Dare you make this Change: Quick Excerpt of Life Lessons from Teresa Hsu Chih

Conincidentally, I just happen to write a lot on this centanarian heroine whom I really admire. I will paste the latest blog post here after this message. Additionally, I have other links of which I would like to share:

1.‘The Human Religion is Love’ Teresa Hsu’s 100 years of Simple Love beats Pretentious Theories.
http://daringtochange.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/the-human-religion-is-lov...

2.Snappy Shots on Her Idea of Life
http://karenfu.posterous.com/daily-meditation-of-110-years-teresa-hsu-chih

3.Our National Treasure -- 108 year old Humanist Teresa XuZhe
http://daringtochange.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/our-national-treasure-ter...

I just couldn’t resist taking the time to pick out the important lessons off from her talk when she received her commendation from Venerable Jingkong some 3 years ago. I may have missed a couple of points,but I think I have somewhat covered most of the pointers. I only have pockets of time to do this and I thought the best format would be in the form of a ‘poetry’. And I call this ‘Dare You Make This Change’ — Lessons from Hsu Chih. She is an extremely humble person, but I thought she’s got lots of cool factor that is humble yet gutsy; old yet young. Here’s my shot for the day:

想年轻 就年轻!

Think young and thou shalf be young!

吃
很浪费时间

干嘛
买菜 洗菜
又煮菜
餐餐洗碗
多麻烦 ！

Eating is a waste of time

Why waste it on

Buying food, washing them

& cooking them

After whish

the hell of washing follows

What a chore!

不如看书
做有意人的事情 更妙 !

Might as well read books

Do chores to benefit mankind Such is a pure wonder!

她
只有爱人的宗教
没有别的
心清静
头脑只为为众生

She

Only harbors the idea of Love

Love is her religion

Nothing else.

The heart is at peace

And the mind is for humanity

切勿动干火!
因为
发脾气 浪费时间
伤害自己 伤害别人

Boil not your head

‘Cos

Fuming churns away your time

Harms yourself & others

不拿病人的钱
人家给她的钱
她全给其他穷人
交水电 房租
买粮食

Not taking patient’s money

Whatever money that is given to her

She passes it on to the poor

To pay for bills, rent

To buy food.

她从不浪费

因
照顾的人很穷，

所以
一定一样跟他们一样的穷

She never wastes

‘Cos

there are many poor people to take care of

That’s Why

she feels she needs to be as poor as them

爱
她信仰是个‘爱’
永远爱世人 爱众生

Love

Is her mantra

Always love humanity, love all fellow beings

她投其四好：
存好心，说好话
行好事， 做好人
百年功绩
就在她 执着的博爱

She focuses on mainly four beliefs:

Keep a good heart, say the wise words

Do the good deeds, practice being a good person

100 years of achievements

lay on the principle of compassion.

苦人太多，贫穷人太多
跟最穷的人一起往来
她的生活要比他们好，她的心不安
这是真的，不但自己心不安
穷人看了会怕；

Sad people are many, poor people are many

Mingle among the poor and interact with them

She feels uneasy when she is better than them

This is real: Not that she feels uneasy

The poor who sees the better off are uneasy

必须过和他们同样的生活
跟大多数人打成一片
就是和平共处的苦心状举！

Henceforth the effort to experience the poor’s life

Be part of the majority

Such heartfelt emphathy is the foundation of peace !

– compiled in the stanzas in the middle of the night by Karen Fu…

Night All !

PS: The basis of peace formed by Teresa Hsu may be a tall order. If not almost impossible, but I believe that if we could move towards the basis of empathy in her direction, we would have sorted out a lot of problems in life. The essence of thrift, sharing and compassion could take us all out of misery that is stemmed out from jealousy, greed and poverty.