Recent environmental scholarship increasingly emphasizes that humans bear immense responsibility for both causing and solving the global ecological crisis. Within this context, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Judith Berling argue that world religions are also actively responding to the dilemmas of this crisis by "entering the ecological phase," referring to how influential figures in religions not only need to address ecological questions through doctrinal hermeneutics and engage their communities in these questions, but also attain equilibrium between religious tradition and modernity. This paper explores this phenomenon through the teachings and dharma lectures of one of Taiwan's most significant figures in contemporary Buddhism, Hsing Yun (1927-2023), with a specific focus on his articulation of the term life-protection (husheng 護生), a foundational concept in his Buddhist environmentalism. In his teachings, Hsing Yun often used the definition of husheng to emphasize that environmentalism from the Buddhist point of view should precisely mean the protection of living beings, as life itself is the foundation of ecology, and it is what unifies humans, non-humans, and even non-living objects (such as soil, water, or everyday functional objects). Life-protection for Hsing Yun signifies that every organism has intrinsic value simply because it strives to stay alive, a perspective that closely resonates with the biocentric ethical views of philosophers such as Albert Schweitzer, Paul W. Taylor, and Holmes Rolston III. By contextualizing Hsing Yun's concept of life-protection within biocentric ethics, this paper demonstrates how his reinterpretations of traditional Chinese Buddhism construct a doctrinally grounded response to contemporary concerns such as environmentalism, animal rights, and consumerism.