Julie Iverson/Richmond News

Jin Puti, founder of the Puti Dharma Meditation Centre in Richmond, has donated his life savings. $100,000, to help the victims of the tsunami disaster. His offering is an expression of his Buddhist belief in compassion for others and detachment from material things.

It's hard to believe anything good can come out of the devastation in Southeast Asia, but it was only through extreme suffering that Buddha found enlightenment, explains Buddhist master Jin Puti.

"Adversity can strengthen us in the end," said Puti, through a translator.

Puti, the director of the Canada Buddhist Dharma Society, recently donated his life savings - $100,000 - to tsunami victims in the primarily Buddhist country of Sri Lanka.

While most of us cling to our life savings for security, Puti simply says we are only as secure as the person beside us, or on the other side of the world.

"When others are secure, I'm secure."

Compassion and detachment are the two cornerstones of Buddhism philosophy.
It might seem presumptuous to tell a grief-stricken parent to practice detachment, but in the face of such immense tragedy, we must let go to find "inner equanimity," Puti explains.

While Puti's donation leaves him without any life savings, it certainly doesn't leave him destitute.

At his non-profit meditation centre in Union Square there is an abundance of reverence for "the master," as his followers refer to him.

In fact, the money he sent to the Red Cross was a collection of what his disciples in China had sent him to help him get established in Canada.

His faith leaves him confident more will come, as it's needed.

When Puti was a child growing up in China he was extremely frail and sickly. At age seven he went with his family to a province of China close to Tibet. It was there he learned the power of meditation and healing.

Although Tibetan spiritual practice was forbidden in China, Puti studied with the Lamas and went to what is called the "yellow school" of Tibetan Buddhism. It's the same school the Dalai Lama went to.

Not only was his illness cured, but by his mid-20s he was being sought by others.
"I realize that I had the power to help people through meditation and healing. I always knew it, but at about 25, 26, I started to practice."

His reputation grew as he travelled through the country gathering disciples.
At one point, he had a vision of a beach and coastline and knew some day he would come to Canada, which he did in 1999. He opened the Puti Dharma Meditation Centre in Richmond last May.

It may be too early to see the "bright side" of the tsunami disaster, but Puti is confident there will be one. Religious and cultural groups are coming together. The world is uniting in compassion, he notes.

"It is only when we are in real pain that we go to the doctor for healing," he said.

This tragedy causes us all to have a more expansive view of the impermanent nature of life and material things, and to expand our hearts. Buddha had a big heart. We must practice to have a big heart. "