One of the most eminent Chinese Buddhist masters of the twentieth century, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua [Xuanhua] was a monastic reformer and the first Chinese master to teach Buddhism to large numbers of Westerners. During his long career he emphasized the primacy of the monastic tradition, the essential role of moral education, the need for Buddhists to ground themselves in traditional spiritual practice and authentic scripture, and the importance of respect and understanding among religions. He focused on clarifying the essential principles of the Buddha’s original teachings, on establishing a properly ordained monastic community, on organizing and supporting the translation of the Buddhist Canon into English and other languages, and on the establishment of schools, religious training programs, and programs of academic research and teaching.

Born in 1918 into a peasant family in a small village south of Harbin in northeast China, the Venerable Master was the youngest of ten children. His father’s surname was Bai, and his mother’s maiden name was Hu. His mother was a vegetarian, and throughout her life she held to the practice of reciting the name of the Buddha Amitābha. When the Venerable Master formally became a Buddhist in his mid-teens, he was given the Dharma name Anci [“Peace and Compassion”], and after becoming a monk, he was also known as Dulun [“Liberator from the Wheel of Rebirth”]. Upon granting him the Dharma-seal of the Weiyang lineage, the Elder Chan Master Xuyun [1840–1959] bestowed upon him the Dharma-transmission name Hsuan Hua [Xuanhua — “To Proclaim and Transform”].

When the Venerable Master was a child, he followed his mother’s example, eating only vegetarian food and reciting the Buddha’s name. When he was eleven years old, upon seeing a dead baby lying on the ground, he awakened to the fundamental significance of death and rebirth and the impermanence of all phenomena. He then resolved to become a monk and practice on the Buddhist Path, but he acquiesced to his mother’s request that he not do so until after her death. When he was twelve, he obtained his parents’ permission to travel extensively in search of a true spiritual teacher.

At the age of fifteen, the Venerable Master went to school for the first time, and when he was sixteen, he started lecturing on the Buddhist sutras to help his fellow villagers who were illiterate but who wanted to learn about the Buddha’s teachings. He was not only diligent and focused but possessed a photographic memory, and so he was able to memorize the Four Books and the Five Classics of the Confucian tradition. He had also studied traditional Chinese medicine, astrology, divination, physiognomy, and the scriptures of the great religions. When he was seventeen, he established a free school in which, as the lone teacher, he taught some thirty impoverished children and adults.

At the age of eighteen, after only two and a half years of schooling, he left school to care for his terminally ill mother. He was nineteen when she died, and for three years he honored her memory by sitting in meditation beside her grave in a hut made of sorghum stalks. During this time, while reading the Avatamaska Sutra, he experienced a deep awakening. Subsequently, while seated in deep meditation, he had a vision of the Sixth Chan Buddhist Patriarch Huineng [638–713 C.E.]. In his vision Master Huineng came to visit him and to give him the mission of bringing Buddhism to the Western world.

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