Taiwan President Culture Awards
Honor Those Who Demonstrate Wisdom and Compassion
(Translated by Lei Sheu, Pittsburgh,
PA)
The Sun Award was presented to Dharma Master
Cheng Yen for her leadership of the Tzu Chi Foundation in
community service and disaster relief. Through the foundation,
the Master has spread Great Love to people all over the world.
Dedicated to individuals who have made significant
contributions to community service, the first Sun Award of
the President's Culture Award in Taiwan was presented to Dharma
Master Cheng Yen, chairperson of the Tzu Chi Foundation. Under
her leadership, the foundation has helped people in Taiwan
and around the world. Her compassionate love is like the rising
sun, warming the people of the world. Certainly, she is most
deserving of this honor.
Master Cheng Yen was born in Chingshui,
Taichung county, Taiwan, in 1937. She grew up in a well-to-do
family. Her father managed several theaters in Taichung, Fengyuan,
Chingshui, and Tangtze. At age of fifteen, she learned that
her mother suffered from an acute stomach ulcer. She desperately
prayed to heaven for her mother's recovery, vowing to exchange
twelve years of her life for her mother's and to become a
vegetarian. To everyone's surprise, her mother miraculously
recovered. The Master continued her vegetarian diet and a
life of spirituality.
Five years later, the Master's father passed
away. At a friend's recommendation, she went to Tzu Yun Temple
to search for enlightenment from the monks. Later, she became
a disciple of Venerable Master Yin Shun and was given the
dharma name Cheng Yen.
In 1966, Master Cheng Yen and her disciples
learned about the urgent need for medical facilities in the
undeveloped eastern area of Taiwan. With compassion like that
of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva with a thousand eyes to
see the suffering of the world and a thousand hands to reach
out and help, she decided to build a medical facility. Along
with four disciples and thirty lay followers, she established
the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Merit Association.
To raise money, they started by making six baby shoes per
day for a total of NT$24 [then US$0.60]; they also saved fifty
cents every day from their grocery money. This was the beginning
of the missions of charity and disaster relief.
In 1973, Master Cheng Yen and her supporters
launched a free medical clinic for the poor and founded the
Buddhist Tzu Chi Compassion Relief Foundation. Six years later,
she opened the Tzu Chi General Hospital. She received the
Philippine Magsaysay Award (the "Asian Nobel Prize")
in 1991. During the great earthquake of September 21, 1999,
in Taiwan and flooding in eastern China last year, Master
Cheng Yen showed her compassionate Great Love and promptly
led the foundation in disaster relief.
