Why Am I Here?

This post is the text of a speech translated from Chinese to English that I gave during my “gap year” to volunteer in Taiwan after high school and before college in 2001-2002. I was 18 when I was wrote this, and I am now 30 years old. Looking back, time has truly flown by, as I had expected. 

I am 18 years old, and I just graduated from high school. Last year, I applied and was accepted into MIT, and I have deferred it for a year to volunteer with Tzu Chi. My current plans are to study for four years of college, four years of medical school, six years of surgical residency. Eventually, 14 years later, I will probably be 33 years old. I know that time will fly, that my life will go by quickly. I also do not know when I will die. Will I die tomorrow or the next month or the year after? I have no way to predict that. I feel that, amidst life's impermanence, since I do not know when I will die, I must first do what I need to do.

When I was in the tenth grade, around age 16, I decided to defer college for a year (a so-called "gap year"), because at that time I did not know whether in the future I would have the opportunity to come to Taiwan Tzu Chi, to follow Master Cheng Yen and to learn from so many Tzu Chi volunteers. I felt that there was a need to spend a year to volunteer with Tzu Chi full-time. (By the way, deferring college for a year is the choice of about 7% of all American high school graduates and the choice of the majority of college students in the UK.)

I feel that this decision was quite simple because I feel this is what I need to do. So I am very fortunate. In coming to Tzu Chi, I feel that I have found a purpose in life.

Since I was small, I was both anxiously and enthusiastically in search of answering some questions on how to best use the time that I have in my life: "What will I do with my life? What do I need to do? What should I do? What is the meaning and purpose of my life?"

This was particularly so during the weekends or holidays, or playing basketball, or playing the cello, or whatever activity after activity that fills the lives of high school students, I would ask: What does this have to do with the purpose of my life? Am I doing what I should be doing? I would feel that, among unlimited decisions and options and choices, what should I do and what path and what direction should I take? What kind of person should I become? I would think: If I do not know the basic direction of where I am going, then how could I make any decisions about how to get there, how to live?

I remember vividly when I was in the seventh grade at age 13. I read an English version of Still Thoughts (now re-branded as Jing Si Aphorisms). One saying said something to the effect of, "If you do not know what you are going to paint, a stroke here, a stroke there, in the end your painting will be a mess and it won’t be pretty." Even though I do not know how I will die or when I will die, when I die I wish to leave behind a beautiful painting. And to do that, I need to properly plan my life.

More importantly, when I read Still Thoughts at age 13, cover to cover in one sitting, the main message stood out to me very loudly and very simply: The purpose of life is to benefit others. In one day, this book had answered a year of my desperate questioning on my life’s purpose. 

I remember that someone asked Master Cheng Yen: When she first started doing Tzu Chi, did she ever imagine that Tzu Chi would become this large? I think the Master never thought about that. Master’s response, however, was something as follows: In my life, I have only done one thing. The only plan that I have made was to benefit living beings, help those who need help. Master Cheng Yen’s courage to help others, her tenacity, and her confidence and faith – are very moving to me.

Some have asked me in the past: Why are you in Tzu Chi? I would then respond, Why is Master Cheng Yen doing Tzu Chi? I hope that I would do Tzu Chi for the same reason that the Master is doing Tzu Chi – or any other activity for that matter. I would like to offer my entire life to others and use every minute and every second for their benefit.

Actually, in the US, it is very easy to do so-called "volunteer work" – and there are many organizations that have service opportunities, volunteer organizations. But Tzu Chi and every organization is different. It is the spirit and the values of Tzu Chi that I wish to learn. When I see Master Cheng Yen, she uses her every second to benefit others. When I see volunteers doing Tzu Chi all around the world, whether they are in Thailand or Taiwan, Jordan or Japan, South Africa or Southern California, I am so moved. Tzu Chi volunteers are the best model for me to learn from at this time. From their bodies and their actions, I can learn how to be a person and how to live. This is therefore the first thing in life that I must do. Everything else is a second priority. 

The Beauty and Benefits of Tzu Chi Uniforms

A previous version of this post was published in Tzu Chi USA Journal.

From a stranger’s perspective, the volunteer uniform of Tzu Chi must seem like an anachronistic, culturally awkward anomaly. When you first hear of them, you may think, "You’ve got to be joking me. Uniforms? In America? I just want to let you know that this is not Taiwan! This is not Communist China, comrade! What about our individuality? Our ability to express ourselves? Uniforms are for people working at McDonald’s or the military. Not that there's anything wrong with those places..."

So the complaints begin, and then people see the uniform. At that point they start to sputter, "What kind of uniform is this? White pants, white collars, buttoned up all the way, with belts and white shoes? Women tie their hair back, boys cut their hair down. This is like the military. I’m not here to join the military. Plus the color white is impractical! It’ll get dirty in two seconds!"

As the complaints come, you can feel the anxiety, the sense of the loss of control. Young people seeking to be fashionable, be warned. You may need to compromise your insistence on doing your own thing. Joining an organization does require—oh my goodness—at times doing things in unison with others.

But like everything in Tzu Chi, there are reasons, and although you may have concerns initially, with careful examination and reflection, your worries should subside. Indeed, there are rational reasons for (most of) "the way things are done" in Tzu Chi. The Buddha always told his followers to question everything, to never just accept anything just because he was the Buddha, a sage, or someone wise. This applies to uniforms and other "rules" as well. If it makes sense, accept it, and if it does not, just forget about it (fugeddabout it).

Uniforms eliminate, for one, a number of physical barriers that fashionable clothing creates. Fashion creates a feeling of haves and have-nots. I have the money to buy pretty clothes and jewelry, and you do not. But when choices of individual clothing are eliminated, so too are the tensions that come between social classes: no more status, no more who is wealthier than who.

More importantly, as volunteers, we need to be professional. Yes, it is true that if you volunteer at a hospital, the Red Cross, or work with Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, or even work at the department store or McDonald’s, you will observe that uniforms create a sense of professionalism and unity. This requires that we not only dress alike so that people can recognize us, but also that the way we dress is neat and clean, not disheveled and messy.

Third, uniforms build community recognition, like a name-brand. As volunteers we represent the organization. By wearing the uniform, we are building up a presence so that strangers can recognize us. In some countries where Tzu Chi volunteers are long-recognized for their reliability and efficiency, Tzu Chi volunteers are called "the blue angels," donning the blue and white uniform. In those places, uniforms are lucrative. Everybody wants to wear the uniform and they are sometimes imitated, worn by pretenders seeking to collect money for their own purposes.

There is a fourth reason which I only recently understood and which is the most esoteric but possibly the most important: The uniform changes our mindset. No, I am not talking about “magic” or anything like that. I am talking pure psychology. There have been recent research that shows that students perform better and are perceived to be performing better, when they are dressed formally rather than casually. What does this mean? It means that our clothes – this superficial piece of thing covering our body – changes our mindsets. The psychologists called it "enclothed cognition."

It is in this changed mindset that Tzu Chi volunteers not only wear the uniform, but the Tzu Chi face, the smile, the genuine warmth and care. By wearing the uniform, you need to remember the entire uniform, not just merely the clothes—the warm smiling face, the hair nearly combed, shirt tucked in, shoes clean, and so on. This is why the uniform is called “the garment of gentleness and tolerance” (柔和忍辱衣).

Thus, most images of buddhas and bodhisattvas are dressed most elegantly – sometimes simply and sometimes extravagantly. The clothes that we wear and the appearance that we present give off a feeling to ourselves and to others. This feeling can change our minds. When wearing a very expensive piece of jewelry or beautiful fine clothes, we are more mindful and careful. In the same way, when we wear nice clothing, our minds too are also sharpened to be more careful.

Yet the purpose of wearing Tzu Chi uniform’s and other "spiritual garments" are entirely different from that of secular clothes. Whereas in most situations people “dress to impress” others and to make themselves feel attractive through their clothes, in Tzu Chi the reasons for wearing the uniform are quite different. The clothes should make us feel more humble, more dignified, with the purpose of benefiting others, not to aggrandize oneself. 

Once, when I was chanting a prayer and as I was making mental and physical offerings of incense, flowers, fine garments, beautiful houses, everything in the universe, at that point I realized that even the clothes that we wear are an offering to others—we offer others our bodies and with it our garments to others.

When we have given others our bodies, what use to us is our own clothes? As a friend and fellow volunteer Isaac once recounted to me in person when he visited Afghanistan in 2002 on a relief trip with Tzu Chi, he could not help but give away nearly everything he had on him—gloves, scarf, etc.

So, too, has Shantideva, the eighth century Indian scholar of Nalanda University, taught in his truly wonderful Bodhicaryavatara, one of my most favorite books, particularly in the third chapter on adopting the spirit of awakening:

Surrendering everything is nirvana, 

and my mind seeks nirvana. 

If I must surrender everything, 

it is better that I give it to sentient beings.

It is with this attitude, too, that I have also become more comfortable in wearing anything, not only Tzu Chi uniforms, but "fancy clothes." I wear not the attitude of "look how nice I look," but rather "I wear this for the benefit of others."

But if you wear the uniform – or any piece of clothing or qipao (a beautiful traditional Chinese-style garment) – and you feel a morsel of pride or arrogance on your physical beauty (or alternatively you gripe about your perceived ugliness), then, alas, you've totally missed the point. The clothes are not about "you" or however you perceive "you." It is quite the contrary. 

When Master Cheng Yen established Tzu Chi Foundation in 1966, she immediately knew that volunteers ought to have a uniform for the above four (if not more) reasons — equality among volunteers, professionalism, community recognition, its capacity to transform our minds. Up to this point, most will agree, but many may still protest against the white pants and white shoes. Is this really necessary, some ask, to have white clothing? Don’t you think it will get dirty quickly?

Actually, when Master Cheng Yen was creating the uniform, she knew to draw on symbols, as does much of Buddhist and Chinese culture (which are, by the way, separate and distinct). The blue top represents the sky, the white pants represent the clouds. (Actually, I’m not sure what the white collar represents.) In sum the actual uniform represents the vast expanse of the sky, which should be our attitude towards all sentient beings, enveloping and embracing everyone.

Several decades ago, when Master Cheng Yen went to visit the poor with other volunteers, as they left the wet area, everyone’s shoes were covered in mud—except for Master Cheng Yen’s, which were without even a speck of dirt. People were amazed. How did she do that?

I was mindful, she said, no doubt very matter-of-factly. (Just do it!)

Thus the uniform not only reminds us to be professional and efficient in the organizational sense, but reminds us to uphold the practices of Tzu Chi—mindfulness, attention, and care (a critical "skilful means" in Buddhist language). In many ways the uniform is like a protecting shield, armor against our wild inattention. When we wear the uniform, we should be acutely aware that we represent tens of thousands of Tzu Chi volunteers around the world. Master Cheng Yen. Gratitude. Great love. Mindfulness. Sentient beings.

So, you see, there’s much more to the uniform than you’d first think. The uniform is not just about ME, MYSELF, and I. Step back a moment, realize that individuality is just a Western concept of your identity. Take a breath and remember why you joined Tzu Chi. You joined because you wanted to help people. In fact, you were inspired that so many people had the heart to help people. People. That’s right. People not just yourself. And by people, we in Tzu Chi mean, all sentient beings. Yes, including that mosquito buzzing in your ear that just bit you.

In the world of Tzu Chi, if you listen and observe so carefully to that point that you can listen with your eyes and watch with your ears, you discover a whole new world of much greater meaning that you had ever imagined. I invite all Tzu Chi volunteers, old and new, to just open your eyes and ears, to absorb and reflect more mindfully this world and Tzu Chi’s place in it. I know we’ll discover more than we never knew before.

How to Enter Someone's Mind

A previous version of this essay was published in Tzu Chi USA Journal.

"To speak is to enter someone's mind," once said, I believe, by Robert Thurman, eloquent speaker and eminent Buddhist scholar-practitioner in America. Indeed, there is something profoundly sacred and ethical about entering someone else's mind other than one's own. It prevents the listening person from thinking their own thoughts and instead their own thoughts are pushed aside with the speaker's words.

Perhaps it is the way that my own mind works, but people's words often stick in my head—good words, bad words, neutral words. Words that don't mean anything. Words that inspire me or depress me. They literally stick and without my wielding, they float to my mind at random times of the day, like they are haunting me, and I hear their voice. Perhaps, it is for this reason that I appreciate my moments of solitude, in the company of my own mind. I can finally hear myself loudly and clearly. There are no interruptive, intrusive thoughts of others.

As the Buddha often said to his followers, "Say good words, do good deeds, think good thoughts; this is the teaching of the Buddha." Such a simple yet essential teaching! If one gets right speech alone, one will have one out of three down. When looking into ancient scriptural texts including those pertaining to vows of a bodhisattva, it is no surprise that there are numerous elaborations and explanations on speech:

gentle, not harsh

truthful, not false

calming, not agitating

relevant, not gossip

concerted and concise, not idle

Gentle, not harsh; calming, not agitating
My mother and I often talk about the way in which we talk. My mother's voice is deep and others tell me that it sounds like she is scolding others; in fact she is just excited, passionate, and opinionated. But, as one classmate suggested to me, it is amazing what raising one's voice to be a pitch higher and a tad slower and gentler can do for those with low-pitched voices, and the opposite for high-pitched voices. The sound of one's voice becomes much more soothing, more gentle.

I remember one time when I visited a friend's house for the first time -- they are, I note, Indian-Americans, Sindhi to be exact -- and on the first day there, I thought the family members were having a terrible fight. People screaming up and down stairs. Loud voices. Scolding. Loud sighs. This continued to the second day. Third day. And finally on the fourth day, I realized that in fact there was no fight occurring at all; it was simply the way in which they were speaking. It is true that there is something cultural about the way we speak -- and it may be that certain cultures are accustomed to speaking more loudly than others. Nevertheless, it also means that there are many opportunities for misunderstanding, especially when a person of one culture is on the receiving end of another person's culture.

And it's not only about the way the voice sounds, but also the choice of words that one uses. For example, when I first met a friend who happened to be Indian, he would often use the word "Fine." It was a "Fine" that in the US usually means "Fine! (I got it -- get off my back -- fine!)" It was in that context that I thought, incorrectly, that he used the word "Fine" when he was annoyed or frustrated. But it was only until I visited India for the first time in 2007 and I spent three full months in Ahmedabad with other English-speaking Indians that I realized that their use of "Fine" was equivalent to our use of "Okay". At that point I realized again, what we say can be totally misinterpreted by others. Hence, both the speaker and the listener have a responsibility -- the speaker to be more careful and the listener to not take things so seriously in case there is a misunderstanding. This is also a teaching from Master Cheng Yen in her Still Thoughts Aphorisms (Jing Si Aphorisms).

I'll be extending this post in coming days on the other features of a bodhisattva's way of speech. Stay tuned.

The Art and Science of Finding and Helping the 'Poor': Tzu Chi's Charity Mission

A core tenet of Tzu Chi Foundation is to "help the poor and educate the rich" (濟貧教富). It sounds so simple, right -- to "help the poor"?

"Poverty" as a topic studied by economists
Before one can help the poor, one must first define "who is poor?" I'm no social worker, but I have studied the field of "development" along with health economics since college. And there's one thing that I know: measuring poverty ain't a piece of cake, at least from an economist's view of the world. There are reams and reams of academic literature on how to best measure poverty. If you search Google Scholar for "measurement poverty", there are at least 1.17 million papers that come up, with Amartya Sen's classic paper "Poverty: an ordinal approach to measurement" at the top of the list with 2,124 citations.

Today there are basically two standard ways to measure poverty in the economic literature. The first involves counting how much you spend on every possible commodity and service out there (consumption expenditure) as a proxy for 'income', doing so for everyone else in your neighborhood (or state or country), and then drawing a line ('the poverty line'), and counting all those below that line as 'poor'. Some make that line universal ($1 or $2 a day), while some would make that line specific to a nation, to urban or rural areas, or other specific locale. It also means, in crude terms, that the less you spend, the poorer you are.

The second involves counting all the things or "assets" you have in your house, and then comparing that to everyone else in the neighborhood (or state or country). You assign weights to those assets (e.g. weigh all assets equally or weigh each asset differently, by obtaining the weights through various methods, such as principal components analysis). Then you assign each household an index based on their assets and the weights to each asset, and then you can rank households on that index. Then you can take the bottom 20% (bottom quintile) or whatever "bottom" you prefer. This definition also implies crudely that the less you have, the poorer you are.

These two economic methods are seen as complementary and not without flaws. For example, the former consumption expenditure method often is subject to under-reporting of spending and hence there are often mismatches when aggregating to the national level when comparing to other sources of data to estimate national spending. The former requires trying to recall how much you spent in the last month or year. The latter involves self-reports on what you own (if not obvious from visual inspection by an interviewer). Both can be quite time intensive, because it involves a lot of questions from a survey, and asking a large number of people through a population representative household survey or census.

But, a new study has found -- in spite of a few decades of economic research and lots of thinking and lots of PhD these on this topic -- ironically, there is a much simpler way to find out whether someone is poor, without having to determine the poverty of every single household in the neighborhood (or state or nation) through such a detailed, extensive survey. It turns out, you can just have them tell you if they are poor or not. Surprise, surprise! Common sense beats research: Common sense, 1. Research, 0.

How Tzu Chi finds the poor
It also turns out that Tzu Chi has been doing this since its inception. If a person requests help, Tzu Chi volunteers will reach out and assess whether in fact that person needs help, and then help them as needed. Assessment involves home visits and inquiries and verification of the household's livelihood and lifestyle. It's Social Work 101, folks (I'm addressing the economists reading this blog). So, how does Tzu Chi find and find and help the poor, exactly?

Well, Tzu Chi has a large force of social workers, professional ones as well as supporting volunteers. Social workers have a method for assessing the household's economic situation, livelihood, and various needs. The social worker may observe that a person has fallen ill, lost her job, and has lost her income for the month. The person may be just above some government cut-off for welfare, but nevertheless still require help. Or the case may deemed needy for a multitude of other reasons, even if the person is already receiving some form of government assistance.

I note that there is one other and newer strand of research on poverty measurement, which attempts to reflect the multidimensionality of poverty, not limited merely to how much one spends or how much one spends, for example, to account for education levels and health status of household members, etc. Tzu Chi's approach to assessing potential social work and charity cases, I imagine, probably reflects aspects of all these different approaches to measuring poverty -- how much a household spends, how much the household has, and other factors in the household. (Master's or bachelor's thesis topic, anyone?)

How Tzu Chi helps the poor
So far I've made the argument that Tzu Chi's approach to measuring and identifying the poor is both practical and "cutting edge". But Tzu Chi's approach to helping the poor has also been equally pragmatic as well.

Tzu Chi has long provided "cash transfers" and "cash assistance" to its social work cases since its inception. Tzu Chi will step up to offer cash assistance as needed until the person no longer needs it, with regular case visits and support and accompaniment (陪伴), a term that I have pulled from Paul Farmer's work in Haiti, but is also a term that has been long used within Tzu Chi. The act of accompanying others cannot be underestimated, and Tzu Chi has done this from the beginning of its work. It means that the mere presence of another person to co-suffer with the person undergoing suffering is effective at alleviating suffering. While some economists or even medical researchers might view this as a "placebo effect" ("you're not giving them any 'treatment' per se"), in fact the "treatment" is be there with someone. And we know from neuroscience and psychology that simply "being there" matters. (More on this as a separate post!)

Sometimes the needs of the poor are cannot be solved by cash alone. If the social worker identifies that because of her falling ill, she hasn't been able to take care of herself, take showers, cook, or clean her house, and she needs some assistance in kind, Tzu Chi volunteers will step in to help. Not only do the volunteers do a professional job (in their blue-and-white uniforms), the volunteers also cheer people up, too, and offer their accompaniment. Hassle-free help.

Basically, any and all needs that Tzu Chi can provide, be it financial or in kind, they will do it if help is requested and needed. As Brother Zach Tse (謝景貴) once told me, "If you told a 85-year-old Tzu Chi granny volunteer that someone in the neighboring town is poor and needs help, that old lady would stand up right away and say, 'Where is she? Let's go!'" That epitomizes the go-getter attitude of Tzu Chi volunteers. Where there is a call for help, there they wish to be. It's no small wish to be like Avalokiteśvara, a being or a person who has vowed to respond to all calls for help, with a thousand eyes and a thousand arms. It also explains why, in Taiwan's devastating earthquake in 1999 (called the 921 Earthquake for occurring on September 21), Tzu Chi volunteers were documented across Taiwan to arrive first at the site of each disaster scene in uniform, even before any government or military emergency officers arrived.

I've described briefly Tzu Chi's practical if not novel approach to helping -- but what I find somewhat funny is that today one of the most fashionable topic in development economics is "cash transfers", and whether it is "unconditional" or "conditional". But if only the development economists spoke to the social workers, then, it would not seem so "new" or "fashionable". At times, I feel the different disciplines don't talk to each other enough, in this case, social work and economics -- especially when talking about poverty, cash transfers, etc. Social workers have been at it way longer than economists, and doing a great job in our own country: Common Sense, 1. Research, 0. (It might also be that economists, particular conservative ones, being generally against forms of social welfare, probably don't like talking to social workers.)

Do social work and economics converge on the use of research and evidence?
Although social work and economics at times are fields that do not seem to be communicating with each other (as suggested by the fashionability of "cash transfers" within economics), there is one thing where social work and economics converge, and that is on the use of scientific evidence. Both social work and economics rely heavily on determining what kinds of interventions work at a population level. Rigorous evaluation studies, not unlike an experimental or quasi-experimental study at the community level, are designed, conducted, and published.

Here is where Tzu Chi, unfortunately, needs to get better. For all its "doing", it has much less "talking" outside of Tzu Chi. Granted, within Tzu Chi there is a lot of both doing and talking -- talking from an individual, colloquial perspective to share and learn from personal experiences, not unlike what I wrote a few days ago on my winter relief experiences. But there is much less talking from a rigorous or research perspective, talking that helps with communicating what they do and with public relations.

As a consequence, that lack of talking, especially in English, has become a missed opportunity for sharing its experiences to different policy audiences and institutions engaged in similar activities. An obvious example of a missed opportunity for Tzu Chi to embark on research: the lack of "rigorous" evidence of Tzu Chi's social work programs, for example. It turns out that Tzu Chi's work will, by onlooking Westerners, seem somewhat "not based on evidence", where "evidence" means "research". From a communications standpoint, it simply means talking in the same language as the audience. If the audience is policymakers, and if Tzu Chi wants to reach out to that audience, then it needs to use some of the language that the policymakers are used to.

And, in order for it to talk to these audiences, Tzu Chi first needs to be open to thinking and talking in similar languages as them. So, for starters, can we set out to evaluate the effectiveness of Tzu Chi's charity and social work programs on poverty in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the US, China, or other countries where Tzu Chi has a large or growing presence?

Moreover, there are other forms of data and information on poverty and deprivation -- such as from the data collected through household surveys or censuses described above -- that any agency or organization can use, not necessarily to identify individual poor people per se, but to help them target their efforts and programs in specific regions or locales. How does Tzu Chi prioritize its efforts, and how does it use data in that endeavor of setting program priorities?

I hope more people interested in economics and social work will take interest in Tzu Chi and wish to evaluate its programs, and thereby learn from what Tzu Chi has to offer. And I hope Tzu Chi, as much as I love this organization, will be open to that critical inquiry. I also hope that Tzu Chi will learn from those scholars on how evidence and data can be used to make better decisions. After all, with mutual learning, everybody, regardless of whether they are Tzu Chi volunteers or donors, will benefit. 

From Blog to Open Book: A Journey

Tzu Chi, having its origins in Taiwan and having spread mainly through Taiwanese- or Chinese-speaking social networks and immigrant communities, has had very poor materials, publications, and documents in English. This gap has persisted for many years, particularly in the US where I am most familiar.

It was and still is in the context of this gaping hole in English communications for Tzu Chi that I began writing through the Tzu Chi USA journal in 2002. That year, I had just returned from Taiwan after living in Hualien (where I volunteered for Tzu Chi for year and which served as the basis of a rough manuscript of my experiences) to start my freshman year in college in Boston. That year, Tzu Chi USA journal, led by my mother, was transformed from more of a newspaper to more of a magazine. (The journal was only put onto the web later years, following incredible changes from the internet in how we read.)

Now, approaching 30 years of age, because of this blog, I am looking back to some of these pieces in Tzu Chi USA journal -- and also the 100-or-so page manuscript that I wrote while I was in living in my one year in Hualien, Taiwan.

Returning to some of the pieces I wrote (some more than 11 years old), though, I am frankly a bit embarrassed by some of my own essays. The language, the style -- it all seems a bit juvenile -- which I guess was expected, as I was still, at that time, a "teenager", at 19 years old.

In 2011, I shared one of these pieces from my 100-page reflections with one of my academic colleagues in economics and public health, and much to my surprise, he was so moved by the piece that he cried (see here). The piece was on comparative experiences in Taiwan and Thailand in hospice care, which I had worked on in a writing class in college and somehow -- accidentally really -- published in a medical journal.

Though my colleague encouraged me to finish my book (Thanks, Professor Jamison!) and though I have been meaning to do so, I have never had time to finish that manuscript that I had started in 2001-2002 (first college and then graduate school got in the way, you could say!). Now, I've got a bit more time (I am totally finished with school and I have a real job now), and so, it is with this live blog that I hope to eventually turn my writings, both past and new, into an "open book" on Tzu Chi. I am taking a page from my colleague at my day job, David Roodman, who wrote an "open book" on microfinance through blogging. (One of his posts on an NGO working on microfinance even today gets about 1000 hits a month.)

If I may entice you, here are some of the topics for forthcoming posts. Whenever I see the activities of Tzu Chi volunteers and all that has happened from its beginnings in 1966, I feel that I have unlimited content to work with. So this list is not comprehensive, and I very much welcome your suggestions on what topics I should prioritize and write/edit first!

• My essays from Tzu Chi USA journal
• New Beginnings
• Bridging Gaps
• The Innovative Origins of Tzu Chi
• I’m Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation in Tzu Chi
• A Word on Tzu Chi’s Uniforms
• Chapters from my manuscript
• mental preparations    4
• 1 to follow in their footsteps    5
• 2 go away, worries! just do it!    8
• 3 the meaning of spiritual practice    10
• the education of being human    14
• 4 great love has no strangers    15
• 5 busy body, not busy mind    22
• 6 the peace project camp    26
• 7 teaching english at the outreach school    29
• 8 high school angst, relived    32
• the thousand arms of avalokiteshvara    33
• 9 typhoon toraji: relief and rebuilding    34
• 10 dear thailand tzu chi: chronicles of love    37
• 11 between living and dying: the world of hospice    63
• 12 body donation, silent teachers    78 
• 13 happy volunteer in indonesia    80
• the culture of great love    87
• 14 making xiang shi bao   88
• 15 the abode of still thoughts    89
• 16 disaster after disaster – the awakenings     95
• 17 the movement to spread the seeds of love    100
• 18 the simplicity and joy of monastic life    105
• 19 leaving hualien    108
• My other essays with different outlets
• Why am I here? (speech)
• To enter someone's mind