It’s a small town on the eastern coast of Taiwan, water on one side, mountains on the other. But tucked away on 2 1/2 acres at the outskirts is a small Buddhist temple, presided over by a tiny female Buddhist master, which is the center of a huge program to bring medical services to Taiwan and relief efforts to the needy all over the world.
Master Cheng Yen, referred to by her disciples as “the Master,” is the driving force behind the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation and the gentle nun who has been called “the Mother Teresa of Taiwan.” In 1993 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1991 she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, given to honor the late Philippine president and considered the “Asian Nobel Peace Prize,” for community leadership.
Cheng Yen is, in effect, the president of a charitable foundation with a global membership of 3.2 million and offices all over the world. She started the foundation in 1966 by getting 30 people to save 50 cents a day toward the effort.
Cheng Yen, 56, was born in Ching Schui, a small town in the Taichung County of Taiwan. According to Ching Yun Bezine, a Chinese-American author who is writing a biography of the Buddhist master, she was the third daughter of her parents, not an enviable position in a family in a society that does not value female babies as highly as male babies. Her father’s brother and his wife, who were childless at the time, asked to adopt Cheng Yen, and her parents agreed.
“They had four children of their own later,” says Bezine, who interviewed Cheng Yen’s adoptive mother for the book, “but they always loved her the most. It was a happy home, and her adoptive father, who owned seven theaters, was rich and generous.”
When her mother became ill with stomach problems, Bezine says, Cheng Yen vowed to become a vegetarian if her mother survived, and when her mother was cured without an operation, she kept her vow. Later, when she was 23, Cheng Yen’s father died, and his death led her to examine her life and beliefs more closely.
She became very interested in Buddhism but immediately found that she was not in agreement with the Buddhist notion of prayer. She did not believe in praying for something you want but rather that one should work and only use prayers to calm oneself and to help concentrate.
This principle has become the central belief of her resident disciples, who grow and prepare their own food, design and sew their uniforms and do virtually all the physical work in the temple and nunnery.
Becoming a disciple of Master Cheng Yen requires a two-year training and trial period, during which the trainees do not shave their heads, only braid their hair. After two years of learning to live in the temple’s austere conditions, which include a bunk with storage area underneath for possessions, communal bathroom facilities, simple vegetarian meals and hours of work and study, the trainee can apply to become a disciple. Cheng Yen decides whether the woman is ready.
There now are 50 women in the two-year trial period. A child as young as 7 can join with her parents’ permission, although the temple never recruits acolytes, Cheng Yen says. And no one can join if she has unfinished business. If a young woman is in high school, she must graduate; a college student must receive her degree before she joins.
Shiz De Shin is a disciple who first heard of the foundation in 1985 when she was 29 and the temple was having a ground-breaking ceremony for its hospital building in Huelien. She owned a small export-import company, and she came to the temple with the intention of donating money. She says she looked at the place, went home to close her business and returned with her backpack. After working and studying for four years, she was permitted to shave her head and become a full-fledged disciple.
“It’s not a special kind of person who can do this,” says De Shin, “it’s a special effort.
“All persons can change their lives, but you have to have three things: faith, courage and strength. My goal is to follow the Master’s ambition and to change my heart into the heart of Buddha, which means the heart of mercy, and to help other people and save people from suffering, no matter what form of life.”
Besides the hospital, the Tzu Chi Foundation has built a nursing school in Huelien and is building a medical school. It distributes food and clothing to the local needy regularly, and its relief efforts stretch worldwide. In 1991, the foundation mounted a massive relief effort in China, where several east-central provinces were devastated by floods.
Cheng Yen and her disciples are also constructing a larger temple, which they hope will stimulate more interest in their foundation and more money for the poor.
Her philosophy, she says, is simple: “With compassion and joyful giving, plant 10,000 lotus flowers in others’ hearts.”
