Nun on FORBES
Dear friends,
This is something I wanted to share with all of you. I find this very inspirational.
I came across this featured article about Master Cheng Yen, the founder of Tzu Chi Foundation. The work that Tzu Chi Foundation does worldwide is so incredible and impactful that they have been featured on this leading news and information source, FORBES.
I have always been inspired by Master Cheng Yen’s organization… how with just as little as 800 staff, they are able to run an international rescue and relief projects. Tzu Chi has branches in 47 countries, 2 million volunteers and approximately 10 million donors… and all of this started from her motivation to help others. How wonderful that she is now able to reach so many.
Master Cheng Yen has gained much international support and has appeared on international news many times previously all of which I have blogged a few.
Do read the article and be inspired at how the Tzu Chi Foundation is able to function and bring Buddhism to so many people across the world. May their efforts continuously grow and may Master Cheng Yen live long and in good health.
Tsem Rinpoche
Sister of Charity
Shu-Ching Jean Chen, 04.02.10, 12:40 PM EDT
Forbes Asia Magazine dated April 12, 2010
Buddhist nun has built the biggest charity in the Chinese world.
Dharma Master Cheng Yen may be a 72-year-old Buddhist nun adhering to a harsh daily regimen in a convent with 160 other nuns, but that doesn’t mean she’s missing out on the latest technology. Wherever she goes in her small temple abode in eastern Taiwan or in the sprawling office complex she oversees nearby, television screens are close by, including two where morning service is held. She presides over a daily video conference and, from the computer on her desk, holds emergency meetings via webcam and TV. In the early 1990s she was quick to get an e-mail address and start surfing the Web.
Cheng Yen is the founder and chief executive of a fast-growing charity, Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, the largest nongovernmental organization in the Chinese world. Thanks to being so wired, she heard about the Haiti earthquake in January right after it hit. She immediately began coordinating a global fund-raising drive and dispatching relief.
Often compared with Mother Teresa, Cheng Yen and five others started Tzu Chi in 1966 when they began sewing baby shoes to raise money for the poor. Begun in a wooden hut not far from its headquarters today, Tzu Chi now enlists entrepreneurs and other lay people as volunteers and organizes itself like a corporation. The number of donors hit 1 million in 1989, the same year that Cheng Yen published her first collection of philosophical musings, Jing Si Aphorisms. But its grassroots activity really caught the public’s attention after the foreign press started criticizing Taiwan as an island of greed during a stock market bubble in 1990. The book is now available in 11 languages and has sold 3.5 million copies, and Tzu Chi’s donors number 10 million.
Cheng Yen never travels outside of Taiwan because she suffers from heart disease. But this doesn’t prevent her from taking Tzu Chi to faraway places; it has branches in 47 other countries, the largest number being in the U.S., where it has 99 field offices. Some 30% of its donors live outside of Taiwan, with the largest group–330,000–in Malaysia. Last year it raised $313 million in Taiwan and at least $30 million overseas; there’s no overall total because Tzu Chi doesn’t tally what all the branches collect. The branches are self-sustaining and seek funding from the headquarters only when necessary.
The organization is a model of efficiency: Its staff numbers just 800, bolstered by its network of 2 million volunteers, up from 30,000 only 17 years ago. By comparison, the Red Cross has fewer than 1 million volunteers, but it pays 34,000 employees. Bangladesh’s BRAC, the world’s largest NGO by number of staff, employs more than 120,000.
Since its first overseas mission in 1991 after a flood in Bangladesh, Tzu Chi’s medical and relief teams have been active in 70 countries, their signature blue shirts and white trousers visible in such far-flung places as Kosovo, Rwanda, Cambodia and North Korea. In North Korea, for many years after 1998, Tzu Chi was the only NGO allowed to hand-deliver goods to recipients, not merely drop off the supplies at harbors as other international NGOs had to do.
In 2003 Tzu Chi became Taiwan’s first NGO included under the UN’s umbrella, giving it protection in hot spots such as Afghanistan, and in 2008 it was the first offshore NGO allowed to register in China. In January Beijing ruled that its name, Tzu Chi (meaning “compassionate relief”), was worthy of copyright protection against a local copycat. “The best way to look at Tzu Chi from a management point of view is how its efficiency and brand name value continue to pull in volunteers and outside donations,” says Stan Shih, a cofounder of Acer. “Cheng Yen is no doubt one of the world’s best CEOs.”
Shih met Cheng Yen in the 1990s through another Acer cofounder, Ken Tai, a Tzu Chi volunteer, and went on to attend a Tzu Chi summer camp held for businesspeople contributing $30,000 or more. Shih is working with Tzu Chi and other organizations to promote computer literacy as part of a pan-Asia effort.
Chief executives are famous for their long hours, but Cheng Yen–who declined to talk to FORBES ASIA for this story–takes this to an extreme. Her office hours begin at 3:45 a.m. and end past 10 p.m. Her schedule is filled months ahead with visits from donors, volunteers, people asking for help and politicians, interrupted only by meals that last no longer than 15 minutes. Frugal to the point of hardship, she is known for using no more than one basin of water a day. A couple of times a year she travels around the island to visit volunteers and deliver speeches. A forceful speaker, she prods housewives to save part of their grocery money to help the poor with medical expenses, and she converts big-name business leaders into devout disciples.
An early disciple was Wei Yin-Chun, one of the four founding brothers of Tingyi Holdings. In 1988, four years before the brothers moved to China to found what later would become the largest instant-noodle maker there, Wei, then 31, was deeply touched by stories in a Tzu Chi publication and contacted its local office to make a donation. In 1995 he started working with Tzu Chi in China, doling out relief and building schools in remote villages. After completing a two-year apprenticeship, Wei became a disciple and now heads the food unit of Tzu Chi’s international aid arm. When disaster strikes, he puts aside work at the family business to focus on relief efforts, as he did in January for Haiti while on business in China. Now back in Taiwan at the helm of a family subsidiary, Wei Chuan Food, Wei set up a unit in 2008 inside the company to offer courses for the group’s 5,000 employees.
Relentless and inspiring as Cheng Yen is, it’s her ability to deliver results while converting the philosophical thought of Buddhism into plain language and applying it to daily life that win her wide admiration. “She talks in a way that makes things sound so simple that you can understand,” says Franky Widjaja, son of Eka Tjipta Widjaja, founder of Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group. “There’s nothing mystical about what she says.”
The father, a Christian, and his son visited Cheng Yen for the first time just days before riots broke out in Indonesia in 1998 in the aftermath of the financial crisis. After returning, the Widjajas jumped into action, distributing food, toothpaste, instant noodles and other daily necessities to victims and the army during the riots. They also worked with Tzu Chi to clean up Jakarta’s notoriously polluted Angke River after disastrous flooding in 2002 and to raise $30 million to resettle victims of the 2004 tsunami. With the help of volunteers such as the Widjajas, Tzu Chi arrived in Banda Aceh, capital of the area devastated by the tsunami, one day ahead of Indonesia’s president, several ministers and the army.
Such grassroots mobilization is meshed with a consensus-driven decision-making structure at headquarters. Cheng Yen intervenes in contentious issues, such as in the decision to help China resettle millions of victims of the 1991 mass flooding in eastern China, even though politics stood in the way on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. It was Taiwan’s first relief effort in China–the Chinese government was suspicious of Tzu Chi’s motives, and some Taiwanese weren’t happy that Tzu Chi was helping mainlanders instead of focusing on domestic relief. “She can combine her charisma with the management of a modern organization,” says C. Julia Huang, an anthropology professor at National Tsing Hua University and author of a new book on Tzu Chi. “That makes Tzu Chi an interesting case study of a nonprofit organization, different from most other Buddhist groups.” Many Buddhist groups have trouble growing beyond their roots as a religious organization, she says.
Mixing her idealism with perseverance, Cheng Yen often commits herself to a project before raising the money. Despite worries about funding, she overruled skeptics and agreed to the requests of every school headmaster who knocked at Tzu Chi’s door asking for money to rebuild after an earthquake flattened a slice of central Taiwan in 1999. Tzu Chi raised $300 million to build 51 schools, all shock-resistant structures. After eight years of trying, she built her first hospital in 1986 by collecting small donations and bypassing big donors. “Do not leave trouble to our offspring,” she told her disciples when explaining why she declined an offer from a Japanese donor to underwrite the whole hospital project. She worried that relying on a single donor would jeopardize Tzu Chi’s independence if the donor demanded a bigger say in its operation.
After six more hospitals came the establishment of a full-fledged university and a medical college, all in Taiwan, and a media group that includes a 24-hour global satellite TV station carrying in-house productions of news, dramas, talk shows and documentaries, as well as Cheng Yen’s speeches and notices of charity activities posted by its global offices from as far as Lesotho. The media group draws a quarter of its annual budget from a metal, plastic and paper recycling business in Taiwan staffed by 60,000 volunteers.
Today Tzu Chi also runs Asia’s largest bone-marrow registry, and its reserve of emergency medical supplies, enough to treat 30,000 patients for a month, rivals that of leading medical missions. “Tzu Chi’s biggest asset is the master, the second asset is the volunteers, the third is the capital and experience of its entrepreneurs,” says Walter Huang, chairman of Texma International, a garmentmaker for U.S. brands such as J.C. Penney, gap and Tommy Hilfiger. Huang is among the five founding donors and managers of a nonprofit textile business under Tzu Chi using fabric made from recycled plastic bottles to sew blankets for refugees around the world.
No apparent successor has emerged from Tzu Chi’s four deputies, all professional managers, or from the nuns. “We and the master always focus on now,” says Gary K.C. Ho, a real estate brokerage entrepreneur who heads the Canada branch. “Master hopes to finish everything while she is still alive, so everything will be in place when we have a successor, who might be less charismatic but would feel less pressured.” But running against a clock that she has meticulously divided into 86,400 seconds a day, Cheng Yen has always said there’s no retirement for her.
Cheng Yen’s Ten Commandments
Words of wisdom for Tzu Chi disciples:
- Do not kill
- Do not steal
- Do not fornicate
- Do not lie
- Do not drink alcohol
- Do not smoke, use drugs or chew betel nuts
- Do not gamble or speculate
- Respect your parents and be moderate in speech and attitude
- Follow the traffic regulations
- Do not participate in politics or demonstrations
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Thank you Rinpoche for sharing Master Cheng Yen story. It is indeed very inspiring. With the very little she has, her only intention is to help others no matter how much obstacles she will face. A very compassion, kind and generous person.
Didn’t know Malaysia Tzu Chi is the biggest overseas branch. They are really fast and always first when there is any catastrophe event. Not only that they even have teams of volunteers that visit hospitals and speak to the patients and patient’s family members to console them. Such thoughtful act.
It is her value that we must learn. And being a volunteer myself I always admire the other volunteers on how they utilise their time and bring the best to the organisation.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for sharing this article on Master Cheng Yen. She is very amazing to have created and founded such an enormous yet efficient buddhist organization. Tzu Chi had built schools, hospitals, colleges and being actively involves in forefront of disaster aids. Tzu Chi’s accomplishment is truly amazing for non governmental organization.
To be able to lead such an enormous organization, Master Cheng Yen had to be an extraordinary being. At such age, she is still actively involved in the organization despite of all the helpers she had. She had totally devoted her life to dharma and serving others. This shows that power of compassion behind Master Cheng Yen’s accomplishment.
Master Cheng Yen is indeed an inspiration for us. Look at how far Tzu Chi has go, they are indeed a very good reference for us to study so that every charity organization can achieve what they have achieved. Their methods of sustaining the organization is very inspiring and a very good reference. Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this.
Master Cheng Yan is truly inspirational; she is 1000-Arm Kuan Yin.
Hi,
I missed yesterday’s blog chat. I was attending open house celebration.
Yes, I am really inspired by Master Cheng Yen. It is unexpected that I met her when I was visiting. She said,” you need not have to worry how much money you give. It is all from your heart. Even 10 sen a day you keep each day,after a year too can help people”.
She gave us one tin per person to collect the money that we like to donate for charity.
This is something very inspiring, Tzu Chi grows so rapidly and globally that it has all the branches in 47 countries. This is something worth rejoicing! With Master Cheng Yen’s pure motivation, She will be able to help thousands and even millions of people around the world. Of course she can’t do all these alone, but if everyone puts in effort, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. Most importantly, I think the key is that her followers have faith in Her, they trust and make things work and this is something very remarkable. I have visited one of the branches in Penang, we even bought their homemade noodles, they are delicious! Hehe
Thank You for sharing Rinpoche.
Tzu Chi have been able to attract some of the brightest medical people into its fold, through its activities and I have heard before doctors apologising to their patients if they are not able to cure them
How humble of doctors if they can be like that. As sometimes we come across medical practitioners who are arrogant and is just commercially motivated. And Master cheng yen can influence doctors to be more caring how amazing and wonderful is this Buddhist icon.
Tzu Chi is very inspiring and they have grown very big. So many people have benefitted by their hands. I truly rejoice for their charity. I can’t wait for Kechara to grow to that stage. I know it will. Master Cheng Yen has always done so much for others, I wish for her long life and good rebirths.
I think Master Cheng Yen is a very generous and benevolent person. She helps the world tireless despite her age and physical condition. I salute her efforts and may God bless her!
Dear Rinpoche,
WOW….. I just cannot express in words how touched and awed at all the amazing deeds that Tzu Chi and Cheng Yen have done to the the the World.
From rebuilding schools to opening hospitals it makes my head burst to think that though Chen Yen is already 72 years old she never fails to keep up with the Technology world.
While most of us complain how hard it is to operate a computer… look at a simply selfless 72 year old Nun operate a computer to send e mails and do other work that is to benefit people!!!!
What is really our excuse???
Even though Cheng Yen has Heart Disease and does not travel out f Taiwan even that those not stop her from helping millions of people in need all around the world.
Cheng Yen is really a living Mother Teresa that is always ready to help people.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this truly great article!
Love
Jutika
As for her life’s experiences, many past incidents could have perhaps shaped her vision to compel her to feel for a higher calling. Incidebtally, it was said that when her father had died of a heart attack, she felt that she had erred in caring for him. Later at the hospital, she witnessed a peniless aborigine woman been denied of medical attention while bleeding on the floor. Another time,it was said that a Catholic missionary had said to her, “You buddhists are a passive group and ignore the needs of others”. From theron, Master Cheng Yen was determined to serve all humanity – through which she envisioned and experienced a world of kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity! According to record, initially with the support of only thirty housewives who set aside NT cents fifty of their grocery money each day, Master Cheng Yen embarked on her mission of helping the poor and educating the more prosperous, through the formation Tzu Chi Merits Society in estabishing a charity fund to provide relief and assistance for the poor. Today Master Cheng Yen’s influence in the World is revealed through the acclaimed International work of Tzu Chi Foundation, with its motto known as “Instructing the Rich and saving the poor”. As for Cheng Yen, she is often called “The mother Teresa of ASIA”. Om mani Padme Hum! Many thanks for the sharing Rinpoche.
This is really good. How they got the news to spread and to let the world know about this organisation is very good. Then people will be aware that such an organisation exists and maybe that organisation would get more sponsors or even more helpers. Even by Rinpoche sharing this on his blog is helping this organisation. I am happy for this.
A nun who started her charity act with just a few house wives can do so much and saving lives all over the world today. Master Cheng Yen is definitely not an original person. She must be the emanation of KuanYin, the Bodhisattva. She always tell her students that spreading Dharma and saving lives cannot be delayed and claimed that because we do not have enough time. She constantly chasing for Dharma work to be done fast. She uses the latest technology to communicate, to save lives, to build Tzu Chi Centers and etc. I am truly inspired by Master Cheng Yen because she built Tzu Chi single handedly. Even in her age now she still involved herself into all important decisions making.
The young Kechara is heading this direction too, lead and inspired by Tsem Rinpoche. Kechara has so little staffs and volunteers yet running all 13 departments at the same time building Kechara Forest Retreat now. I am so blessed to be part of team. Kechara is going global now because of Rinpoche’s teachings touching many people’s hearts everyday.
People from every conner of the world will come to Kechara Forest Retreat to get blessings from Tsem Rinpoche. We will be building Kechara communities all over the world starts from Kechara Forest Retreat in Malaysia.
Wow this is incredible! Such an inspiring person Master Cheng Yen is, its amazing how she has built Tzu Chi Foundation the organization it is today. With relentless compassion and commitment towards all human beings she doesn’t hesitate to help those in need not only in Taiwan but throughout the whole world. Its incredible with the amount of employees, volunteers and donors that are involved in the Tzu Chi Foundation. With quick and clever thinking of Master Cheng Yen, no wonder the Foundation is where it is today. Its truly admirable and wonderful despite her health, age and condition that she is in she never stops helping others with compassion.
truly inspiring lady.
Shelly tai on 11 July 2013 at 434pm
Rejoice for Tzu Chi foundation that they do so much to reach the world. We kecharian should work hard to help Rinpoche to achieve his goal as like Rinpoche always said be beneficial for others. Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this blog post with us.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this inspiring story of Master Cheng Yen and Tzu Chi.
Nowadays, most people are spoilt living in their own world, satisfying own needs and that’s all. One step out of the own comfort zone brings fears, but those will not bring you ultimate happiness and satisfaction. A lot of people find their life empty, living just for themselves.
It’s really touching to see Master Cheng Yen’s efforts inspire more and more people step out to live for others. It’s not an easy journey. I believe her journey to relieve others from suffering encountered difficulties and uncertainties, but with determination to Buddhahood, she made it, and she made a lot of people make it.
The world will become a better place when we practice selflessness. May all the Boddhisattvas that living among us live forever long. Om Mani Padme Hum…
I’ve always thought she was Mother Teresa of the East. She is really one extraordinary being who has made Buddhism so active and alive by being one of the leading charitable organisation that is ever ready to help those in need, and what a success she has created. Truly a person who actually puts the Dharma in to practice. She does what we call compassion in action.
It is funny and quite enlightening to read that she too like our Rinpoche quickly adapted to technology and uses it as a tool to reach out and benefit others even more. I guess now those who want too say they are too old to learn how to use the internet… well they should take a read here. Master Chen Yen even does conference meetings and teachings via the net and at age 72! Wow!
Another similarity I find with our Rinpoche is that she is also seem to be in a rush to get things done as the term used “running against the clock” and just like Rinpoche she wishes to make sure everything is done perfectly before the next successor. Her drive and devotion in benefiting others is somewhat similar to Rinpoche’s… and how at 72 she think about “no retirement”. She sounds like a Boddhisattva Kuan Yin! Amazing real life heroes we can take as true human and spiritual role models!
I came to know Tzu Chi through DA AI TV, and I love it because it always has the messages on Guru devotion, wisdom and also compassion. Master Cheng Yen’s disciples always followed her instructions without any doubt and do it immediately without a second delay. That is what Guru devotion really is!
Dharma Master Cheng Yen is truly inspiring,she and five others started Tzu Chi in 1966 when they began sewing baby shoes to raise fund for the poor and now Tzu Chi has branches in 47 countries.A buddhist nun has built the Biggest Charity in the Chinese World.They managed to reach out and benefiting so many people all over the world and it is growing fast. Some of the Tzu Chi volunteers have told me that their Master is liked thousand arms and thousand eyes Kuan Yin, be able to reach out to all the needy throughout the world which i think is true because Msater Cheng Yen is selfless and only think of helping others!
It is truly inspiring to know that a Buddhist NGO can be so successful in reaching out to so many people around the world. We need more organisations like Tzu Chi that inspires others to be altruistic and truly relief sufferings around the world without agendas such as converting them to Buddhism. They really practise compassion.
Religion is a method to one’s salvation and is a personal choice. It should not be a prerequisite when helping those in need.
Thank you Master Cheng Yen for your selflessness.
Rejoice to Master Cheng Yen and all dedicated disciples that help to succeed and maintain this organisation…
We must always improve and repair our Guru samaya hence towards to globalize… We can make it happen!!!
wow, Master Cheng Yen is really amazing. A nun who owns nothing merely with the motivation to help others are able to set up and run a organisation this HUGE! I see a lot of similarities between Rinpoche and Master Cheng Yen. Master Cheng Yen uses modern way to promote Buddhism, she does not like to travel and she seems to be a very private person but yet she is able to reach out to many! She is not afraid to take on responsibility, when she has a goal, she goes all the way for it. She basically does not set a limit to her ability to help others. How inspiring.
To be successful, one has to be adaptable, react fast and have no fear to uncertainty. With the right motivation, all the supports needed will come. I have watched an interview with her, she said she is so persistent because she has made the promise to her guru and she has complete faith in her guru.
Tzu Chi is a very inspirational organisation and started from humble beginnings. Master Cheng Yen’s humility and compassion in helping people in need has garnered a huge following and managed to gather people to contribute to society. This is truly admirable. The fact that the organisation spread all over the world is because of her and people believed in her vision.
What is more admirable is that she takes on technology to be in tune with the modern and ever changing society. Her age does not stop her from learning new things to make her organisation grow further. Total respect to Master Cheng Yen.
May Tzu Chi continue to grow and Master Cheng Yen live long!
It is really inspiring that Tzu Chi Foundation has grown so far and wide! So many ppl got helps and hopes from the organisation! Rejoice for them. Really wish Kechara will be like them in near future. We must work harder to reach out.