HUALIEN, Taiwan. When a magnitude 7.4 Earthquake devastated Taiwan In April, it took the region’s largest charity about 30 minutes to set up an emergency response centre.
Tzu Chi, an international Buddhist organization led by a Venerable Cheng Yen, 87-year-old nun, and his followers, took action. They prepared hot meals and gathered essential items for survivors and rescuers, from drinking water and energy drinks to blankets, beds and tents.
The nuns reside at Jing Si Abode in Hualien, the epicenter of the earthquake on the island’s east coast. It is also the spiritual home of the global organization, which is supported by millions of members in 67 countries, including the United States.
In 1966, Cheng Yen, affected by the lack of access to basic healthcare in this beautiful but economically underdeveloped region, founded Tzu Chi, inviting local housewives to save 50 Taiwan cents each month.
Today, the charitable foundation organizes relief operations around the world. In Taiwan it runs hospitals, a medical school and its own cable television channel. During the COVID-19 pandemicin the middle of a Fight at the national level to vaccinate people. On the island of 23 million people, the foundation used its members’ influence in health care and other business sectors to purchase 5 million vaccines.
Within Taiwan, Tzu Chi is known for his earthquake relief efforts. Globally, he has built a network of influencers whose work ranges from disaster relief and building schools, places of worship, homes and hospitals, to resettling refugees and feeding the hungry. The organization has had a significant presence in the United States since 1989 with programs in 80 locations run by paid staff and about half a million volunteers.
They led relief operations after September 11, 2001, and during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. More recently, they have been available to support survivors and families of a mass shooting in 2022 in the predominantly Asian city of Monterey Park in Southern California. They donated $1.5 million to relief efforts after the 2023 Maui fires in Hawaii that claimed more than 100 lives.
Stephen Huang, executive director of Global Tzu Chi Volunteers based in Southern California, became a disciple of Cheng Yen 35 years ago, during a time of personal grief, days after the sudden passing of his older brother. Huang understands why those unfamiliar with Tzu Chi might wonder how a small, soft-spoken nun who functions in a patriarchal society and rarely leaves her humble abode in Hualien could have built this global organization.
“She is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things,” he said. “The heart behind all the work she has done over the past 60 years can be described in one word: compassion.”
The organization exists thanks to its fundraising. Much of its work depends on its commissioners, members who have received extensive training and who raise funds monthly. There is no minimum amount required, but members must raise money from at least 40 people while also making donations themselves.
“The more the better, there is no lower or upper limit,” said Cheng Mei-yue, a school teacher and Tzu-Chi commissioner in Taipei.
This model helps fund Tzu Chi’s work in Taiwan and abroad. Its most recent annual report for 2022 shows that Tzu Chi raised 5.6 billion New Taiwan dollars ($175 million) through fundraising efforts, which accounted for 61% of its budget.
Still, the organization has not been immune to scrutiny or scandal. Public criticism of the lack of transparency prompted leaders to Publish Tzu Chi’s annual reports and financials online. The organization has also attracted attention for recruiting wealthy commissioners and for the vast amount of resources at its disposal to promote its causes.
In 2005, the organization’s attempt to rezone and develop land designated for environmental conservation in Taipei’s picturesque Neihu district was met with public outrage. Tzu Chi relented in 2015 after a decade-long administrative battle with local residents and environmentalists who led the fight to preserve the land.
Tzu-Chi CEO Po-wen Yen, a former director of United Microelectronics Corporation, a major semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan, is well aware of the criticism about the organization’s wealth. He came on board as CEO right after the Neihu scandal and promised to be more open with the public.
“You can say that all the resources we put together are to help as much as possible when a disaster strikes,” he said, adding that his budget also funds other global chapters.
Although the nonprofit is supported by wealthy benefactors, he said, most members are still middle class.
The organization walks a fine line between an aid organization and a Buddhist sect that has forged its own religious identity under Cheng Yen’s leadership.
Julia Huang, a professor of anthropology at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, traced the evolution of Tzu Chi from a grassroots initiative to a global nonprofit in her book “Charisma and Compassion.” She says Cheng Yen’s teachings emphasize walking the path of the Bodhisattva, a compassionate person who postpones his own enlightenment to save suffering beings.
Tzu Chi’s humanitarian aid efforts are inseparable from faith, said Joe Hwang, the organization’s head of volunteer affairs, although it marks a departure from traditional Buddhism, which advocates a retreat from the world.
Religion, he said, is a way to guide people toward good and equip them to help others. “That’s what I think engaged Buddhism is, that we are engaged with this world.”
Tzu Chi is also unique in the way it “sanctifies secular fields,” Julia Huang said. Buddhist symbols can be found in his hospitals. Hualien Hospital has a giant mosaic of Buddha caring for a sick monk.
“In Tzu Chi, the hospital itself is an embodiment of the Buddhist canon,” he said.
Cheng Yen also supports donating bodies to medicine, teaching his devotees that human beings do not own their bodies after they die. The nun is inspired by stories, including one in which Buddha is said to have given her body to a hungry tigress who could not feed her cubs.
And yet, Tzu Chi has volunteers from all major religions. The superintendent of his hospital in Hualien is a devout Christian. The organization has funded the construction of churches in Haiti, Ecuador and Mexico, and mosques in Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims of any country in the world.
“Even though we come from Buddhism, that doesn’t limit who we help,” said CEO Yen.
Tzu Chi is currently building schools and homes in Mozambique; helping with the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Türkiye; build the largest university in Indonesia; training Ukrainian refugees in Poland to do relief work; and the construction of houses in Bodhgaya, India, the city where Buddha achieved enlightenment.
Stephen Huang says the nun even spent thousands of dollars to repair an ancient Quran. He said the largest number of Tzu Chi projects are in China, with an emphasis on promoting vegetarianism and building schools, housing and water wells in arid regions.
In 2010, Tzu Chi became the first foreign religious nonprofit organization to gain permission to establish an office in China, where it identifies as a charity rather than a religious group. Julia Huang said members in China are “walking on eggshells” to maintain a presence in that country, where the government requires each religion to be loyal to the Communist Party and its policies. To that end, Tzu Chi has had to rethink how they refer to sacred rituals like tea ceremonies and remain apolitical, he said.
While the organization has struggled to make a dent in countries where political stability is an issue (such as Afghanistan, Nepal, and parts of South America), it has found success in other countries such as Indonesia and Mozambique.
Franky Widjaja heads the Indonesian chapter with 2.3 million members, of which 85% are Indonesian and Muslim. He has had a close relationship as a teacher and devotee with Cheng Yen since 1998, when his father introduced him to the nun. Since then he has been involved in disaster relief efforts and has overseen the construction of schools and hospitals in and around Jakarta. Widjaja says Cheng Yen compares the organization’s structure to the thousand arms of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion.
“She says if 500 of you come out to help, that’s 1,000 hands,” he said. “When you believe in that purpose and lead by example, you will see the impact for yourself.”
In Mozambique, Dino Foi and his wife Denise Tsai are leading a $70 million project to build 3,000 homes and 23 schools in the region that was devastated by Cyclone Idai in 2019. Tsai, who is Taiwanese, met and married Foi when he was a student in Taipei. The couple runs the Tzu Chi chapter in Mozambique, where she runs a wide range of programs including hot meals, senior care, teen pregnancy prevention, child nutrition, vocational training and English classes.
“We started small and are still small, but we believe the future will be bright,” Tsai said.
At the heart of Tzu Chi’s work is the belief in karma and reincarnation. Buddhists believe that every intentional action, good or bad, generates karma and that a person’s rebirth depends on his or her thoughts and actions in previous lives.
Stephen Huang says he not only found his purpose in Tzu Chi’s mission to help people, but he also witnessed the positive effects of good karma.
When the earthquake hit Hualien in April, members from as far away as Mexico City said they wanted to raise money to help those affected around the world. Displaced Syrian refugees, who are rebuilding their lives and have no money or resources of their own, also offered assistance.
“We are all connected by compassion,” Huang said. “That’s the power of love.”
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Bharath reported from Los Angeles.
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