The main aim of Mahayana Buddhism is to release living beings from suffering. Engaging in charity work in order to be of service to others is therefore a calling for many present-day Mahayana Buddhist practitioners. Though there are complementing aspects between charity work and religious belief, there are also latent tensions and dilemmas. This article offers a meta-reflection on the charity mission of the Tzu Chi Foundation, following the two main points of the paper: First, I propose that the entanglement of holiness and worldliness is a common challenge for all religious charities; hence it is also a problem that the Tzu Chi Foundation could not escape. I then take a look at how the foundation has thus far dealt with and responded to the challenge. In this respect, Ven. Cheng Yen strives for the ideal of guiding others “from the door of charity to the door of Buddhism,” i.e. making Buddhist practice accessible through charitable activity. Secondly, I suggest the high-qualitied educations in monastic group will strengthen the development of Buddhist charity. Besides, the Buddhist philosophies may serve to solidify the characteristics of Buddhist charities and prevent a situation where charity workers simply follow the crowd. That is, a solid grounding in Buddhist theoretical models (such as the dialectics between upāya and uttara, and the coherence between the conventional truth and ultimate truth) not only serves as an impetus for promoting charity work, but further harmonizes the apparent polarities of sacredness and secularity, or the holy and the mundane.
