The Buddhist teacher who founded what is now a global charity and religion with a US$283 million operating budget grew up at a time when women could not be ordained as Buddhist nuns.
What Cheng Yen (證嚴), now 87, started in 1966 in Taiwan’s eastern countryside as a grassroots effort among housewives has now burgeoned across 67 countries, including the US. The organization, named Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, has mobilized 10 million volunteers who have helped build schools and hospitals, run programs for refugees in Ukraine and victims of mass shootings, and respond to natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
Cheng and about a dozen other nuns reside in the Jing Si Abode (靜思精舍) in Hualien County, the headquarters of Tzu Chi. The picturesque county — known for its majestic mountains that overlook the Pacific — gets its name from the “huilan,” a reference to the swirling currents of the Hualien River where it meets the Pacific Ocean.
Photo: CNA
What sets Cheng apart is that she is one of very few female Buddhist leaders in a strongly patriarchal faith tradition where ordination was barred for women — and still is in many countries.
“A female leader in our entire research of religious history is very, very different,” said Yao Yu-shuang (姚玉霜), a professor at Fo Guang University in Yilan County who has studied Buddhist movements.
Cheng, whose given name was Wong Chin-Yun (王錦雲), was born in 1937 to a relatively well-off family, but her parents gave her to her childless uncle’s family to raise. After her adoptive father died from a heart attack when she was 21, she ran away from home to become a nun.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Yao said getting ordained was an uphill task for her because in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia at the time, being a monk was reserved for men.
That changed when Taiwan came under Japanese rule and women started receiving an education. Japan also allowed nuns to study at Buddhist universities in Japan, and when they came back to Taiwan, they established their own practices, formally opening the path to women being ordained.
Later, a chance meeting in Taipei with Yin Shun (印順法師) became a defining moment for Cheng. He accepted her as a disciple and formally ordain her.
Even though the Buddhist master’s base was in Hsinchu, and he spent little time with Cheng, the two developed a connection, said Tseng Guo-fang (曾國藩), a professor of anatomy at Tzu Chi University’s medical college.
During his final days, Yin Shun was cared for at Tzu Chi’s hospital.
During her time in Hualien, Cheng saw extensive poverty in the countryside. She wanted to help, but as a nun, she did not have her own source of income. She turned to local housewives, asking if they could spare coins, said Deng Su-qin, an early volunteer at Tzu Chi’s hospital.
Cheng saw how poverty was inextricably linked to lack of healthcare access as she helped families with loved ones who were sick and unable to work.
“I truly discovered that there were many people who fell ill because of their poverty, and even more people who were poor because they were sick,” said Cheng, recounting the hospital’s origin at a meeting with volunteers in 2007.
“Poverty and illness are like twins,” she said.
It took her eight years to build a full-service hospital in Hualien, then came the challenge of staffing it, because doctors and nurses did not want to live in the rural area. So she established a medical college, which serves as a feeder school for the hospital. Today, many of the hospital’s doctors and staff members come from Tzu Chi’s universities.
That focus on healthcare and decades of expertise led Tzu Chi to mobilize during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Buddhist organization was able to purchase 5 million doses of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine when the government could not.
Stephen Huang (黃思賢), executive director of Tzu Chi’s international operations based in southern California, called his teacher “an old soul” who experienced difficulties at a young age — losing her loved ones, running for cover as US military aircraft bombed Taiwan, then a Japanese colony, during World War II and seeing people around her struggle with poverty. He sees her as a bodhisattva — compassionate beings who put off their own enlightenment to help others.
“She is now 87, skinny and has a heart condition,” he said. “But she still wakes up at 4 in the morning and walks for two hours. She barely sleeps and eats. Her strength comes from her spirituality and loving compassion.”
Cheng’s followers view her as a wise, down-to-earth, empathetic leader with a sense of humor who likes to keep a low profile. She rarely gives interviews and declined to speak with The Associated Press as well.
While an aging Cheng continues to attend to her duties diligently, the organization’s followers are already planning to ensure her legacy endures. Huang said there is a plan for a core group of disciples to take the helm in the future — a daunting challenge for an organization that has for decades relied entirely on its charismatic leader for guidance.
“There is no one person ... who can replace Master Cheng Yen,” Huang said.
Unlike most countries, Taiwan cannot use its country’s own name to compete in the Olympic Games or other major international sports events. Instead, it participates under the name “Chinese Taipei,” a name that causes confusion and sparks curiosity among many people, including an American director who explored the topic in his new documentary. Garret Clarke, the director of the 20-minute documentary What’s in a Name? A Chinese Taipei Story, said in an recent media interview said that he was motivated to make the documentary because he finds the name “Chinese Taipei” to be “weird.” The dispute that eventually created the name dates back
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to