The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua Brings the Dharma to the West [In Memory of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, Vol 1]

Abstract

The Venerable Master's vision was as vast as the Dharma Realm, and he taught and transformed all beings without regard to path of rebirth, country, ethnic origin, religion, and so forth. There are two countries, however, where he had special affinities in this life: China and the United States. Although the majority of his disciples are Chinese, history will probably remember him primarily for his work in bringing the teachings of the Buddha to the people of the West.

The story begins in rural Manchuria at his mother's grave site. The Master, then in his late teens or early twenties, was observing the Chinese filial practice of three year's mourning. As a novice Buddhist monk, he did it in a uniquely Buddhist way by building a meditation hut of sorghum thatch and sitting in continuous meditation there. One day he saw the Venerable Master Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch in China of the Chan (Zen) Lineage, walk into his hut. The Patriarch spoke with him for a long time. The Master remembered him saying:

The five schools will divide into ten to teach and transform living beings: a hundred and then a thousand, until they are endless, . . . countless like the sands of the Ganges . . . the genuine beginning [of Buddhism] in the West.