Meaningful work beyond the sacred and the profane: organic tea farms in the Taiwanese Buddhist social landscape

This article examines meaning-making in Taiwanese Chan Buddhist tea farms where monastic, lay, and volunteer labour integrate organic agriculture and commercial production. Based on 2023 ethnographic fieldwork in Pinglin and Ruisui, it analyses how work is framed as spiritual practice, ethical cultivation, and economic activity. Findings show labour is understood as both soteriological—an embodied Chan path toward liberation—and ethical, grounded in environmental non-harm and organic farming. Drawing on meaningful work and workplace spirituality literature, the study argues these communities blur sacred and profane boundaries by integrating ritual life, agricultural production, and market exchange within a single organisational system. It further demonstrates that Buddhist environmental ethics operate as both meaning-making frameworks and as market positioning in Taiwan’s tea industry. The article contributes to debates on religion, labour, and capitalism by extending Weberian accounts and challenging Western secular perceptions about work through a contemporary case study.