"We believe that a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy can help nurture creativity, encourage greater integrity and ingenuity in confronting challenges, and foster effective and positive change, both for individuals and for societies."
BACKGROUND
Robert Y.C. Ho is chairman of the Hong Kong-based Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, which fosters and supports Chinese arts and culture and promotes deeper understanding of the teachings of Buddhism and how to apply them to everyday life. The Foundation, established in 2005 by Ho’s father, Robert H.N. Ho, exemplifies the family’s long legacy of philanthropic giving.
Ho is the great-grandson of Sir Robert Ho Tung, who was born in 1862 to an Englishman of Jewish Dutch ancestry and a Chinese woman from what is now Shenzhen. The elder Ho’s birth took place 20 years after Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain as a result of China’s defeat in the Opium Wars. Fluent in both English and Chinese, and an astute businessman, Ho worked as a comprador in Hong Kong. By age 35, he was reportedly the wealthiest man in Hong Kong, and he devoted much of his wealth to the less privileged. With his second wife, Lady Clara, he established the Po Kok Day and Evening School and the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, both Buddhist.
Today, the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation engages in strategic, sustainable long-term projects in Hong Kong and around the world. In 2011, the Foundation established the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, a multi-year grant that enables the school to offer Buddhist insights, textual traditions, and practices to students from all religious traditions who study ministry at Harvard. The grant also enables future Buddhist clergy to be trained appropriately for the 21st-century, and supports the work of Buddhist clergy in hospitals and other places of pastoral care.
To further Chinese arts and culture, in 2013, the Foundation gave $10 million to the Guggenheim Museum to expand its collection of Chinese contemporary art. The funding has gone to commission new works aimed at increasing contemporary Chinese art's profile among mass audiences. The grant exemplifies the Foundation’s aim to not only make Chinese culture — past and present — accessible to all audiences around the world, but also to demonstrate “that arts are fundamental to the growth and health of society.”
MOTIVATION
Robert Ho’s father, Robert H.N. Ho, told the South China Morning Post in 2012 that the “family motto is 'Before you receive you must learn to give.' It was drilled into me by my grandfather, who raised me. This is what we've been doing, and we have to continue this.' The impetus for the Foundation to direct part of its resources to Buddhism harkens back to the family’s ancestors. “Lady Clara set up a temple in Hong Kong, Tung Lin Kok Yuen, in 1935 — it later grew to two charity organizations, in Hong Kong and Canada — and there’s a school associated with it. So Buddhism has been part of the family,” explains Ho. The Foundation’s focus on Chinese art and culture is, he explains, “because my father, who grew up in Hong Kong, appreciates Chinese arts — classical, traditional and contemporary.”
IMPACT
"Our family began working ten years ago to build a global network of Buddhist learning," said Robert Y.C. Ho. "We believe that a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy can help nurture creativity, encourage greater integrity and ingenuity in confronting challenges, and foster effective and positive change, both for individuals and for societies." Perhaps the largest funder in the academic study of Buddhism, the Foundation has, for the past three years, supported research and teaching of Buddhist studies at institutions of higher education through a multi-year grant to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The ACLS is a federation of 71 scholarly societies devoted to the promotion of the humanities and related social sciences. In cooperation with the Foundation, ACLS offers an integrated set of fellowship and grant competitions that expands the understanding and interpretation of Buddhist thought in scholarship and society, strengthens international networks of Buddhist studies, and increases the visibility of innovative currents in those studies. The suite of grants and fellowships offered include: dissertation fellowships for graduate students, postdoctoral fellowships for emerging scholars, collaborative research grants to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship, research fellowships, and new professorships. The family has put substantial resources in this initiative in order to strengthen the teaching and study of Buddhism in modern society, support outstanding scholars and institutions worldwide, and ultimately further the study of Buddhist philosophy and broaden its impact in the twenty-first century.