Helen So (傳嚴),
Vice Coordinator , Fundraising Section

Helen is the niece of Grace So. She has kept up her donation of many essential things to Ocean Sky, and has never once ceased in so many years. These things include, for example, the weekly merienda (snacks) for the meditation students, bottles of mineral water, all dispenser drinking water, and fresh vegetables for the monastery. She would also launder the meditation mat covers and the blankets used by all lay people in the Chan hall, returning them to the monastery neatly pressed and folded.

Helen likes to chant sutras everyday and would diligently join the nightly Medicine Buddha ceremony. Helen and all her siblings are also very filial pious to their mother. Every year, on her mother’s birthday, Helen and all her brothers and sisters gratefully accompany their mother to the monastery to offer prayers to Buddha, and make offerings to the Three Jewels on her behalf in repayment for her kindness, and also offer a vegetarian banquet to the Ocean Sky Shifus and lay people. Clearly, because of their pious deeds, Helen’s whole family received the benefits.

Helen reflects back to her years of coming to Ocean Sky: “Since I joined the monastery, I have found peace, hope and strength. It made me realize that nothing in this world is permanent and that I have to be patient and compassionate in all my relationships with other people. I love being in this temple especially during the chanting of sutras, because it makes me relinquish all of my worries, which in my opinion, makes it the best temple I have ever been to.”