Who was the Buddhist nun who built a global charity from a small apartment in rural Taiwan?

HUALIAN, Taiwan (AP) — The Buddhist teacher who founded the now-global charity and religion with a $283 million operating budget grew up at a time when women could not be ordained as Buddhist nuns.

Cheng Yen, now 87, started as a grassroots effort among housewives in rural Taiwan in 1966 and has now grown to 67 countries, including the United States. The organization has called Tzu Chi has mobilized 10 million volunteers People who have helped build schools and hospitals, run programs for refugees and victims of mass shootings in Ukraine, and help with natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods.

Cheng Yen and about a dozen nuns live in the Jing Si monastery in Hualien, Tzu Chi’s headquarters. The picturesque area – known for its majestic mountains overlooking the Pacific – takes its name from the phrase „Huilan” which refers to the swirling currents of the Hualien River where it meets the Pacific Ocean.

What sets Cheng Yen apart is that she is one of the few female Buddhist leaders A strong patriarchal faith tradition Where Women were banned from ordination – still exists in many countries.

„A female leader is very unusual in our entire research of religious history,” said Yao Yu-shuang, a professor at Fo Guang University in Taiwan who has studied Buddhist movements.

Cheng Yen was born Wong Chin-yun in 1937 into a relatively well-to-do family, but her parents gave her up to a childless uncle’s family to raise. After her adoptive father died of a heart attack at age 21, she ran away from home to become a nun.

Yao said the ordination was an uphill task for her because in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia, monkhood is reserved for men.

That changed when Taiwan came under Japanese rule, and women began to receive education. Japan’s approach allowed nuns to study at Buddhist universities in Japan, and when they returned to Taiwan, they established their own practices and formally opened the path to ordination for women.

Later, a chance meeting with Master Yin Shun in Taipei turned out to be a turning point for Cheng Yen. He agreed to accept her as a disciple and perform formal ordination.

Although the Buddhist master’s base was in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, he spent some time with Cheng Yen, and the two developed a rapport, said Guo-Fang Cheng, professor of anatomy at Su Chi University College of Medicine. In his final days, Yin Shun He was cared for at Tzu Chi’s Hospital.

During his time in Hualien, Cheng Yen saw widespread poverty in the countryside. She wanted to help, but as a nun, she had no source of income of her own. She turned to local housewives and asked if she could spare 50 cents, according to Deng Su-kin, an early volunteer at Tzu Chi Hospital.

„Anyone can save 50 cents,” he said, which has become the organization’s mantra for decades.

Cheng Yen saw how Poverty Access to healthcare is inextricably linked to lack of access, as she helps families with loved ones who are sick and unable to work.

Describing the hospital’s origins in a 2007 meeting with volunteers, Cheng Yen said, „I really discovered that many people are sick because of poverty. They are like twins.”

It took her eight years to build a full-service hospital in Hualien; As doctors and nurses do not want to live in rural areas, it comes with the challenge of recruiting staff. So he established a medical college which served as a feeder school to the hospital. Today, many of the hospital’s doctors and staff come from Su Chi’s universities.

Tzu Chi has led mobilization while focusing on health care and decades of expertise International spread of the coronavirusAnd the Buddhist organization was able to afford it 5 million doses of BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine The Taiwanese government could not.

Stephen Huang, executive director of international operations at Southern California-based Tzu Chi, calls his teacher „an old soul” who experienced hardships at a young age — losing loved ones, the American bombing of Taiwan during World War II. He sees people around him suffering from poverty. He sees her as a bodhisattva – a compassionate human being who puts aside their own enlightenment to help others.

„She’s 87 now, skinny and has heart disease,” he said. “But she still gets up at 4am and walks for two hours. She rarely sleeps and eats. Her strength comes from her spirituality and loving kindness.

Cheng Yen’s followers see her as a smart, down-to-earth, passionate leader who has a great sense of humor. He rarely gives interviews and declined to speak to The Associated Press.

As the aging Cheng Yen continues to diligently attend to his duties, followers of the system are already planning to ensure his legacy lives on. Huang said he has a plan for a core group of disciples to assume leadership in the future — a difficult challenge for a company that has relied heavily on its charismatic leader for guidance for decades.

However, „There is no one to replace Master Cheng Yen,” he said.

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Bharat reported from Los Angeles.

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