THE GRACE OF GOD

※THE GRACE OF GOD※

   Another Testament to Great Tao

Few years back, Vijay K.Gurung was working in Johor Bahru, Johor State, West Malaysia. Through his Tao introducers and Tao guarantors, he acquired Tao. After acquiring Tao, with the guidance of three Tao lecturers, Ms Gan Chooi Chooi, and Mr and Mrs Toh Kian Heng, from Tao communities of Singapore and Malaysia, Vijay truly understood the meaning of Tao and started practicing vegetarianism. And he brought a lot of Nepali friends acquiring Tao in Tao temples.

After returning to his hometown, Vijay's wish of setting up a family-type Tao temple became a reality. On 15th Dec 2014, the temple was consecrated and mercifully named by Guru Chuang Shengtang as Ming-Guang Temple. Ming-Guang Temple is under Chang-Ha Temple in Nepal, located on the remote mountaineous terrain of Gorkha District, Nepal, the Himalayas. December is the month of winter in the Himalayas. Giving support to Vijay for the consecration day, Gan and the married couple Toh took long leaves and flew to Nepal just to greet him.

To get to Ming-Guang Temple from Kathmandu, it usually takes two days by car or bus, followed by a 5-hour path of trekking and climbing. Following days of blood, sweat and tears in ascending, and crossing some rivers, foreign daoqins (Tao members) finally reached Vijay's house. On the consecration day of Ming-Guang Temple, almost all the villagers turned up for the initiation ceremony, with a total of 65 locals acquired Tao. Two notable things were that the Maitreya statue was directly flown to Nepal from Singapore, and the offering table was carried home by Vijay with a piece of belt hanging on his forehead from downhill. Despite his temple is small in size, his sincerity was at 100%.

The temple had been newly set up for months. On 25th April 2015, however, the century earthquake with a magitude of 7.9  on the Richter scale struck the land and left the helpless Nepalis with unexpected shock.

The victims saw their houses destroyed by the massive earthquake in disbelief. It all happened in a sudden such as the rocking of earth and mountains, and the destroy of bridges and roads.

People could not believe that all houses in their beautiful homeland reduced to rubble in a blink of eyes. Now, Nepal is the land full of weeping, whining and frightening along with deaths are everywhere.

Geographically, Gorkha is located in a very remote mountainous area; the availability of transportation and medical facilities posts a major problem for the locals. Unfortunately, Gorkha was the hardest hit area as it is situated very near to the epicenter.
Therefore, during the earthquake, the landslides blocked all the roads and caused difficulty in sending rescue force to the locals.

After the earthquake, the local people lost contact with the outside world completely. Planning to give help to people in Gorkha, 25 persons from various nationalities formed a group of rescue team and tried to reach there. However, tremors struck the area again and caused the 25 personnel to be buried alive on the spot. In an attempt to rescue those quake victims, the second rescue team of five members tried to enter there. Sadly, they were all buried alive on the spot too by the landslide during a magnitude of 7.4 earthquake occurred on 12th May.

From a chapter of accidents, Vijay's village is the luckiest one. Even though all houses collapsed, most Taoqin villagers are safe. Amazingly, there is one house that still stands firm and undamaged on the ground. That is Vijay's house; Ming-Guang Temple is housed in here. Not only holy lamps, Maitreya statue and offering cups stand firm, but they also showed no signs of shaking or changing of its original positions at all.

The local villagers are amazed with such miracle. And from now on, they have more faith with Tao; also, they have even more confidence on Tian-Ming, the Mandate of Heaven, that is entrusted to our Enlightening Teacher.

After the quake, through the help of the Nepalese school branches of Cheng-He Confucian Academy, the Tao Admin Centre (TAC) of Fa-Yi Chong-De (*FYCD) in Taiwan was quick to react and set to send disaster relief items to Nepal by air as soon as possible, especially in Gorkha.

Vijay, however, told us that his hometown is near to the epicenter, all the main roads on the mountaineous area are temporarily inaccessible due to severe rocking. The only viable way is delivering foods and relief items to Vijay's hometown by trekking and climbing, but it has to take about five hours to reach there; additionally, those foods and relief items are hardly to be eventually delivered owing to looting as some villagers tend to be aggressive and violent. It also risks volunteers from being assaulted or killed on some degree. The best solution is keeping those things in the temple first and secretly taking it at night for distribution the next day.

Being a Taoqin holding the compassionate spirit of Buxiuxi Bodhisattva, not only Vijay has to help rebuilding his village, but he also has to form volunteer groups for the clean-up and the reconstruction of school in his village.

Though reconstruction is a lenthy and uphill task, Vijay said he is very confident on God and our holy teacher, because he has the backing from the Tao community, as well as love and care from our holy teacher, Baishui Sagely Emperor and Buxiuxi Bodhisattva. He added he will be even more dedicated and serious in Tao cultivation and propagation from now on.
*I-Kuan Tao has 13 members and 18 submembers. FYCD is one of its 18 submembers.

Translated by: Jecelyn, Jia Chyi, Ebbie & YB.
Edited by: Ebbie & YB.