Teaching Dharma Without a Sermon

Da Ai Television produces the great majority of its own programming rather than acquiring it, and its content policy is unusually strict for a channel with global satellite reach: no politics and no violent content appear on air, a rule the network maintains consistently across news coverage, documentary programming and its extensive children's programming slate. The teaching that runs through nearly everything Da Ai broadcasts is Buddhist dharma as Dharma Master Cheng Yen has taught it throughout Tzu Chi's history, built around the foundation's central conviction that people are fundamentally good, a premise the network treats as something to demonstrate through documentary storytelling about humanitarian work rather than argue through direct religious instruction.

That approach extends to Da Ai's international programming as well, including an internet radio service carrying English language shows such as The Power of the Heart to audiences well outside Taiwan and mainland Chinese speaking communities. Alongside Tzu Chi's hospitals, schools and disaster relief operations across dozens of countries, Da Ai functions as the foundation's storytelling arm, broadcasting the same humanitarian Buddhism in motion that the organization practices on the ground, funded entirely by the recycling and giving of the people who watch it rather than by anyone buying airtime.