The heart of Tzu Chi

I took a day trip to Tacloban a few weeks ago as a guest of the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation. I expected to find a city on its knees, unable to rise from the devastation from Yolanda, but I came away impressed with the bustle of the place. From the airport to the city proper to nearby Palo, the place was busy with economic activity, with small businesses rising everywhere. The malls were up and running, their shops and restaurants enjoying brisk traffic. Motorcycles, buses, trucks and private vehicles sped past. Students in uniform filled classrooms in the universities and colleges. Hospitals were in service.

The magnificent Santo Nino shrine at the center of the city with its glistening white dome had just undergone a P55 million renovation. Its donor was the Tzu Chi Foundation’s Dharma Master Cheng Yen who recognized the importance of the Catholic Church to Filipinos and responded generously to the request of the parish priest for assistance in restoring the damaged church.

Giving comes naturally to the Tzu Chi Foundation. It has generous donors, access to resources, and volunteers with the heart (and pockets) to serve others without counting the cost, inspired by the Dharma Master who said, “Life is happiest when you are needed by others and can do things for others.” And as a volunteer organization, it works with little or no overhead cost.

Dharma Master Cheng Yen, a 78-year-old Buddhist nun who lives in Taiwan, founded the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation in 1966. Tzu Chi literally means “compassion relief” and it thrives on donations and volunteerism. Under the Master’s guidance, Tzu Chi volunteers have done their good works in more than 80 countries, including Nepal, Syria and Afghanistan.

A group of Filipino-Chinese volunteers were at a meeting with the Dharma Master in Taiwan in November 2014 when she ordered them to go home and help the victims of the monster typhoon that had just hit Central Philippines. The volunteers, who had not heard about Yolanda and the devastation it caused in Tacloban, rushed back to Manila and 10 days later, 300 Tzu Chi volunteers from 13 countries were on the ground in Leyte. They came to give survivors relief from their grief and depression with cash, goods and loving concern. From 10 stations in Tacloban, they immediately shelled out as much as P2 billion pesos to affected families, with amounts ranging from P8,000 to P15,000, depending on the number of members per family.

The survivors had lost everything and the Tzu Chi volunteers were not about to violate their dignity by making them prove they needed help. While the United Nations gave $6 a day in its cash-for-work program, Tzu Chi shelled out P500 per person per day for cash-for-work, with no questions asked whether or not they did any work.  

To help clean up the city, they brought in 52 pieces of heavy equipment borrowed from a mining company to clear the massive detritus in the streets.

Almost two years since Yolanda, the Tzu Chi Foundation hasn’t left Leyte.

Our group motored to Barangay San Jose in Palo where the foundation has built the Palo Tzu Chi Village of 255 temporary homes in land lent by the local government to Tzu Chi for 10 years.  The homes are in neat rows two-bedroom duplexes, with toilet and bath and a solar panel on every roof.  Each family is provided with collapsible beds made from recycled plastic that can be stored or converted into living room furniture during the day.  

Because the housing is temporary, the houses are hooked to the ground with cables, for easy dismantling when the 10 years are up. This is in conformity with the Tzu Chi principle that one must  leave nature as one found it.

Sally Yunez, who runs the village, says that the operative rule in developing the village was, “If you can live in it, give it,” which explains the neat and clean neighborhood with well-kept houses surrounded by flowering plants and vegetable plots. The village has a basketball court and a treehouse for the community’s many traumatized children to play in. 

There are livelihood opportunities for the women to sew tote bags, prepare organic vegetarian lunches, and bake delicious artisan bread to sell in government offices. And residents are offered used motorcycles that have been repossessed by banks, on credit.

Outside the village are two bridges that Judy Lao, Sally’s sister in law, is particularly proud of: a small concrete bridge built over a creek, and a hanging footbridge over a river that connects Barangay San Jose to Barangay Arado constructed with donations solicited by Judy from her high school classmates. Built at the cost of P1.9 million, the hanging bridge is a game-changer. Whereas before, students had to walk three kilometers to the highway where they took a jeepney to school, with the hanging bridge, the highway to an education is just a stroll away.

The hanging bridge is aptly christened, the Tzu Chi Bridge of Great Love. 

It is great love that motivates Tzu Chi volunteers to do what they do. Tzu Chi Foundation Philippines has been every place where they are needed: the Infanta landslide of 2004, the Ondoy flood of 2009, Sendong in 2011, Pablo in 2012, and Yolanda in 2014. They hold medical missions treating goiter patients, providing dental services and performing minor surgeries on cleft palates and cataracts. They give assistance to survivors of fires and sunken ships, and help clean classrooms with DepEd’s Brigada Eskwela. 

To Buddhists like the Tzu Chi volunteers, service is a spiritual path, meditation in action. They work quietly, lovingly, humbly, guided by the principle, “You are not higher than anybody else.”

May their tribe increase.