendship with those co-workers. But I am still able to get in touch with a few of them by e-mails. People needs friends and socializing, and that’s why provision of free telephone counselling is a significant offering to the society.

My Zen Retreat Experience

I had my first and only one experience of Zen retreat in May 1992. Although I now practice Pure Land Buddhism and realize the importance of focusing in this technique, from time to time, I would recall the activities I had taken part in during that 3 day Zen retreat.

1992 was the year when we immigrated to New Zealand. To start this big move, I came by myself alone in March in order to find a right home for the family to live in. During this stage, apart from looking for a house, I was also seeking for local Buddhist group where I could have social life and spiritual practice.

Through phone book, I got in touch with a Buddhist group called Dorje Chang. I explained the purpose of my visit. The man who met me asked me what kind of Buddhism I liked to be in. I really had no idea when I was asked with this question. But somehow, I described something like sitting in meditation. So he thought I liked Zen tradition and gave me a number of Zen Society.

The organizer of the Auckland group of Zen Society was a kind elderly called Jim. He asked me to meet him in their regular sitting venue in a library in Ponsonby. I had my first time ever formal sitting with a group of about 10 Zen Buddhists, all were Europeans, that evening. Despite the numbness on legs after the sitting, I found I really enjoyed the solemn atmosphere and the serenity of the zendo setting. Thus, I became a regular attendee of this group till I left for Taiwan to fetch my family in June.

In one of the sitting sessions, Jim announced that he was going to organize a weekend zen retreat to be held in a camping field in Swanson, Western Auckland in May. The fellow practitioner sitting next to me that evening urged me to experience this wonderful activity. So I enrolled on.

It was a cold Friday evening. The winter was almost there when the zen retreat began. Jim was the first one arriving the camp with full load of food in his yellow Ford station wagon. I volunteered to help unloading the stocks. Before long, it was almost dark and everyone had arrived with smiley face.

The zendo would be set up in the central activity hall. Jim assigned each of us a task to be completed before the formal retreat commencement ritual that night. My assignment was to wipe the zendo wooden floor sparkly clean with some other fellow helpers. By 7pm, all the tasks were done, and we all gathered in the dinning room for Jim’s instructions about this activity.

The activity would formally commence from the start of dinner. The dinner was of vegetarian dishes. Complete silence would be kept throughout the retreat period. Not even a wink of eye to each other when we encountered on the paths of the field. This was aimed to keep us focus on our mind all the time. All activity sessions would be signalled by means of bell, wood block. Actually this activity is a mini size of a traditional zen monastic life. Wow, by accident I was put in this kind of experience. Wouldn’t it be cool?

The dinner began finally. I was really hungry. We all sit in silence on our seats waiting for the rice to be passed to you. When it arrives, you scoop some in your bowl according to your need. Then wait for the other side dishes to come around and you scoop the right amount into your plate. And when the dish passing is finished, you start eating your meal. We were suggested before the dinner that the process of meal time was a training of mindfulness.

After dinner, only a couple of volunteers were helping washing and tidy up in the kitchen, the rest of us walked to zendo upon hearing the striking of the wooden block. Zendo was illuminated only by two candles stood beside Buddha’s statue. Along the walls of the two sides were two rows of sitting mattress, called Rahu. The leading monk was a Kiwi who was ordained in L.A., called Mike. He led us to do 15 minute walking zen followed by 30 minute sitting zen. What impressed me a lot was Mike’s shadow on the wall. His shadow radiated sort of concentration of his mind. I believed it was the result of constant practice.

Night meditation was over on the bell rings. Mike led us to walk out of zendo. Then it was time for all sorts of individual needs such as a cup of tea, toilet, shower or whatever, but everyone had to be in the bed before the wooden block was striken.

Four persons shared a hut of two bunks. Nobody shared the hut with me, so I had more space to keep my personal belongings. It was really cold. The bedding I brought for this retreat was not warm enough, but it was only a two night stay anyway. I said to myself this could be the first time in my life I would be in silence for two whole days. Wow! How cool it is.

The wooden block sounded again when it was still very dark. It was 4:45am. My first thought when I was woken up by the block striking was about the days when I went through my new soldier training in Taiwan many years ago. I dressed up quickly and quietly walked to the washing room. The whole room was full of steam because everyone was having a morning shower.

The second block striking meant gathering in zendo for sitting meditation, or razen. That was a sitting session before the breakfast. How cold it was in the spacious zendo early in the morning, but it might be the best time for mindfulness training. Besides coldness, I heard stomach rumbling sound here and there. Everyone must be very hungry. What a distraction! But again, this is what practice is about.

After breakfast, there was a short break for everyone to sort out whatever was needed to be done prior to the morning sessions. I only remembered there were endless sitting meditations and walking meditations in the second day of the retreat. For a few times, I fell asleep during razen. Encouragingly, I had short moments of mind stillness. That stillness really made me feel an indescribable joy. Some people term it the Dharma joy.

The third day was half day activity. We did a lot of cleaning on the building, windows, kitchen floor. Jim later explained that this cleaning tasks we had done was called working zen. It was a time to train our mind to concentrate on what we were doing. By the way, we gave the rented facility back to the landlord in clean condition.

After the lunch, we chanted a verse and it concluded our retreat. At this moment, many of the attendees took a deep breath and made a big grin and began to talk and talk loudly. We said good bye to each other. Although I said to one of the fellow Buddhists that I really enjoyed and would like to join again later, I found all my time was spent for my family after I brought them over in September 1992 and could not do what I had said.

I hope all the people I met in that retreat are well and are practicing their Buddhism as diligently as before.

The Big Question

At some stages of our life, we may have big questions come up our mind such as: Where was I before birth? Where am I going to after death? What I am here for?

I remember it was in my pre-school age when I asked my mother, for the first time, where I was from. I remember the answer given was that I was popping out from a big stone. Though I believed what I was told then, the same question had been asked by me at various stages of my life again and again, and the answers were different one another.

The answer of this question is not just something as that is explained in the biology textbook. I think all of us are born to be with some degree of a philosopher’s mind. That’s why, in my personal example, I kept on asking and considering over the same question. All sort of answers and theories were never satisfactory to me, and I think this applies to everyone else, because the real truth is not yet found.

Over 2500 years ago, Buddha had gone through the same process trying to sort out his big questions about why is life impermanent and suffering, and how to attain permanent bliss. After all, he was an extraordinary human being, after 12 years of searching for the answer and the way to solve the problems, he got it. He tried to explain and teach his experiences and methods in the following 49 years to people who were also in quest of the answers. But only a very few could understood his teaching and achieved enlightenment. Most of his teachings seem understandable to us, but yet, the answer to the big questions are still beyond our reach. Why?

Because it is such a big question that the answer is beyond the capability of any language to describe to make it understandable to us. That’s why Buddha taught us eighty four thousand methods in his 49 years of lecturing. He assured that by practicing the most suitable method he had taught, we will finally get enlightenment and fully understand the truth of life and the whole universe. The truth can only be experienced, and can not be really understood by means of words.

What is the most suitable method that will enable us to achieve the objective? The one that most patriarchs and senior practitioners advocate is Pure Land chanting Buddha’s name. One of the most popular websites promoting this method can be accessed by the following link: http://www.chinkung.org/ . Another method being popular among western Buddhists is meditation. Rev. Kusala Bhiksu is one of the American monks teaching this method. His very popular podcast lectures can be downloaded at: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/dharmatalks.html .

Well, my fellow answer seekers, let’s set off for the journey of seeking the answer. May whoever reaches the goal remember to come back to help the others.

In memory of my uncle

This picture has been kept in the album for over 70 years approximately, so old that uncle’s face is almost not recognizable. Standing on the far right is uncle, and the one next to him is my father.

Uncle was tall and handsome. In addition to the good looking appearance , he had good sense of humour and was pretty talkative. I knew stories about uncle mainly from my mother. Aunt did not like to mention about uncle. If she did, it was about the bad side of uncle.

Why aunt was so unhappy with uncle? The story began with the fact that uncle had left aunt and their five kids in Taiwan during world war II, and he himself went to Japan to seek for a better living. But this arrangement resulted in a virtually termination of their marriage life. What had happened was that a Japanese widow was in mad love with uncle and would not let uncle to leave Japan. Aunt knew this problem through family friends whose husbands left for Japan as well. They came back home to see the families every a couple of years.

Although uncle did not come home to see aunt until 18 years after his second journey to Japan, he really worked hard in Japan to earn money, and frequently sent money home for aunt and the five children to live on. He firstly worked as salesman for a pharmaceutical company for a few years. He then used his saving to set up his own pearl jewellery business. He bought pearls from pearl farmers, polished and processed them, and sold them to tourists. Business grew rapidly and he employed two workers who were a pair of sisters, both were very beautiful.

Working with a tall, handsome, humorous and talkative Taiwanese employer, the older sister loved uncle so much that they lived together before long. The younger sister loved uncle, too, but her older sister was in the way so she said a lot of rumours about her sister to uncle so as to damage their relationship. The younger sister finally won the battle and replaced her sister’s position living with uncle.

This Japanese aunt was a good woman because she attended uncle with great patience and care during the long period when uncle was in serious illness. Her tremendous caring moved uncle so much that when Taiwanese aunt blamed her for seizing other’s husband, he stood up to defend for his Japanese wife.

Uncle did come back to visit his Taiwanese family in 1968 for the second time since his immigration to Japan. I could imagine how aunt felt upon meeting with this long-time-no-see husband. Aunt was good at singing when she was young. I remembered during my childhood I often heard her singing songs relating to love sickness. But when she talked about uncle, she often cursed him with hatred. Poor aunt had lived with her youngest daughter’s companion. This cousin, Chaishia, was tall and beautiful but she pledged to stay single throughout her life. My father, mother and aunt all had been urging her to get married when she was still young. But Chaishia always argued that how could she left her mother without someone’s companion, and what if she married to someone who ended up to be another example of her own father. Chaishia’s filial virtue is indeed respectful. She is 64 years old now, still single.

Aunt died in 1984. Uncle came back to attend the funeral. No one saw him shedding tears. He commented on his relationship with aunt, “Our relationship can go only so far in this life. The love feeling has to remain natural”.

Uncle died in 2006, aged 93. News about his death sent back to Taiwan saying that he was baptised to be a Christian in the bed by Sumi’s husband, his son-in-law, who was a pastor.

Life is like that of the waves in the ocean. Uncle’s stories make me realize that everyone of us is living for a purpose of repaying what you owe to others. In uncle’s example of relationship, both his Taiwanese and Japanese wives had repaid what they owed him. The Taiwanese aunt bore and raised up alone five children for him, and the Japanese aunt attended for his daily living for about 56 years in addition to a daughter.

I hope uncle has united with his Taiwanese wife in heaven merrily.

Jean's tour to Pure Land Learning College

This is my wife, Jean, standing by the entrance of Pure Land Learning College. Picture was taken during her recent visit/learning trip to this school (or monastery) from 24/2/07 to 10/3/07.

In June 2001, Master Chin Kung established Pure Land Learning College in Toowoomba, Brisbane, Australia. In order to continue the mission of spreading Buddha’s education, he found it was necessary to have a homebase where decent Buddhism lecturers can settle in and concentrate on their cultivation and learning. From time to time, they invite adherents from all over the world to the College to witness their learning outcome.

The most recent visit/learning activity was scheduled on 24/2/07 for 2 weeks. Having learned a lot from others about Master Chin Kung, we took this as a very precious opportunity to meet the master in person and to treat ourselves with an overseas trip together. However, at the last minute of the decision process, we realized that one of us had to stay at home to look after our dog, Spot. As Spot listens to me more than to anyone else of the family, I decided that I gave up this opportunity, and let Jean travel with the New Zealand group of 10 to enjoy her first time ever of a visit/learning tour. Through the assistance of Amituofo Chanting Society of Auckland, this group of 10, led by Mr. Lee, set off for Brisbane on 24/2/07.

Jean was very much impressed by the College’s valuing the real essence of things instead of pursuing the appearance. For instance, she thought the school building could be something like a traditional Chinese temple. But it is not. It is just an ordinary Australian building. She was told that the building used to be a Catholic church. The College maintained it as it was after the purchase. This enables them to save a great amount of money and energy in property maintenance, and thus, their delivery of education quality can be more assured, and more resourses can be saved for education related activities.

A short distance from the main building is a vegetable farming section growing organic produce. This is where the residents of the school can exercise their physical body by involving in the garden jobs apart from the spiritual cultivation. Together with another even bigger area of vegetable garden farther away, the amount of vegetable produce is sufficient to feed the 1000 visitors of this activity. The 3 meals each day are simple but abundant and fresh.

It is said that Master Chin Kung’s biggest dharma protector, Mrs. Han Ying, was very good at cooking, and also took the meals provided to visitors as a very important part of the religious activity. So during her life time, she had created a lot of recipes of vegetarian dishes. In this activity which Jean attended, each of the visitors was given a recipe book based on Mrs. Han Ying’s cooking principles. After Jean returned home, she made a few dishes following the recipes and found that we all liked their taste. Most important is that the materials required in the recipe are very ordinary stuff and the cooking process is simple.

The daily activities started from 6:15am in the morning and ended at 9:00pm in the night. Each of Master Chin Kung’s disciples was allocated at least one lecturing session of two hours. The topics were surrounding the three classical works – The Ten Good Deeds Sutra (十善業道經); The Supreme Response Chapter(太上感應篇); Disciples Regulations(弟子規). This covers the 3 major beliefs of Chinese community: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Master Chin Kungs believes that the teachings taught in these three classical works are like the three legs of a Tripod. That means attaining Buddhahood begins from fulfilling the teachings of these three works.

Besides the three lecture sessions each day, there are Buddha chanting practices in between the classes. Buddha chanting is held at Ten Thousand Surnames Ancestors Memorial Hall (萬姓先祖紀念堂). In the hall, Jean saw that the three sides of the wall were full of wooden plaques each of them represents a family branch in Chinese history. A religious ceremony called ‘Three times reminder" (三時繫念) is conducted here regularly to remind both the ancestors and the alive of their endeavour to immigrate to the Pure Land.

With this tight learning schedule, Jean said, one can empty their mind easily for receiving the good knowledge. To her personal experience, she totally dropped the material world matters as soon as the first two days had past. She felt her mind was full of dharma pleasure since the 3rd day and onward.

On 4th March, the visit/learning activity came to its peak because the Master Chin Kung arrived the College from Hong Kong to conduct a memorial ceremony for his biggest dharma protector, Mrs. Han Ying, and his dharma initiator, Master Zhang Jia(章嘉大師).

For years, most of the adherents have been learning Buddhism with Master Chin Kung by means of CDs, books or on-line videos without having a chance to see their teacher in person. So the atmosphere in the hall was a mixture of respectful, exciting and surprising when Master Chin Kung entered the hall. They have known from CDs that their teacher looks young and is healthy despite his being 81 years old. Now they witnessed this fact by themselves. After the ceremony was done, the adherents of each region had a photo with their teachers and the master.

Time flies. On 6th March, they said goodbye to the college and carried on their remaining activities at Amitabha Brisbane Association. On 10th March, they came back home with a more purified mind. I am surprised to see that Jean has become a more committed vegetarian after this visit/learning trip.