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SCP0010.1177/0037768615587809Social CompassLee & Han:The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change

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Social Compass
2015, Vol. 62(3) 311­–325
Recycling Bodhisattva: The © The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0037768615587809
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Chengpang LEE
University of Chicago, USA

Ling HAN
Stanford University, USA

Abstract
This article traces the emergence of climate change discourse and its related practices
in one of the largest and globally most influential Taiwanese Buddhist organizations –
Tzu-Chi (Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Association). The authors analyse more
than 500 volumes of Tzu-Chi’s periodicals and describe its recycling practice from the
social organizational perspective. Our findings suggest that climate change discourse
has emerged in recent years as a response to increasing natural disasters, particularly
typhoons. Practices such as recycling are implemented in order to address this crisis
through the cultivation of a disciplined inner self. The article compensates for the lack
of current studies on what Buddhist organizations actually do for the environment
and how they address climate change. It also offers a correction to the studies on
environmental movements, in which religious environmentalism is often overlooked.

Keywords
Buddhism, climate change, environmentalism, recycling, Tzu-Chi

Résumé
Cet article retrace l’émergence du discours sur le changement climatique et les
pratiques qui y sont liées au sein de l’une des plus grandes et plus influentes organisations
bouddhistes taïwanaises – Tzu-Chi (Fondation bouddhique de la compassion). Les

Corresponding author:
Chengpang Lee, University of Chicago, Social Science Building, 1126 East 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Email: cplee@uchicago.edu

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312 Social Compass 62(3)

auteurs analysent plus de 500 volumes des périodiques de Tzu-Chi et décrivent sa

pratique de recyclage à partir d’une perspective socio-organisationnelle. Les résultats
de leur recherche suggèrent que le discours sur le changement climatique a émergé
récemment suite à l’augmentation de catastrophes naturelles, particulièrement des
typhons. Des pratiques telles que le recyclage sont organisées via une culture d’un
« moi » discipliné. Cet article pallie au manque d’études sur la religion concernant ce que
font concrètement des organisations bouddhistes pour la protection de l’environnement
et la manière dont elles font face au changement climatique. Les auteurs proposent une
autre approche que celle adoptée par les études de mouvements environnementaux,
qui négligent souvent l’environnementalisme religieux.

Mots-clés
Bouddhisme, changement climatique, environnementalisme, recyclage, Tzu-Chi

Although studies on environmental organizations, protests and social movements are

abundant, few social science work has studied how religious organizations differ in terms
of their environmentalism, and how they respond to climate change. Hence, Haluza-
DeLay (2014) calls for more social science work to examine how religion responds to the
issue of climate change.1 At the same time, most of the existing sociological studies have
been oriented toward examining White’s (1967) thesis, which is whether Judeo-Christian
traditions have negative effects on people’s environmental attitudes (e.g. Sherkat and
Ellison, 2007). Nevertheless, apart from religious and environmental studies (e.g. Miller
et al., 2014; Kaza and Kraft, 2000; Sahni, 2008; Sørensen, 2013; Tucker and Williams,
1997), little social science work has been done to investigate the argument also made by
White that Buddhism, specifically Zen Buddhism, is the potential cure for the contemporary
ecological crisis.2 Although studies of Buddhist cosmology and ethics have generated
useful insights, we know relatively little about what Buddhist organizations actually do
for the environment, and how they respond to issues of global climate change, especially
from an East Asian perspective.3 This article is the first attempt to answer the following
questions: To what extent do Buddhist organizations from East Asian religious traditions
care about the environment? How do they understand issues of climate change? If climate
change is their concern, how do they address this problem? What kinds of action do they
take to tackle these problems?
Limited by the length of this paper, we focus our discussion on a single case. We
examine both environmental discourses and their related practices using the renowned
Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Association (Tzu-Chi thereafter). Tzu-Chi is
currently the largest and the most influential Buddhist organization in Taiwan and has
extensive influence in many other countries. Its success in the past five decades has
attracted many studies (Huang, 2009; Madsen, 2007; Yao, 2012). Extant studies provide
different valuable angles to examine its development and social impact. For example, Tzu-
Chi is sometimes viewed as a new religious movement, sometimes as a charismatic
movement, sometimes as a middle class movement. However, the environmental dimension

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 313

of the Tzu-Chi movement has mostly been ignored by the existing studies. Recognizing the
merits of these studies, we attempt to demonstrate that concern for the environment is a
fundamental element of the Tzu-Chi movement. We re-examine Tzu-Chi by viewing it as
a response to the degradation of the environment and trace its incorporation of climate
change discourse into its theology-practice system.
Specifically, we approach our questions by analysing two periodicals published by
Tzu-Chi to examine the rise of climate change discourse and the corresponding
environmental activism. These two periodicals are Tzu-Chi Monthly (ciji yuekan),
published since 1967, and Rhymes Monthly (jingdian yuekan), which was purchased by
Tzu-Chi and has been published by it since 1998. We focus our analysis on Tzu-Chi
Monthly, since this magazine is the better source for understanding the evolvement of the
Tzu-Chi movement, and use Rhymes Monthly as a supplement. We converted 529
volumes of Tzu-Chi Monthly (1967–2010) to searchable files. Then, we searched for
keywords and recorded the frequency of each keyword. We specifically searched for
three keywords and their related terms – environmental protection (huanbao), recycling
(huishou) and climate change (qihoubianqian). By doing so, we were able to identify
how the environmental discourse has evolved over the past half century. We paid specific
attention to the context in which these terms were mentioned; and whether they were
used in statements by the mission or only in a secondary reports.
This methodology generated fruitful results. For example, our data suggests that as
early as 1990 the term ‘environmental protection’ was frequently being mentioned in the
Tzu-Chi Monthly: Tzu-Chi began recycling in 1991, ten years earlier than the nationwide
implementation of government-mandated recycling. Climate change and its related
terms appeared as early as 1992. However, its full theorization as a discourse of ideas and
practices did not occur until the new millennium. This transformation, we argue,
accompanied the increase in natural disasters, and was especially marked after 2000, in
the wake of several devastating typhoons. The data suggests a strong connection between
natural crises and the increase in climate change discourse.
This article proceeds in the following way. In the next section, we briefly discuss the
theological background of Buddhist environmental ethics. We concede that it is
impossible to provide a complete summary of Buddhist environmental thought in this
short paper and doing so is not our goal. Second, we provide a brief introduction to Tzu-
Chi and point out its significance in contemporary Taiwanese, as well as Chinese,
Buddhism. Then, we move to our content analysis of the two periodicals and present our
findings from the data. Next, we discuss the transition from general environmental
protection to the discourse of climate change. Finally, we examine how specific practices
– recycling and individual disciplining – were implemented as a way to deal with the
crisis of climate change.

Environmental ethics, climate change and Buddhism

Buddhism is generally regarded as an ‘environmental friendly’ religion. This view is best
argued by the historian Lynn White (1967: 1206), who contends that ‘what we do about
ecology depends on our ideas of the man–nature relationship’ and ‘more science and
more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a

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314 Social Compass 62(3)

new religion, or rethink our old one’. Observing the intimate link between the increases
in student movements and cultural movements and the rise in Zen Buddhism during the
tumultuous 1960s, White presented a rosy view of Buddhism as the cure for the ecological
crisis of the time. For example, he asserted that ‘the beatniks, who are the basic
revolutionaries of our time, show a sound instinct in their affinity for Zen Buddhism,
which conceives of the man–nature relationship as very nearly the mirror image of the
Christian view’ (White, 1967: 1206).
Why is Buddhism the mirror image of the Christian view? Scholars of religious
studies have examined this issue extensively. Arguably what fundamentally distinguishes
Buddhism from other religions is its emphasis on the (inter)-dependent origination. This
ethical principle provides what scholars call a ‘holistic worldview’ in which Buddhists
see that all lives on Earth are interconnected and that the actions of one person influence
others (Swearer, 2006). Furthermore, Buddhist theological structure is marked by
nondualistic and nontheistic characteristics. It is argued that Buddhist ‘nondualism is
based in the same kind of awareness of interdependence, resulting in the same kind of
dethroning of humanity from the center of the universe that deep ecology suggests’
(King, 2009: 123). Buddhism is conceived as being a religion ‘without a transcendent
God’. The logical consequence of this nontheistic principle is that there is no rigid
distinction between the sacred and the profane, as is seen in theistic religions such as
Christianity. Consequentially, it leads to the dethroning of humanity from the centre of
the universe.
Although these ethical principles are common to all Buddhist traditions, we should be
aware that the singular term ‘Buddhism’ actually covers various teachings and texts, and
that teachings and texts do not automatically lead to environmental activism. In fact,
scholars argue that ‘green’ Buddhism is a recent phenomenon, which is linked with the
environmental movements of the 1970s in Western countries (Kaza, 2006).4 The framing
of Buddhist environmental thought was also associated with the Deep Ecology Movement
in the fields of ecology and environmental studies (Barnhill and Gottlieb, 2001; Swearer,
2006). Surveying several Buddhist traditions, Henrik Sørensen (2013: 103) argues that
‘environmentalism, and nature conservation, as we understand them today, were not
significant issues in traditional East Asia Buddhism’. In addition, it is recognized that
current Buddhist environmental concerns usually focus on certain areas (Kaza, 2006).
For example, Western Buddhist environmentalism mostly prefers a cultivation of lifestyle
via meditation on one’s connection and co-existence with all lives rather than direct
mobilization using organizational power. The Buddhist lifestyle is characterized by a
vegetarian diet, refraining from harming animals, and consumerism with a specific focus
on food quality. However, some critical issues are barely mentioned and are under-
theorized. Kaza (2006: 3) argues that ‘key issues such as global climate change have
hardly been mentioned in either academic or popular discourse.’ In short, Buddhist
environmentalism cannot be taken for granted and has to be examined carefully.

Tzu-Chi and the Tzu-Chi movement

Over the past two decades, the success of Tzu-Chi has been thoroughly studied. Previous
studies have usually considered Tzu-Chi as an organization. They are usually focused on

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 315

Tzu-Chi’s charismatic leadership, and attempt to explain its rise via the link to charisma.
We suggest that a distinction be made between the study of Tzu-Chi as an organization
and the study of the Tzu-Chi movement. This is useful because the study of the Tzu-Chi
movement concerns broader empirical and theoretical questions (e.g. the environment,
public welfare provision). Recognizing this distinction, we provide a brief history of
Tzu-Chi, its basic organizational structure and its influence.
The Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi association was founded in 1966 by a
Buddhist nun, Cheng Yen, and several laypeople in Hualien, a town on the east coast of
Taiwan.5 Women constituted the majority of its early participants. The organization in its
initial form was similar to a Chinese local mutual-aid association in that it provided
material support to the local poor or victims of emergency (e.g. fires, floods or diseases).
The active and regular participants called themselves weiyuan (commissioners).6
Commissioners differed from members (huiyuan) who only made regular donations.
Commissioners had to devote their time to regular tasks assigned by the organization.
These included visiting poor families, collecting donations and distributing resources
(e.g. money and food). It is worth noting that mutual-aid associations were common
social organizations in Chinese society. Their popularity often signified the insufficiency
of state welfare provisions and at the same time they served the functions of communication
and social integration.
Tzu-Chi grew slowly but steadily in the 1970s. At the end of the 1970s, it was an
organization with approximately one hundred commissioners. Each commissioners was
usually in charge of the collection of donations from a group of around forty members.
Thus the estimated total membership at the end of the 1970s was roughly three to four
thousand. Yet, we should not put too much emphasis on the number of members, since
they were just people making regular donations to the organization. Although members
frequently became commissioners, their connection and commitment to the organization
varied greatly. For some still unclear reasons, this small to medium-sized mutual aid
organization gained momentum in the 1980s when it decided to build a modern hospital
in Hualien. This project inspired and motivated much of Taiwan’s population. In the
1990s, the number of commissioners jumped to more than three thousand, and its
membership jumped from under five thousand to around one million.
Currently, the organization claims to have more than a hundred thousand commissioners
and more than ten million members globally, the largest group being in Taiwan. Evidence
from the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS) supports this claim. The percentage of
people who report that they are Tzu-Chi members is consistently around 10–13%.7
Therefore, an estimate of its total membership in Taiwan is between two and three
million. This number far exceeds the reported membership of the second largest Buddhist
organization, Foguang Shan, which claims less than 3% of the total population.
Viewing Tzu-Chi as a social movement, Richard Madsen (2007) has argued that Tzu-
Chi had a positive effect on the democratization process during the 1980s in Taiwan by
easing the tensions and conflicts between the authoritarian government and the oppressed
middle class. Chengpang Lee and Ling Han (2014) recently analysed the transnational
mobilization efforts of Tzu-Chi in three locations to provide welfare provision that states
and private companies could not. However, there are still many other dimensions that
have not been explored.

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316 Social Compass 62(3)

The rise of environmental awareness and recycling

In the following two sections, we present the result of our content analysis from two of
Tzu-Chi’s periodicals – Tzu-Chi Monthly (ciji yuekan) and Rhymes Monthly (jingdian
yuekan). Tzu-Chi Monthly is the oldest official Tzu-Chi publication, first published in
1967, one year after Tzu-Chi’s founding. In contrast, Rhymes was originally an art and
culture magazine targeting urban intellectuals. However, it had financial problems in the
1990s. It was purchased by Tzu-Chi in 1998 and has been published continuously since
then. The target audiences of these two magazines are different. Tzu-Chi Monthly is free
to all members, and is said to be the most widely read monthly magazine in Taiwan. In
contrast, Rhymes targets educated intellectuals and the urban middle class. Its articles are
more concerned with cultural and social issues and are not directly related to Tzu-Chi’s
activities.
Recognizing the difference between these two periodicals, we concentrate our analysis
on Tzu-Chi Monthly and use Rhymes to supplement our analysis. We examined 528
volumes of Tzu-Chi Monthly published between July 1967 and December 2010.8 The
abundance of information contained in this monthly magazine enabled us to trace when
and why certain terms and discourses arose and how discourse on environmentalism,
climate change and their related practices have changed over the past four decades.
We searched for three categories of keywords in these 528 volumes. The first category
was environmental protection. We use the Chinese keywords huanbao and huanjing baohu
– both meaning ‘environmental protection’. Our second category was recycling. We used
the Chinese keyword huishou. Our third category was climate change. Normally, people use
qihoubianqian to mean ‘climate change’. However, there are several other ways to express
it. For example, wenshi xiaoying (greenhouse effect) and qihoyichang (abnormal climate)
often connote ‘climate change’. Therefore, we used all three of these keywords. Another
criterion for deciding the frequencies was that we only counted the number of articles,
reports and lectures which contained these keywords. In other words, if a keyword appeared
in one article five times we counted it only once in our data. The result is shown in Figure 1.
We can identify three stages in the use of environmental protection terms. The first stage
is from 1990 to 1994, the second between 1995 and 2003, and the third from 2003 to 2010.
The term ‘environmental protection’ (huanbao) first appeared in the Tzu-Chi Monthly in
1990, after which the frequency of articles mentioning this word grew slowly. It reached its
first peak in 1995, jumping from 20 articles in 1994 to more than 50 in 1995. Then the
frequency followed a steady upward trend until it made another jump in 2003. After 2003,
the frequency mostly remained at this high level, but it jumped again in 2005 and 2008.
The term ‘recycling’ (huishou) appeared later than ‘environmental protection’. It first
appeared in 1991 and reached its first peak in 1992. The period from 1992 to 1998 can
be thought of as the first stage of recycling. Recycling as a practice was introduced by a
commissioner in 1991. It was then recognized and implemented by Tzu-Chi, which
began to encourage its local branches and members to recycle materials. This
organizational effort continued for several years until the new practice was widely
accepted and implemented. This is why the frequency of the use of this term declined
after 1998. However, after 2002 the frequency of references to recycling rose again, and
it reached another peak in 2004, remaining at a high level thereafter.

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 317

Figure 1.  Frequency of three categories of keywords in Tzu-Chi Monthly.

Source: Tzu-Chi Monthly 1967–2010.

The term ‘climate change’ (qihoubianqian) appeared sporadically during the 1990s. It
was first mentioned in 1992, in an article about the importance of environmental
protection. The author reported the conclusion of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, held
that same year. A central issue of the Rio Summit was global climate change due to
energy consumption. Then, throughout the 1990s the magazine mentioned the greenhouse
effect several times each year, mostly in news reports. The term ‘abnormal climate’
(qihoyichang) was constantly mentioned from 2001 to the end of the study, but after
2008, references to ‘climate change’ exceeded both ‘greenhouse effect’ and ‘abnormal
climate’ and it soon replaced those terms, becoming a concept that received systematic
treatment in multiple articles. To sum up the pattern of climate change-related terms, the
data suggests that the concept was not regularly mentioned until 2001 but became a
frequent reference after 2005.
Although we did not perform a statistical analysis, we did find a correlation between
the changes in the frequency of use of these terms and the natural disasters happening
during this period. Furthermore, the frequency increased particularly rapidly after
disasters in which Tzu-Chi was involved. Table 1 lists the natural disasters to which Tzu-
Chi sent teams to distribute resources.
However, we suggest that different types of natural disaster have different cognitive
effects. Typhoons and earthquakes were the two most common natural disasters reported
in Tzu-Chi Monthly, but they evoked quite different responses. An increase in both the
frequency and the intensity of typhoons is generally regarded as a sign of global climate
change, while earthquakes are not directly linked to climate change.
To summarize the findings from Figure 1 and Table 1, we suggest first that Hurricane
Katrina in 2005 triggered a sense of global climate connection. North America was the
continent where Tzu-Chi had the second largest number of members. When Hurricane
Katrina turned the city of New Orleans into a swamp and left thousands of people

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318 Social Compass 62(3)

Table 1.  List of the natural disasters to which Tzu-Chi sent

teams to distribute resources (1990–2009).

Year Disaster
1991 Eastern China flood
1996 Typhoon Herb
1997 Typhoon Winnie
1999 Chichi earthquake
2001 Typhoon Trami
2001 Typhoon Toraji
2001 Typhoon Nari
2004 Typhoon Mindulle
2004 South Asian earthquake and tsunami
2005 Hurricane Katrina
2005 Pakistan earthquake
2006 Malaysian flood
2008 Typhoon Kalmaegi
2008 Typhoon Sinlaku
2008 Sichuan earthquake
2009 Typhoon Morakot

homeless, Tzu-Chi’s American branches soon mobilized thousands of volunteers and

sent resources to cities in need. The impact of Hurricane Katrina was significant. Via the
description of a special volume of Tzu-Chi Monthly, people now understood that even a
country as strong as the USA could not cope with natural disasters without assistance.9
Tzu-Chi organized a campaign to mobilize resources and volunteers from branches in 30
countries. The campaign strengthened the sense of connection. When people read articles
reporting the relief work thousands of miles away from Taiwan and saw photos of
hundreds of Tzu-Chi commissioners collecting donations and distributing resources in
cities such as Dallas and Houston, global climate change was no longer an abstract idea
but a reality. In short, Hurricane Katrina was the result of the ‘greenhouse effect and the
phenomenon of global climate change’.10
Second, the first decade of the 21st century witnessed both an increase and an
intensification of natural disasters. Seven of the ten typhoons that brought the most rain
in the recorded history of Taiwan have happened since 2000.11 These seven typhoons
caused unprecedented damage to Taiwan, which forced people to reflect on the
consequences of unconstrained modernization and economic development. For example,
Typhoon Morakot in 2009 levelled one village and killed more than seven hundred
people. An editorial article declared that this ‘nightmare has shown the terrible
consequences of over-development’.12

From ‘environmental protection’ to ‘climate change’

In the previous section, we showed that the frequency of references to ‘environmental
protection’, ‘recycling’ and ‘climate change’ went through different stages. ‘Environmental

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 319

protection’ appeared first, then ‘recycling’, and finally ‘climate change’. In this section,
we delve further into the meaning of these concepts and analyse how they have changed
over time. We identify two lines of evolution of these concepts. First, the environmental
discourse was initially focused on local issues such as pollution by local industries, but it
gradually evolved to address the global environmental situation. Second, the discourse
evolved from addressing personal material concerns (e.g. clean neighbourhoods) at the
beginning to emphasizing the interdependence of global citizenship. These two lines of
development converges with the ‘climate change’ discourse in 2006, when climate change
began to be considered not only on the personal/local level, but also via the lens of
interdependence and global crisis.
When the term ‘environmental protection’ was first used by Tzu-Chi’s spiritual leader
Cheng Yen in 1990, it appeared as a concept with communal implications. In a public
lecture on the planned work of Tzu-Chi, Cheng Yen said: ‘I feel that Tzu-Chi’s work
should not be limited to teaching the wealthy and assisting the poor … We should
especially promote the task of environmental protection. Tzu-Chi must stand up and call
for the removal of heavy industries in Hualien [the district in which Tzu-Chi had its
headquarters]’.13 The communal meaning of ‘environmental protection’ equates to the
NIMBY phenomenon (‘not in my back yard’) that scholars studying environmental
protests have long identified (Robbins, 2007: 1246–1247). However, Tzu-Chi articulates
the meaning of environmental protection broadly to incorporate universal concerns such
as over-consumption of materials and energy. In a lecture to more than ten thousand
people, Cheng Yen first articulated a systematic view of the broader implications of
environmental protection. The title of the lecture was ‘huanbao shi xifu yeshi zaojiu
jingtu’ (environmental protection is about appreciating what we have and also creating a
pure land).14 She said that the goal of environmental protection was not only to have a
comfortable and clean neighbourhood but also to help save resources by being frugal and
recycling. In this early stage, Tzu-Chi’s environmental discourse was mainly concerned
with the scarcity of our natural resources and how wasting materials could create
obstacles to survival for the next generation. For example:

Human beings rely on the Earth to survive. However, many people do not cherish it, so that the
resources on Earth are becoming scarce. Wasting resources deliberately and destroying the
natural environment will cause a vicious cycle in the ecosystem, and this will make human, as
well as all other, life difficult. Everyone should practise environmental protection to protect our
Earth. This will benefit the next generation.15

The devastating Chichi earthquake in 1999 and the consecutive typhoons of 2001
further threatened people’s belief that they were living in a peaceful world. Leaders of
Tzu-Chi were aware of this change and began to address the natural crisis by environmental
action. The earthquake and climate crisis were argued to be the result of an unharmonious
relationship between human beings and the Earth. The Earth was ‘tired’ just like an old
‘mother’ who has devoted all her life to her children. However, human beings, like those
children, did not cherish their mother and did not let her rest. Therefore, she was
exhausted and that is why there were so many natural disasters. In order to remedy this
situation, people were urged to reform their hearts:

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320 Social Compass 62(3)

How do we harmonize the relationship between the Earth and human beings? We have to begin
this harmonious relationship from the heart (congxintiaoqi). Everyone takes care of his/her
thoughts (xinnian). Do not yield to your desires. This will lead to resource conservation.16

The emergence of the global ‘climate change’ discourse was accompanied by a

transition from emphasis on the material aspect of life to the spiritual aspect. We found
that the first systematic treatment of the issue of global climate change was right after
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One year before Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian
earthquake and tsunami had shocked global society and triggered a wave of transnational
humanitarian efforts. Tzu-Chi mobilized thousands of volunteers in Malaysia, Indonesia
and Singapore, who went to the disaster area and built temporary houses for victims.
With the memory of the South Asian earthquake and tsunami still fresh, and relief work
still ongoing, Hurricane Katrina was the last straw that broke people’s confidence. A
special report in the Tzu-Chi Monthly was devoted to the crisis. In an article titled ‘The
global climate crisis: The responsibility of global citizens’ (quanqiuqihou yichang:
diqiugongminbixumianduidezeren), the author wrote:

In recent years, we have witnessed abnormal weather that continues to break records. It is
getting harder to predict weather. Natural disasters come in quick succession and bring severe
destruction. The situation is beyond our expectations. The destruction of Hurricane Katrina is
undoubtedly an alert to all human beings. The climate crisis is not a regional issue, but a global
one … We cannot rely too heavily on technology and luck. Everyone belonging to the Earth
Village should take responsibility for loving our Earth and living peacefully with nature. That
is how we can reduce the damage.17

Because the global climate crisis was a result of the acceleration of the greenhouse
effect caused by increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, a crucial step to mitigate the
crisis was the reduction of carbon dioxide production. In other words, people must be
aware of the ‘carbon footprint’ produced by their daily activity. In one slogan, ‘where
people go is where there is a carbon footprint’, Tzu-Chi urged its members to reduce
unnecessary consumption in order to lower their carbon footprints.18
The effort of mitigating the crisis of global climate change was finally theorized in
the Kejifuli (restrain oneself and return to the order) movement proposed in 2007.
This term originates from classical Chinese Confucian thought, and is unrelated to
Buddhist principles. From a Confucian perspective, Keji is inner-self cultivation
through continuing self-surveillance. Fuli is the idea that outward practices should
correspond to the cultivation of an ideal, gentlemanly image. Harmonious social order
is achieved only when people (in most situations, men) can respect these two
principles. Tzu-Chi gave this age-old Confucian idea a creative, modern meaning. In
its usage, the ideal, harmonious natural order replaces the ideal social order. This
harmonious natural order can be achieved only when people cultivate frugal and
environmentally friendly ethics. In short, to solve the global climate crisis people
needed to return to a frugal and simple style of life.19 For example, they were
encouraged to (1) adopt vegetarianism, not waste food and prefer locally produced
foods with a low carbon footprint; (2) save energy, paper and water and use bicycles
or public transport instead of driving cars; (3) live frugally, not follow trends or fads

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 321

Figure 2.  Layout of a recycling site.

blindly, reduce consumption, extend the life of reusable items (wuming) and not use
disposable items.20
Environmental protection discourse gradually evolved from its early emphasis on
local issues to a concern with global climate change. The proposed solution also gradually
evolved from an emphasis on material frugality to an emphasis on spiritual and inner
discipline. The implication is that science and technology alone cannot help us solve the
problem of global climate change. To Tzu-Chi, climate change is an ethical question and
thus religion should play an important role.

A solution to climate change: Recycling

We have already discussed the meaning of environmental protection for Tzu-Chi and the
transition from environmental protection to a more generalized global climate change
discourse. In this section we shall describe one of the most important environmental
practices of Tzu-Chi – recycling. To the best of our knowledge, there are no directly
comparable cases in other countries in which Buddhist groups have organized and
established recycling operations. Words such as ‘industry’ and ‘business’ better capture
the scale of Tzu-Chi’s recycling operation. According to Tzu-Chi’s report, it now operates
more than five thousand community-based recycling sites in Taiwan with more than two
hundred thousand regular environmental volunteers dedicated to sorting recyclable
materials.21 Economically speaking, the revenue generated from these recycling sites is
remarkable and helps to support Tzu-Chi’s other activities, such as philanthropy and
disaster relief, which do not generate revenue but are very expensive.
Tzu-Chi’s recycling sites vary in size. In urban areas, they are frequently located in
volunteers’ houses or on street corners. In areas where population density is low, a
recycling site can be as large as a small park. However, no matter where it is located, a
typical Tzu-Chi recycling site comprises several components (see Figure 2). First, there

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322 Social Compass 62(3)

is a public space to accommodate 10 to 50 people. This public space is usually divided

into a classroom-like space and a kitchen. There is always a photo of Cheng Yen – Tzu-
Chi’s spiritual leader – hanging in the centre of the classroom. Several of Cheng Yen’s
slogans are also on the wall. Sometimes, there is a Guanyin statue in the site.22 The
kitchen is used for serving vegetarian food for the volunteers, and the cooks are also
volunteers. There are often visitors to the recycling site. They may be senior Tzu-Chi
commissioners, government officials or invited speakers, who give a talk in the classroom
to all the volunteers and share a meal with them afterwards.
The public space and kitchen is the centre of the recycling site. The site then is divided
according to the types of items it collects. Normally, there is a large space for paper,
including newspapers, magazines and other paper-based items such as bento boxes.
There is another space for bottles and glass. Metals such as broken bicycles and
electronics are located separately. Used clothes comprise another category. Depending
on the size of the recycling site, the number of volunteers also varies. At big sites, there
could be several hundred volunteers. Volunteers are usually divided into groups and they
go to the site on a rota basis. Each volunteer usually goes to the site twice a week, but
some go more frequently. Each site normally divides the day into two shifts of around
two hours. Volunteers can choose whether to go in the morning or in the afternoon.
Recycling occupies a unique position in the Tzu-Chi environmental movement, since
it is one of the environmental practices with the longest tradition within the organization.
Recycling has a double meaning to Tzu-Chi’s members. On the one hand, recycling is
argued to be the best way to solve the problem of global climate change due to the
greenhouse effect. Scientific knowledge is used to prove that in order to reduce energy
consumption a constrained lifestyle is necessary. Recycling is thought of as the core of
this lifestyle, in which people should cherish the items they use. On the other hand,
recycling has a religious meaning. Recycling helps to blur the social boundaries of
gender, occupation, wealth and age, and therefore facilitates group integration.

Recycling is not only an environmental practice for nature but also an environmental practice
for your mind. The Master always tells people the great wisdom ‘discipline the mind by
doing tasks’. What does this statement mean? That every environmental volunteer, regardless
of age, gender or social status, when they get together they aim for one purpose … This is to
teach people to forget their social role and to concentrate on cultivating themselves [via
recycling].23

In several examples we found in the periodicals, recycling is viewed by the Tzu-Chi

members as a way to practise Buddhism and achieve the status of Bodhisattva. The
action of properly recycling is considered sacred and has to be carefully performed. The
ritualistic aspect of Tzu-Chi’s recycling practice is shown in several examples. One is
that when recycling at the site, volunteers are discouraged from talking to each other.
They are encouraged to concentrate on their actions and to appreciate the recycled
materials, which give human beings a comfortable life. In Tzu-Chi’s own words, every
item has its own life (wuming). People should respect the life of every item no matter
how small it is. Recycling in this sense is a collective funeral of used items, but the
ceremony gives a new life to these same items. The following example further shows the
ritualistic and religious dimension of recycling.

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Lee & Han: The Tzu-Chi movement’s response to global climate change 323

Besides taking care of people’s hearts, Tzu-Chi’s volunteers also embrace environmental
protection [recycling] to take care of the Earth. There is a 93-year-old woman from Jilong who
woke up when the sky was still dark. She dressed neatly and fastened her urine collection bag
to her leg. She said: ‘I begin to chant the name of Buddha (nianfo) and walk around Buddha
(raofo) every morning. For me, seeing litter and bowing to pick it up is equal to chanting the
name of Buddha. Recycling along every street is equal to walking around Buddha.’24

Conclusion
In this article, we have examined the environmental discourse and the related practices of
Tzu-Chi from a non-member perspective. The results answer several of the questions we
asked at the beginning of the article. First, as a Buddhist organization, Tzu-Chi has
participated extensively in promoting environmental protection. It not only provides a
theoretical background for environmental action, but it also directly involves its organization
in environmental practices. Second, Tzu-Chi’s environmental discourse corresponds
closely to global environmental trends. We have shown that after 2000, references to global
climate change gradually increased in its environmental discourse. We argue that the
increase is related to an increase in natural disasters both locally and globally. For example,
we find that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 created a new wave of efforts to link past
environmental protection practices like recycling to the phenomenon of global climate
change. Third, we briefly examined the social organization of Tzu-Chi’s recycling operation
and explained how this is systematically organized. This widespread and highly
institutionalized recycling operation has made Tzu-Chi’s approach different from other
types of religious environmentalism, which normally focus on the cultivation of a
harmonious relationship with environment. In contrast, Tzu-Chi’s recycling practice has
taken a step further by establishing a strong organizational infrastructure. Finally, we argue
that the discourse on climate change and environmental protection has been integrated with
recycling so that the practice of recycling has a ritualistic and religious meaning.
In sum, this article is a first attempt to delineate the actual practice of a Buddhist
organization facing the crisis of global climate change from a sociological perspective.
The findings support the claim that Buddhism has a selective affinity to environmentalism
by showing how Tzu-Chi draws on theological teachings such as a belief in interdependent
origin for its environmentalism. However, we also find that in order to theorize an ethical
solution to climate change, Tzu-Chi returns to the source of traditional Chinese
Confucianism and draws on the ethical principles of a disciplined lifestyle.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
 1. Religious environmentalism is barely mentioned in Lee and So’s (1999) book on Asia’s
environmental movements.
 2. Daniels (2010a, 2010b) has attempted to integrate Buddhist ecological values into his
economic development model. Tomalin (2013) also offers a critical examination of the
existing economic development model.

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324 Social Compass 62(3)

  3. Several scholars have carried out case studies on Western Buddhist environmental practices.
See Kaza (2006) for a review of existing studies. For two recent collections of studies on
religion’s response to climate change see Gerten and Sigurd (2012) and Veldmanm et al.
(2014). However, both of them lack a discussion of the East Asian Buddhist tradition.
  4. Stephanie Kaza (2006) describes the development of green Buddhism in North America and
provides useful background information about important works.
  5. Huang (2009) provides an examination from an anthropological angle. Richard Madsen (2007)
provides a useful comparison between Tzu-Chi and the other three religious organizations in
Taiwan.
  6. We do not make a distinction between female and male commissioners. However, it should be
noted that Tzu-Chi call female commissioners weiyuan and call male commissioners huiyuan.
  7. The survey does not distinguish commissioners from members. Therefore, we do not know
whether those respondents are commissioners who actively engage in the activities or just
members.
  8. We had access only to the volumes of the Tzu-Chi Monthly from this period.
 9. Tzu-Chi Monthly 466, Special Volume on Hurricane Katrina, September 2005.
10. Tzu-Chi Monthly 466, Special Volume on Hurricane Katrina, September 2005.
11. See, http://photino.cwb.gov.tw/tyweb/hazards/meteo-hazards-r.htm.
12. Tzu-Chi Monthly 513, August 2009.
13. Tzu-Chi Monthly 282, May 1990.
14. Tzu-Chi Monthly 289, December 1990.
15. Tzu-Chi Monthly 386, January 1999.
16. Rhymes Monthly 52, November 2002.
17. Tzu-Chi Monthly 466, Special Volume on Hurricane Katrina, September 2005.
18. Tzu-Chi Monthly 484, March 2007.
19. Rhymes Monthly 104, March 2007.
20. Tzu-Chi Monthly 497, April 2008.
21. Tzu-Chi Year Book 2011.
22. Guanyin is the most popular goddess in Taiwan and several parts of Southern China. She is
thought of as the embodiment of Avalokitesvara bodhisattva in Chinese culture.
23. Tzu-Chi Monthly 390, May 1999.
24. Tzu-Chi Monthly 432, November 2002.

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Author biographies
Chengpang LEE is a PhD candidate of sociology at the University of Chicago. In his dissertation on
the development of the Tzu-Chi movement, he uses multiple research tools to develop original
datasets to investigate the relationship between organizational structure, religion and environments.
He has published articles on issues regarding faith-based organizations in China, religion and
gender, and colonialism in journals including Voluntas and Nova Religio.
Address: Social Science Building, 1126 East 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, University of Chicago,
USA
Email: cplee@uchicago.edu

Ling HAN is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil
Society. She received her doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of California, San
Diego. Her dissertation explores the logic of the uneven formation and development of the social
work profession in China. In her other works, she investigates how the production of knowledge,
transnational ties, religious orientation and gender influence how NGOs and communities interact.
Address: Stanford University (San Francisco), USA
Email: l2han@ucsd.edu

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