Mingli C. Shih

Taiwan

Mingli C. Shih

Taiwan

Mingli Chang Shi is a woman of extraordinary giftedness, concentration and compassion. She was born in 1960, and raised in Taipei, Taiwan.

Her parents owned a gift company which they started from scratch. As the eldest daughter of the family, and at the same time seeing the hard work of her parents to support their household, she chose night school, and learned the family business during the day from her father. She inherited unique craft skills. She writes, “With a pair of scissors, I tried to cut out the beauty of Chinese characters and cultivate the abundance and wisdom of life with sincerity.”

She married, immigrated to the US, became a vegetarian, joined Huayen Lotus Association, and in 2003 accepted Bodhisattva vows. Her father became ill, and she perceived the impermanence of life and made a vow to copy the Sutras by paper-cutting, each individual character.

Throughout more than a decade of Sutra paper-cutting, she presented her artwork in Taiwan and China at: Huayen Lotus Association in Taipei; White Horse Temple in Henan, Luoyang; Anguo Zen Temple in Hubei; Dinglin Temple in Nanjing; and Tamsui Cultural Park. Mingli C. Shih also collaborates in exhibits, offers lectures and performances of her artistic mastery of paper cutting Chinese characters.

During exhibitions, she was interviewed by the People's Daily, China Times, Ruyi Station of Buddhism, Hubei People's Daily, etc., and Mr. Gao Hong, a well-known art connoisseur in mainland China, once praised her work as “majestic, solemn, ancient and extremely Zen.” Mingli C. Shih’s work inspired the dean of the Karuna Buddhist Center in Nepal to initiate a sutra copying program, which now boasts more than 2,000 students who copy the sutras daily.

As of 2020, there are more than 300 Heart Sutra works with collectors in Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, and China. Large works such as the Diamond Sutra are more temple-like treasures, and may be used for foundation laying or temple fund-raising events, and their lengths have repeatedly broken records with the 7,532-word Infinite Yijing which is 16 meters long.

After her mother passed away in 2009, she moved back to Taiwan to care for her father. Through the process of copying and contemplating the sutras, she has worked as a diligent gardener; her focus: on the characters of the Sutras, the skill, and their meaning in every moment of life has brought her great peace and freedom.