The dissertation examines the Ciji (Tzu-chi ) Gongde Hui (Compassionate-Relief Merit Society), a Taiwanese transnational Buddhist humanitarian foundation with a charismatic female leader. It is an anthropological study based on twenty months ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan (1997–99 in Jiayi, Hualian, and Taipei) and shorter periods of field research among its overseas branches. Research methods included participant-observation, individual interviews of devotees, foundation employees, and monastic disciples, and a review of Ciji's publications and local press coverage. The study employed Max Weber's theory of charisma to examine how participants maintained their charismatic emotional commitments to the movement as religious devotees while simultaneously rationalizing their practices to become a powerful modern transnational nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Ciji devotees originally based their commitments on an intense personal emotional tie to their charismatic leader. As Ciji grew spectacularly in the 1990s and its leader was glorified, this aspect of commitment became less individual but remained personalized through the leader's visits to congregations and followers' “homecoming” visits to the headquarters. Devotees continued to express their emotions in bouts of ecstasy (embodied uncontrollable crying) and orderly collective performances of “silent melody” (a disciplined ritual with the sign-language for the deaf).
The movement's charismatic elements contrast sharply with its emphasis on rationalized practice in dealings with the outside world. As the largest formal association in Taiwan and a flourishing movement among overseas Chinese communities, it serves as a moral model for other NGOs in Taiwan's politics and an alternative transnationalism for Buddhism. Emotions toward the leader and her humanitarianism are employed to foster Ciji's proselytization and give its organization a moral certainty in its political negotiations with Taiwan's government. While its external mission is expressly international, Ciji's emotional appeal is culturally specific. It has attracted mostly women, drawn largely from Taiwan and the Taiwanese diaspora. The study demonstrates that while charismatic religious emotion can be combined with rational worldly conduct, Ciji's style of emotional practices is culturally specific and ethnically bounded.
