COVID-19 Became the Final Blow That Took My Father Away

COVID-19 struck with devastating force and became the final blow to my father, who was
already suffering from lung cancer. That winter felt especially bleak and desolate. Snow
was falling, yet even the snowflakes did not feel as cold as my heart.

My father was the person I respected most in my life. He was the “backbone” of our family.
Born in a rural village in northeastern China, my father was not only the pride of my
grandparents but also the pride of the entire village. In those difficult times, for a boy from a
poor rural family to be admitted to a prestigious university was almost like becoming the
top scholar in the ancient imperial examinations—a promising young man had risen from
humble beginnings.

Yet my father had a very difficult childhood. He lost his mother at a young age when my
grandmother passed away. My grandfather had to be both father and mother, raising all six
children on his own.

Through perseverance and hard work, my father was able to leave the countryside behind.
He graduated from university with outstanding grades and was assigned to work in Tianjin.
In a city where he had no relatives or connections, he gradually established himself.
Through years of tireless effort, he achieved extraordinary results in an ordinary position
and eventually built a successful career.

Time passes so quickly, often catching us completely unprepared.

One day in July 2022, I noticed that my father, who had always been in good health, was
making a wheezing sound when he breathed. After medical examinations, he was
diagnosed with lung cancer.

We were utterly shocked.

We sought medical advice and treatment from various doctors and hospitals. In the end,
however, we had no choice but to opt for conservative treatment because the location of
his tumor made surgery unsuitable.

Tormented by the illness, my elderly father grew thinner by the day. Whenever I saw him
coughing so severely that he could barely catch his breath, I wished desperately that I
could bear his suffering for him. I would rather have been the one who was ill.

Yet no matter how deeply I loved my father, there was nothing I could do to take his
suffering away.

How small and powerless human beings can be in the face of illness!

Then, as if things were not already difficult enough, my father contracted COVID-19. His
already frail body suffered yet another devastating blow.

On December 25, 2022, while many people were celebrating Christmas, my father left us
forever.

I held my elderly mother in my arms and dared not shed tears, afraid that seeing my grief
would deepen her sorrow.

After comforting my mother, I softly recited the Kṣitigarbha Sutra beside my father, praying
that he would receive the blessings of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and be reborn in one
of the three higher realms or in a Pure Land.

According to local customs in Tianjin, the deceased may be transferred to a mourning hall,
where the family holds memorial rites. Traditionally, the body remains there for three days
so that relatives and friends can come and pay their respects.

After receiving the many relatives and friends who came to mourn my father, I remained
alone in the mourning hall.

Standing before my father’s portrait, I could no longer hold back my tears. I simply let them
flow.

One by one, I told my father all the things I had wanted to say to him over the years but
never had the chance to express.

Perhaps it was only my imagination, or perhaps it was because I missed him so deeply, but
I almost felt that he was right there in front of me, listening as I spoke.

Lament — A Regulated Verse

The desolate winter wind chills me to the bone;
Across the mournful sky, wild geese cry in sorrow.
Weary in both spirit and form of this cold mortal world,
The body now belongs beneath the pure white snow.

A loving father’s warmth has faded like a dream;
Could a child’s devotion ever be in doubt?
A lone chrysanthemum stands by the fence, as though on a distant riverbank.
I gaze sorrowfully into the hazy distance as a thin mist drifts in.

This poem could express only a fraction of the grief within my heart.
No matter how reluctant I was to let him go, my father’s body was eventually reduced to a
bag of ashes and placed inside a small urn.

I could not even be certain whether those ashes truly belonged to the physical body that
had once been my father. But in fact, whether they did or did not no longer mattered. The
body was merely a temporary combination of the four great elements. The “soul” of the
father I had known had already gone somewhere beyond my knowledge.

At that moment, I could not help recalling an impartation from Namo H.H. Dorje Chang
Buddha III in Philosophical Sayings About Worldly Matters:
“A person grows wiser by learning from the setbacks he suffered. True knowledge
comes from one’s own experience. Secondhand experience is worth little.”

On the journey of life, how can we truly understand the truth of something or gain genuine
insight into our own state of being?

The essential point is that understanding cannot come merely from what we hear, nor
merely from what we see. Beyond seeing and hearing, we must learn to draw experience
and lessons from repeated setbacks and failures. Through practical experience,
verification, and sincere reflection upon our failures, we can gradually develop an inward
understanding of things and come to comprehend the truth.

Therefore, we must personally undergo experiences before we can truly understand them.

If we merely rely on hearsay without personally putting things into practice, what we gain is
not an understanding of their true nature. Only the experience gained through what we have
personally undergone, witnessed, and practiced can lead us to genuine understanding and
truth.

“Life is impermanent” was something I used to say often.

One day, I would talk with someone about how quickly time passes; the next day, I would
speak with someone else about how everything can change in an instant.

But in reality, I had never truly developed a deep awareness of impermanence.
It was not until my father passed away that I was finally awakened to it.
My father had truly given me a profound and painful lesson in impermanence.

Written by: Zai Lu Shang
Edited by: Yuese

Link: https://myhappylifestyle.net/2026/10/11/dorjechangbuddhaiii-covid-19-become-the-final-blow-that-took-my-father-away/

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My Personal Experience: The High Price of Saving Face

My Personal Experience: The High Price of Saving Face

From ancient times to the present, many people have placed great importance on “saving face,” often associating it with reputation and social status. Outwardly, they want to maintain a favorable image in the eyes of others; inwardly, they want to satisfy their own vanity. So, if someone causes them to “lose face,” serious trouble may follow.

Think about it carefully. It can be something as minor as a group of people scrambling to pay the bill at a restaurant, or something as serious as a tragedy caused by someone desperately trying to protect a fragile sense of pride. So many conflicts arise simply because people care too much about “face.”

When I was a child, I too once paid a price for wanting to save face.

In the 1970s, everyday necessities were relatively scarce. Toothpaste tubes were made of aluminum, and itinerant peddlers often traveled from village to village collecting used tubes. Every so often, someone would also come to the village to castrate roosters and collect empty toothpaste tubes and the inner linings of chicken gizzards, known in traditional Chinese medicine as Ji Nei Jin.

Not many people did this kind of work. They traveled either on foot or by bicycle, carrying a long string of copper pieces fastened together somewhat like traditional Chinese clappers. As they walked, the copper pieces swung and struck against one another. Their distinctive clattering could be heard from far away, inevitably setting the chickens squawking and dogs barking in the otherwise quiet village.

One day, one of these peddlers became thirsty and stopped by our house for some water. After greeting him, my mother went to work at the threshing ground beside our house.

The man kept talking to me, trying to win me over. “What a good child!” “What a clever little one!” Compliments cost him nothing, and they came pouring out one after another. Before long, I was completely carried away by his flattery.

He asked me to bring him some peanuts to taste, and I obediently did as he asked. I brought him a large scoop filled to the brim with peanuts.

He showed no hesitation whatsoever. He dumped all the peanuts straight into the two large bags hanging from either side of his old-fashioned bicycle—and even remarked that it was not very much.

Just then, a fellow villager happened to pass by.

The peddler deliberately raised his voice and said, “What a hospitable child—so very generous!”

The villager gave me an amused smile and replied, “Yes, very generous indeed!”

At that moment, I actually felt terrible. After all, this was a time when food and clothing were scarce. Yet once I had been praised as an “especially generous child,” my concern for saving face made it difficult for me to stop. I had already given away a large scoop of peanuts, and the man still thought it was too little.

Gritting my teeth, I went and found a large bag and filled it to the top with peanuts for him.

Once again, he deliberately said in a loud voice, “You don’t need to give me so much! What a generous and sensible child you are!”

He then filled the two large bags on his bicycle with the peanuts and rode off without looking back.

Later, when my mother found out what had happened, she said to me, “Our family wasn’t doing business with him. It would have been enough to offer him a little something out of courtesy. Giving him such a large bag was far too much—that was enough to serve his whole family! Well, let’s just consider this your first time playing host and entertaining a guest.”

Although my mother did not criticize me, I knew very well how hard my parents labored in the fields to put food on our table. I deeply regretted what I had done. Our own family often did not have enough to eat, so how could I have given away our food so easily?

That incident taught me an important lesson: It can be very difficult to resist when someone showers you with flattering praise.

As I gained more life experience, I came to realize that sometimes people defend their pride and “face” even at the cost of their lives.

Take Xiang Yu, for example. After suffering defeat in the Chu-Han Contention, he fled to the Wu River. The chief of Wu River Pavilion told him, “Although the region east of the Yangtze is small, it spans a thousand li and has hundreds of thousands of people. It is still enough territory for you to rule as king.”

Xiang Yu laughed and said, “Heaven intends to destroy me. What would be the point of crossing the river?”

He would rather take his own life than continue living in defeat. What a tragic and lamentable end!

In fact, when Xiang Yu felt that he had “no face to see the elders of Jiangdong again,” concern for his pride and reputation was still at work deep within him. Had he been able to put aside the issue of saving face, cross the river, and regroup his forces, history might conceivably have unfolded differently.

Another example was a 2021 case in which a man killed his wife following an argument that began over an onion.

A man surnamed Li was drinking at home with several friends. After they had been drinking for some time and were in high spirits, one of his friends suddenly wanted some onion as a palate cleanser. Li called for his wife, Su, to cut some onion for them.

But Su was busy caring for their three young children and already had more than she could handle. Her husband not only failed to appreciate how overwhelmed she was, but also ordered her around. Already unhappy about his drinking, she replied in frustration, “If you want it, cut it yourself. If you don’t want to do that, then forget it. I’m not here to wait on all of you!”

That single remark, spoken with resentment and frustration, turned what had been a small gathering into a scene of violence.

After being refused by his wife, Li felt that he had lost face in front of his friends and that his authority as the “head of the household” had been undermined. He began arguing fiercely with Su. Under the influence of alcohol, Li picked up a sharp kitchen knife and stabbed his wife.

Su collapsed and lost consciousness. She later died from severe blood loss and damage to her internal organs. Li was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.

Just like that, a once-intact family was shattered.

Li’s attachment to saving face cost his wife her precious life and sent him into the depths of imprisonment. Trying to save face for a moment can result in a lifetime of regret.

This also serves as a warning to us: Why cling to something as hollow as “face”? Face itself is worth nothing.

Put another way, protecting one’s “face” is really a way of protecting one’s attachment to self. When everything revolves around “me,” human weaknesses such as selfishness, greed, anger, and ignorance can flourish, leading to one problem after another.

If a person truly wishes to earn dignity and respect, that person should strive diligently to accomplish something worthwhile and then share the benefits, care, and warmth with others, working for the well-being of the public. In this way, people will naturally respect that person from their hearts.

As Namo H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III imparted in Philosophical Sayings About Worldly Matters :

“What makes the sun the greatest thing man has ever known? It is admired for providing light and warmth for all the beings under it. A truly great person is one who is willing to sacrifice his own benefit for the well-being of others.”

Why is the inherent nature of the sun considered great? It is because the sun consumes itself to bring light, warmth, and energy to the world. It enables plants to grow and humans and animals to survive, providing the conditions that sustain life in our world. In other words, the sun bestows benefits upon all things in the world. That is why everyone praises its greatness.

By the same principle, if we are free from selfish motives, quietly devote ourselves to others, and even make personal sacrifices to serve the interests of the public and bring benefits to others, people will naturally respect us and praise what we have accomplished. In doing so, we ourselves become great.

But if we merely put on appearances and do things for show—whether to impress ourselves or others—without genuine kindness and compassion arising from within, then ultimately it will all be nothing more than flowers reflected in a mirror and the moon reflected on water: beautiful illusions without substance.

Written by: Mingxun
Edited by: Yuese

Link: https://myhappylifestyle.net/2026/10/04/my-personal-experience-the-high-price-of-saving-face/

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There Is No Generation Gap—Am I the North Wind or the Sun?

There is a saying: “If you have never experienced what others have gone through, do not be quick to judge their faults. If you have never endured their suffering, do not be quick to tell them how they should behave. If you had suffered what I have suffered, you might not have done any better than I did.” Such a simple truth—yet I never realized how poorly I had practiced it in the past.

Ever since I was young, my father had raised me with a strict and authoritative approach. This was very different from my relationship with my mother, with whom I always seemed to have endless things to talk about.

As I grew older, friction between my parents gradually increased, leaving many negative impressions deeply embedded in my mind. My father and I rarely talked. Whenever my parents had a disagreement, I invariably took my mother’s side without trying to view the situation objectively. As a result, my misunderstandings of my father grew deeper and deeper.

During the years when I suffered most severely from illness, my father took care of me tirelessly and without complaint. Although I was deeply moved by everything he did for me, for some reason I could never let go of the memories of his arguments with my mother. Deep inside, I still harbored resentment toward him.

After my mother passed away, my father was overwhelmed with grief. Yet he often pulled himself together to encourage me, simply because he was afraid that remembering my mother would make me sad and bring me to tears.

Now that only my father and I remained to keep each other company, the awkwardness of having so little to talk about became even more apparent. Sometimes when I accompanied him on walks, I would become impatient when he repeatedly talked about things from the past. Although this was his way of expressing his emotions, I failed to recognize the helplessness and loneliness hidden behind his words.

Instead, I behaved almost like a fault-finding inspector. Even as I listened to him, I would contradict or correct him. Our conversations would often end with him saying, “If you don’t like talking to me, at least don’t lose your temper with me!”

I do not know how many times this pattern repeated itself. Then one day, I suddenly became alarmed by my own conduct. I realized what an inconsiderate daughter I had been. I had continued to hold on to the painful memories of my parents’ arguments, and because of that, I had never truly listened to what was in my father’s heart.

I began to think: We can change ourselves without demanding that others change, can’t we? Moreover, how could I possibly understand all the causes and conditions underlying the relationship between my parents?

I therefore resolved to become a gentler and more understanding daughter. I began training myself to truly listen, to let go of the burdens and attachments of the past, and to sincerely fulfill my filial duty toward my father.

It reminded me of Aesop’s famous fable, “The North Wind and the Sun.” I was determined to be the sun!

Gradually, my relationship with my father became more and more harmonious. Whenever I am not by his side, I call him at a regular time each day to see how he is doing. When I return home, I also make an effort to spend more time talking with him. Over time, my father has come to feel that I genuinely care about him.

My father and I had once been almost like strangers, but now we live together in harmony. I deeply understand that this transformation came about through genuinely learning and practicing Buddhism. It is also a result of frequently listening respectfully to the Dharma discourses expounded by Namo H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, through which I received purification and blessings.

The Buddha Dharma exists in this world and is inseparable from awakening within this world. There is no knot in life that cannot be untied. What matters is whether we are willing to let go of our attachments and make the change.

Link: https://myhappylifestyle.net/2026/09/08/there-is-no-generation-gap-am-i-the-north-wind-or-the-sun/

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When I Came to Understand the Pain Deep Within My Mother’s Heart

When I Came to Understand the Pain Deep Within My Mother’s Heart

Through participating in group study, respectfully and deeply listening to the Dharma discourses expounded by my Buddha Master, Namo H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, and sharing what I had learned with others, I gradually came to understand and feel the pain deep within my mother’s heart.

For as long as I can remember, my parents were constantly arguing. During holidays and festivals in particular, our home would become filled with tension. After an argument, my mother would always wear a stern expression and remain silent, while my father would sigh repeatedly, not knowing what to do.

After encountering the Tathagata’s True Dharma taught by H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, I wanted to resolve a question that had puzzled me for a long time: My mother had everything she needed in terms of food and clothing and was free from serious illness or misfortune, so why did she complain every day? She would either say that my father did not treat her well or feel that my younger brother and his wife did not treat her well. She would become so upset that she sometimes could not sleep all night.

My mother cared greatly about maintaining appearances, even when doing so caused her hardship. She especially doted on my younger brother, whom she treasured dearly. To ensure that he could hold his head high in front of his wife’s family, my mother used almost all of her savings to buy them a home and a garage.

Whenever there was an important occasion or even a smaller matter involving my sister-in-law’s family, my mother always handled everything generously and properly. She would rather live frugally herself than allow my brother to lose face.

Yet despite all she had done, my brother seldom contacted her. Although they lived in the same city, he rarely checked in on her, much less came to see her. I could feel how deeply my mother missed her son. She would often ask me, “I wonder what your brother has been so busy with lately?”

To tell the truth, seeing my mother like this made my heart ache, and I also felt deeply concerned about my inability to help her. How I wished she could learn the true Dharma of the Tathagata with me! After all, it was through learning the true Dharma of H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III and developing right understanding and right views that I myself had been able to free myself from the suffering caused by my divorce.

Having personally experienced the benefits of learning Buddhism and cultivating myself, I tried to persuade my mother not to dwell on the things that troubled her. I explained to her that these circumstances were the result of causes, conditions, and karmic forces planted in the past. But she did not agree with what I told her.

To avoid upsetting my mother, I tried to take care of nearly all the household chores myself so that she would have to do as little as possible for my single-parent household. Yet strangely, the more responsibilities I took upon myself, the more upset she seemed to become. No matter what I did, I could not seem to make her happy.

Back then, I lived very cautiously around her, afraid that something I said or did might cause her to become upset and silently resentful. I also tried communicating with her, but she would often remain silent and keep everything bottled up inside.

Through respectfully studying Expounding the Absolute Truth Through the Heart Sutra, I brought forth right mindfulness and finally came to understand how I should correctly practice the Four Immeasurables of loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. I first needed to begin with equanimity and selfless giving—to be willing to devote my time to considering the needs of my family. Caring for them was not merely about making sure they had enough food, warm clothing, and money to spend. I also needed to learn to recognize and understand the suffering within their hearts.

I began to sincerely spend time with my mother, and gradually I discovered that the ice within her heart was beginning to melt. Instead of telling her, “Don’t be angry anymore” or “Don’t hold on to resentment,” I began placing the responsibility upon myself: I needed to understand the pain within my mother’s heart, listen to what her heart was trying to tell me, help heal her emotional wounds, and help her establish right understanding and right views.

When my mother complained, I became willing to set aside my time and sit quietly beside her, listening attentively. I no longer used the principle of “cause and effect” to argue with her until she had nothing left to say.

When she felt physically tired, I would take the time to massage the acupressure points on her feet and ask her whether the pressure was too light or too strong. When she felt bored, I would willingly spend time with her and chat about everyday family matters instead of lecturing her about principles and doctrines.

The more I tried to understand the pain in my mother’s heart, the more she began saying things like, “Don’t waste your time on me. I don’t need you to keep me company. Go take care of the children. Once you’ve taken care of everything for them, go do whatever you need to do.”

What surprised and delighted me even more was that my mother eventually began reminding me herself, “It’s almost time for your Buddhist group study. Don’t forget to join the meeting. I’ll help you look after the children.”

I had finally gained my mother’s support. And it happened simply because I had learned to recognize the pain within her heart and was willing to devote my time to sincerely being there for her.

This is exactly what the H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III teaches in the Dharma discourses: we must put our cultivation into actual practice and cultivate ourselves with respect to the three karmas of body, speech, and mind. We must be sincere in our words and actions and in the way we interact with and treat others. Only by putting genuine effort into our conduct in everyday life can we truly touch the hearts of others.

Contributed by: Ji Cheng / Kui Xing

Link: https://myhappylifestyle.net/2026/09/06/dorjechangbuddhaiii-when-i-came-to-understand-the-pain-deep-within-my-mothers-heart/