Our Founder
Venerable Master Hsuan Hua was born in 1918 in Manuchia, China, to a poor, rural family. He developed an interest in Buddhism early in life, and when he was eleven he began the practice of bowing to his parents to repent for his past bad behavior. He expanded this bowing practice to include all living beings, so he would bow over 800 times early in the morning and late at night, rain or shine (or snow). At the age of 18, he founded a free school for the poor and illiterate people in his village, where he taught them. After his mother's death, when he was 19 years old, he built an A-frame hut by her graveside and sat in it for three years as a practice of filial respect. During this time, he ordained as a novice monk and studied extensively the Buddhist Sūtras, practiced meditation and performed austerities. It was then that he had the vision that would later lead him to come to the US to spread the Dharma: while sitting in meditation, he saw the Sixth Patriarch Huineng of the Ch'an (Zen) school, who told him that in the future, he would travel to the West, where he would teach many living beings.
After the mourning period was over, he retired to a cave in the Changbai mountain range, where he furthered his practice. In 1946, he began the arduous journey across China that would take him to Nanhua monastery, where he sought to pay his respects to the Venerable Master Xuyun (Empty Cloud), one of the most revered Chinese monks of the 20th Century. He took full monastic vows in 1947 in Putou Mountain, and, in 1948 he finally reached Nanhua, where Venerable Master Xuyun appointed him head of the Vinaya Academy and later Dean of Academic Affairs. On the occasion of his first meeting with Venerable Xuyun, Master Hua wrote:
The Noble Yun saw me and said, "Thus it is."
I saw the Noble Yun and verified, "Thus it is."
The Noble Yun and I, both Thus,
Universally vow that all beings will also be Thus.
In 1956, the Venerable Master Xuyun bestowed on him the Dharma transmission of the Wei Yang Ch'an (Zen) Lineage, as well as the name 'Hsuan Hua.'
During this period, Master Hua traveled extensively across China and Hong Kong lecturing on the Sūtras, sponsoring Buddhist publications, building monasteries and teaching many disciples. He also visited Thailand and Burma, where he investigated Theravāda Buddhism.
In 1962, upon request from disciples in the United States, and seeing that the conditions were ready for Dharma to take root in the West, he traveled to California, where he set up a monastery in San Francisco's Chinatown. During this period, he called himself a "monk in a grave" because he lived in a damp, windowless basement. He later moved to a low-income apartment building, where a group of young Westerners began to slowly gravitate towards him. In 1968, he led a 90-day Shurangama Sūtra study retreat, attended by over 30 students from the University of Washington. At the end of the retreat, five of the participants decided to go forth as monastics under him, marking the first time that a novice ordination had taken place on Western soil.
Throughout his teaching career in the US, not only did he teach his left-home disciples how to conduct themselves and practice as monastics (a nontrivial task, given the wide cultural berth between traditional Chinese monasticism and America in the 1960s), he also lectured virtually every single day on the Buddhist Sūtras and on various classical Chinese texts, he held Chinese lessons, and he transmitted the principles of Buddhism to his lay and monastic disciples through everyday, lively interactions where he demonstrated how these principles could be applied to their lives. "Encountering specific matters, we understand the principles; understanding the principles, we apply them to specific matters," was one of his maxims.
In 1974, Dharma Realm Buddhist Association (DRBA), the organization presided over by Master Hua purchased what used to be a large psychiatric asylum in the outskirts of Ukiah, in northern California. There, he established the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, one of the largest Buddhist monastic complexes in the West and headquarters to the Association.
Master Hua also oversaw the creation of primary and secondary schools and a university, following his conviction that a solid educational system was key for Buddhism to have a positive and lasting contribution in the West. He also founded the Buddhist Text Translation Society and encouraged his disciples to learn Chinese and translate the Sūtras, in the belief that Buddhism could only be properly understood in the West when its doctrinal texts were available for readers in their native tongues. Furthermore, he sought to breach the gap between religions and engaged in numerous interfaith dialogues with clergy from other beliefs, and, perhaps most significantly, he also wished to establish links between the "Northern" or Mahāyana, and "Southern" or Theravāda traditions of Buddhism. In 1991, he invited Ajahn Sumedho, a senior Western monk in the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah to serve as preceptor at a monastic ordination in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (an unprecedented decision), and in 1995, he donated to him the plot of land that would become Abhayagiri Forest Monastery.
On June 7, 1995, after a long period of illness, Venerable Master Hua passed away in his sleep. "I came from empty space, and I will also return to empty space," were his parting words.
At the age of 19, Master Hua made the vow to "dedicate all blessings and bliss that I myself ought to receive and enjoy to all living beings of the universe." His life was one that truly exemplified this principle. He always went out of his way and sacrificed his own well-being in order to bestow kindness and benefit others, using all expedient means at his disposal to lead those around him to wake up to the fundamental fact of awakened reality, which is that, as he often liked to say, "Everything is okay. There's no problem."
For more accounts of Venerable Master Hua from the perspective of his disciples, please visit the Oral History Project YouTube page.