The Most Famous

RELIGIOUS FIGURES from Taiwan

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This page contains a list of the greatest Taiwanese Religious Figures. The pantheon dataset contains 3,187 Religious Figures, 1 of which were born in Taiwan. This makes Taiwan the birth place of the 128th most number of Religious Figures behind Burkina Faso, and Cambodia.

Top 1

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Taiwanese Religious Figures of all time. This list of famous Taiwanese Religious Figures is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Cheng Yen

1. Cheng Yen (b. 1937)

With an HPI of 57.30, Cheng Yen is the most famous Taiwanese Religious Figure.  Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages on wikipedia.

Cheng Yen or Shih Cheng Yen (Chinese: 證嚴法師, 釋證嚴; pinyin: Zhèngyán Fǎshī; Wade–Giles: Chêng4 Yen2 Fa3-shih1; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Chèng-giâm Hoat-su; born Chin-Yun Wong; the 24th of the third Lunar month, 4 May 1937) is a Taiwanese Buddhist nun (bhikkhuni), teacher, and philanthropist. She is the founder of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, ordinarily referred to as Tzu Chi, a Buddhist humanitarian organization based in Taiwan. In the West, she is sometimes referred to as the "Mother Teresa of Asia". Cheng Yen was born in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. She developed an interest in Buddhism as a young adult, ordaining as a Buddhist nun in 1963 under the well known proponent of humanistic Buddhism, master Yin Shun. After an encounter with a poor woman who had a miscarriage, and a conversation with Catholic nuns who talked about the various charity work of the Catholic Church, Cheng Yen founded the Tzu Chi Foundation in 1966 as a Buddhist humanitarian organization. The organization began as a group of thirty housewives who saved money for needy families. Tzu Chi gradually grew in popularity and expanded its services over time to include medical, environmental, and disaster relief work, eventually becoming one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world, and the largest Buddhist organization in Taiwan. Cheng Yen is considered to be one of the most influential figures in the development of modern Taiwanese Buddhism. In Taiwan, she is popularly referred to and is the last surviving of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of Taiwanese Buddhism, along with her contemporaries Sheng-yen of Dharma Drum Mountain, Hsing Yun of Fo Guang Shan and Wei Chueh of Chung Tai Shan.

People

Pantheon has 1 people classified as Taiwanese religious figures born between 1937 and 1937. Of these 1, 1 (100.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Taiwanese religious figures include Cheng Yen. As of April 2024, 1 new Taiwanese religious figures have been added to Pantheon including Cheng Yen.

Living Taiwanese Religious Figures

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Newly Added Taiwanese Religious Figures (2024)

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