As said by the reputed management consultant Peter Drucker, non-profit organizations provide values to the society as “providers, practitioners and beneficiaries.” What values do non-profit organizations promote? Professor Leonardo at Management Department of Harvard University studied Tzu Chi and used it as a part of teaching. Mr. Leonardo wanted their students learn the spirit of Tzu Chi, namely “manage with love and lead with values.”

The spirit of Tzu Chi is about big love, which refers to Buddhist concept of mercy and equality. Master Cheng Yen manages with love and leads with beliefs and concepts in order to clarify people’s heart and take care of week groups of society. He has three wishes, namely “clarify people’s heart, harmonize the society and remove the disaster from the world.” Big Love of Tzu Chi is important religious spirit and emotion, “undemanding giving” and “gratitude for being able to give” said by Master Cheng Yen, which is the core value of Tzu Chi Big Love.

Buddhism teaches Paticcasamuppada (origin) and Dhammadipa (empty nature). Everything in the world is an origin without nature; everything is relative to each other, and that’s why it doesn’t have nature. This concept tells us to treasure this kind of relationship. The core of Master Cheng Yen’s concept is “demanding nothing for giving.” Giving is the origin and demanding nothing is empty nature. Therefore behind the modern phrase “demanding nothing for giving” is Paticcasamuppada and Dhammadipa of Buddhism. Every giving is an origin, and having no obsession about it is empty nature.

How can we make it? John Rawls, famous modern political philosopher, stated in his A Theory of Justice that Equality to opportunities is the justice of society. It’s the same as Buddhist concept of mercy and equality. We divide Tzu Chi Big Love into three equal loves. The first is teaching the rich to help the poor. This Buddhist idea of having great kindness and great compassion teaches the rich to help the poor instead of helping them when becoming rich. The second love is teaching a rich heart by helping the poor. Everyone can have the opportunity to love equally by giving the poor group the maximum benefit. The third love is to give even to those with hatred and complaint, responding hatred with love.

Love all equally

The origin of Tzu Chi was thirty house wives. They save 5 jiao everyday which didn’t affect their normal life but could be used to help others. They save the money when they bought cooking materials so the grocery owners also joined them when they realized 5 jiao was used to help others. Thus Tzu Chi’s “Bamboo Tube Age” started in Hualian. Every family had a small bamboo tube for collecting 5 jiao every day. It was a small step that everyone can make. To Master Cheng Yen, charity is not the exclusive activity of rich people, but also can be done by those who have a kind heart. People with a loving heart are rich. Tzu Chi told the rich to help the poor and love all people equally.

Tzu Chi launched charity activities in 83countires, affecting more than 20million people every year. From Taiwan to the whole world, 5 continents are covered. 28 provinces in China mainland witnessed Tzu Chi charity activities. More than 80 countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Central and South America, El Salvador, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, despite their religion, race and culture, have seen an equal love. Loving all equally is the first kind of love of Tzu Chi.

Tzu Chi thinks important that putting efforts into helping others rather than merely donating money. You should carry the rice on shoulder rather than only distributing it. In addition, Tzu Chi volunteers bow to their beneficiaries to show their gratitude for letting them to give. They went close to the misery to learn what happiness is. These activities brought the merciful heart to life by helping others.

From “doing good things” to “being good.” Giving donations won’t make you a good person. As Nirvana says, not owing other’s money is the lowest level of happiness, giving money to others is at the middle level, and having no obsession on your body, mouth and mind is the highest level of happiness. The purpose of doing charity is not only helping others, rather it’s just the first step to being good. To be a good person that everyone respects and likes, it’s more important to build your internal character and behavior. From “doing good things” to “being good,” you need to show your goodness at every corner of life, to realize the real purpose and mission of charity.

Master Zheng Yen said that religion cares about human life’s meaning and education. Human life’s meaning is to benefit others and education is about clarifying the mind and building the character.

Master Zheng Yen said that “gratitude, respect and love” are three key concepts of giving charity. The reason why Tzu Chi promotes giving charity personally is that we give more love than substance. Loving with gratitude is the only way to build a circle of love.

Inspire everyone to love others

The second kind of equal love is to teach everybody to love and donate. Tzu Chi has thousands of Zulu volunteers in South Africa. In the past decades, in addition to distributing rice, Tzu Chi opened a needlework class for 30,000 Zulu women. They sold the clothes they learned to made and provided for their family with the money they earned. They didn’t spend all money but save some cuts to open needlework classes in other villages. In ten years, they managed to open 600 classes in 600villages and helped more than 30,000women.

This is a charity project launched by Pan Mingshui, a Chinese Tzu Chi volunteer. The awaken character such as Pan Mingshui can benefit many people. Starting from building heart and self-cultivating, Pan Mingshui launched 30,000 needlework classes, from which 10,000 women proposed to become volunteers. These black people speaking Zulu languages were not rich but willing to help old people and take care of AIDS patients. Everyday averagely 500 black women cook food for 1,000 AIDS children in Deben, South Africa.

These Zulu women became Tzu Chi volunteers to get trained to meet their demands for intellectuality. Under the blue sky and white clouds, these lively women sing and dance. They even created a song. They are still Christian, not Buddhists. The purpose to be in Tzu Chi is not to become a believer, but a person with kind heart.

In the song they created, “I will do Master Zheng Yen ask me to do, or I will be sorry for Jehovah,” they sang and danced while getting out. Professor Clark from Oxford University said this smeared off the boundaries of religions.

Mrs. Gladys, one of the most important and experienced South African volunteers said, “We are doing God’s work. Through Tzu Chi, we are even closer to our God.” These volunteers were beneficiaries before but they can help others now. After being taught to help the poor, they were inspired a rich heart to create a cycle of love. The key of this cycle is about gratitude. Showing gratitude, love and respect when you give can make them feel very good to be loved, thus inspiring them to love others. When asked what you will do when you grow up, a little boy in a South Africa school helped by Tzu Chi answered, “I want to be Chinese, because Chinese are good, always helping us.” Tzu Chi didn’t convert their religion, but helped their life and changed their view about life. They know that life with giving is the most valuable life.

In the 2008 windstorm attacking Burma, hundreds of thousands of people died, sea water entered the land and the whole rice field was becoming black. Tzu Chi distributed a lot of materials, including rice seed. With rice seed, they had a good harvest. Because these people were poor tenant farmers helped by Tzu Chi, they bear the old teaching in mind and tried to donate. A storehouse farmer started the activity. Before he cooked rice every day, he grabbed a handful of rice and put it in a “rice tube.” This amount of rice was intended to go to poorer people. The “rice tube” was like the “5 jiao bamboo tube” at the early stage of Tzu Chi. With a handful of rice collected by thousands of families every day, they could donate the rice with Tzu Chi volunteers in several months. This is “teaching a rich heart by helping poor.” Now, more than 20,000 Catholics in Philippine and thousands of Moslems in Indonesia are being trained to be Tzu Chi volunteers.

Equal love for complaints

The third kind equal love, “equal love for complaints” means “responding hatred with love.” In 1998 once-in-ten-years Chinese exclusion in Indonesia, Chinese people tried hard to leave the country. However Master Zheng Yen told the Tzu Chi volunteers in Indonesia that they needed to feedback the heaven and ground they used. Volunteers didn’t leave and continued to distribute rice in Jakarta. In the most severe time in 1998, volunteers distributed rice to 130,000people, including army and the poor. At this turning point, Tzu Chi volunteers responded race conflict with love, embodying Buddhist concept of equality in front of complaint.

In 2002 Jakarta flood, 13rivers ran over the whole region. Hongxi River was a 70-meter-long garbage river by which thousands of families lived. Several spaces fended by wood boards in the middle of river were used as toilets. A few feet away people use the same water to brush teeth, take showers, even to make tofu. Life here is hell itself.

Tzu Chi volunteers cleaned this garbage river more than ten kilometers long, and covered the medical treatment of nearly 50,000people for free. Tzu Chi entrepreneurs in Indonesia helped transferring thousands of river residents to a beautiful community of “big love houses” that they invested. Tzu Chi volunteers built schools in the community for children, a permanent charity clinic and a refugee factory. They created steady jobs and opportunities to make lives for the local poor people. Tzu Chi volunteers also built a gathering place for Moslem. They want the Indonesians that hate them to settle down and live a good life. This is the highest level of implementing equal love, Master Zheng Yen’s religious ideal of giving up conflicts.

The selfless big love that Master Zheng Yen proposed and implemented can also be interpreted as “equally love all people, make all love and respond to complaints with love.” It fills the gap of love that western philosophy of freedom and equality that left. The “selfless big love” that Master Zheng Yen has been practicing for more than 40years should be the highest principle we rely on to eliminate poverty and build our theories.

True freedom is love. People can only become free when they are in love; true equality is love. People can only achieve equality when they love each other. In the community of Tzu Chi, the rich help the poor, implementing “teaching the rich to help the poor” concept proposed by Master Zheng Yen. Poor people receiving the help finally help others. This is equality, which can be achieved by love. This also proved Buddhist doctrine of “empty nature of treble aspects”which meant “no giver, no receiver, no giving itself.” This is the true big love and the belief of Master Zheng Yen: giving without demanding.

Because we demand nothing for loving people, we have no obsessions. The true freedom of mind is based on the removal of obsessions. Buddhist freedom means no binding on the mind. A mind not bond with the outside world can enjoy the great internal freedom, which can be achieved by an abstemious heart. However if people can love each other, the environment or groups will not constrain people; instead it can become the support for personal achievement. Therefore a selfless love is the base for mind freedom and social equality, our final solution.

Since the dawn of human history, to eliminate poverty has always been the dream and purpose of human kind, especially in this century. Poverty is not caused by ignorance, but by an unlimited desire; not by underdevelopment, but by cold hearts; not by the absence of justice, but by the persistence on justice which causes conflict and hatred and makes us pay a huge cost.

To eliminate poverty, we should start by building an abstemious heart rather than urging the rich to donate. A grain of rice that drops on the ground can be the cause of famine millions of miles away. The conflict just in front of us may be the key to the famine of children on the other side of planet. People can only know that poverty is not far from us or abstract by touching it. People can only know that our desire may cause the poverty for others. We can remove poverty from this planet only if we start to help each other, practice selfless love and resolve all racial, religious and national conflicts with love.