1000430 Cheng Yen

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Cheng Yen

By TIME Staff Monday, Apr. 04, 2011

Age: 73
Occupation: Buddhist nun and philanthropist
Previous TIME 100 appearances: 0

Cheng Yen is known as the Chinese world's Mother Teresa. She runs the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, one of Asia's largest charities. Earthquakes, floods, typhoons, famine, tsunamis, you name it — Tzu Chi people are there dispensing food, blankets and warm clothing (as they have done recently in Japan), and also committing long-term by rebuilding villages, establishing clinics and schools and providing scholarships to needy students. The foundation is based in Hualien on Taiwan's east coast, but has chapters worldwide. Cheng Yen's reputation is such that the group is allowed everywhere, even into hermetic North Korea and conflict zones like Afghanistan. Tzu Chi is well funded by millions of donors, including a few tycoons who want her blessing, but there has never been any hint of impropriety.

Max-Cheng Yen is one of the most kindhearted people in Taiwan. Because of her father died suddenly when she was about twenty years old, she started to contact with Buddhism. After that, she went to Hualien to study Buddhism, and finally became a Buddhist nun. She founded Buddhism Tzu Chi Foundation, and now the foundation is already forty-five years old. When the foundation was founded, not many people know it, so they can only do things like donating money to help some people. However, after the foundation spread to other places of Taiwan, many more people become members of Tzu Chi, most of them had a bad life on the past and wanted to join Tzu Chi for the rest of their lives. In the past few years, the foundation started to help other countries when they met some disasters, they gave some supplies to the countries, and also donated money to them. So the Tzu Chi Foundation’s founder, Cheng Yen, is really a great Buddhist!