Written by: May Lin

Tang Mei-Yun, a renowned Taiwanese opera actress, has been playing some Taiwanese operas on great dharma masters in history in Da Ai TV. She explained to the audience that she’s not just playing a role, but spreading Buddha’s teachings through Taiwanese operas. Therefore, she emphasized that all of the plots must be based on authentic data because she must spread the correct information to the audience. Then, she shared how she and the TV staff made Taiwanese operas and three of the stories of great dharma masters in history.

First, she mentioned some difficulties they faced during filming. One of them is the limitation of place. Since it is impossible for them to shoot outdoors every time; instead, they shoot in a virtual studio, where they can combine people and objects with computer-generated environments.

After talking about the difficulties of shooting, she started to tell the stories of the three great dharma masters in history. One of them is the story of Dharma Master Wonhyo, who plays an important role in Korean Buddhism by spreading the Buddha’s teachings to ordinary people. At that time in Korea, Buddhism is excluded to people in higher classes, so ordinary people didn’t have any chances to access to Buddhism. Nevertheless, Dharma Master Wonhyo opposed this concept, expounding sutras to all walks of life. Because of him, the Buddha’s teachings can be spread to people in lower social classes in Korea.

In addition, she shared some interesting stories of shooting in South Korea, one was her interaction with a monkey who suddenly showed up and asked her for food, and even shared food to the ants on the ground. She was touched by the kind-hearted monkey and thought that it is true that all sentient beings are equal. The audience enjoyed her talking very much and the hall was filled with laughter.