ABOUT
ABOUT THE WEBSITE
For over fifty years, Dharma Master Cheng Yen has led Tzu Chi’s volunteers in putting the Buddha’s teachings into practice, expanding from a humble group of thirty housewives who saved US$0.02 a day to fund its charity work, to an international humanitarian NGO with footprints in over ninety countries.
This website outlines the core principles introduced via her teachings over time and how they paralleled key activities and events in the history of Tzu Chi’s development.
The Jing Si Dharma Lineage is a path of diligent practice. The Tzu Chi School is a way of bodhisattvas in the world.
The Jing Si Dharma Lineage originates from the inner cultivation of the spiritual practitioners at the Jing Si Abode, the spiritual home of Tzu Chi volunteers, and follows the teachings of Buddhist sutras, especially from the Lotus Sutra and the Sutra of Infinite Meanings. The Tzu Chi School of Buddhism establishes the external practices of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity based on the teachings from the Jing Si Dharma Lineage. The Jing Si Dharma Lineage and Tzu Chi School of Buddhism represent two complementary aspects of spiritual cultivation, internal cultivation and external practice, both of which must be fulfilled by those on the path of spiritual awakening.
The site content is presented as three stages in the cycle of spiritual cultivation: faith, vows, and practice. With faith, we will have the courage to start and continue our journey; by making vows, we strengthen our determination; and through our practice, we validate the direction of our path, thus strengthening our faith.
