Dharma Master Cheng Yen on Time 100 Most Influential People Poll

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http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2058044_2060338_2059983,00.html
Please vote, if it so moves you. =)


Forbes article:

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 videoconference 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.

Bloomberg Businessweek article:

Cheng has organized Tzu Chi so that all donations can be channeled directly to relief efforts. Overhead costs and salaries for its 570-member staff are met by sales of Cheng's inspirational books and tapes and endowments from wealthy members. In addition to its relief work abroad--including in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere in Asia--Tzu Chi runs a number of civic projects in Taiwan, ranging from providing monthly welfare checks to 4,000 needy families to pushing an environmental agenda that it estimates has recycled enough paper to save 3.5 million trees. All volunteers are banned from lying, smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, fornicating, gambling, and participating in politics.

For all its good works at home, Tzu Chi has been criticized in the local media for its relief efforts in China. Cheng has worked on the mainland for the past nine years, with activities in 19 of its 35 provinces. Cheng shrugs off concern about whether a Taiwan organization should be helping the mainland while its politicians threaten the island with war. ''We don't care about politics,'' says Cheng. ''There is no reason to love some people less than others, and mainland Chinese are people, too. Buddhism teaches us to take care of people, to take care of society.'' She's doing that--and then some.