The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies

Given by Dr. Yu-shuang Yao for the OCBS on 14th November 2011

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"First let me thank the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies for inviting me to give this lecture while I am here as a Visiting Research Fellow. The subject of my talk is a new religious movement called Tzu Chi. It was founded in 1996 by a middle-class lady called Cheng Yen, who took Ordination (though informally) as a Buddhist nun and is still the movement’s leader. The movement now has about 3.5 million members and is notable for a very low drop-outrate. It is active first and foremost as a medical charity.

Let me begin with a few illustrations. The first one concerns an incident, shown here, on 16 September 1996, which as you can see created a stir in the media. After a summer camp lasting a fortnight, a traditional Buddhist sect had converted more than a hundred female students to take ordination as nuns, often against the will of their parents. This drew so much attention that even the British sociologist Eileen Barker went to investigate. This was the first thing that motivated me to undertake my research, which I began soon after this."