Comments by Dr. Effie Chow
President of the East-West 
Academy of Healing Arts

      The messages from the Abbot help keep me going and I hope will help all of you through your times of frustration and embattlement and during your times of greed, hatred, and stupidity so we are able to overcome these. I don't pretend to be what the Abbot has so graciously stated—free from these myself. I think I am the most guilty of these.

The message of the Abbot is very important. I think in our frustrating and difficult times, we can hope that these words will stay with us. In the area of holistic health we say that we have to go through our own transformation and this is the message Abbot Hua has delivered today: that our self-transformation must come before we can hope to influence others around us. It isn't the outward extension of striving to change others that is so important, but the act of being and the emanation of what you truly are that is the important factor others will pick up. You don't have to tell them to do something, they will want to do what you are doing; they will want to be as you are.

I hope this will be a very good year and I know that we will be in the presence of the Abbot as much as possible, though perhaps not as often as we would like.