Who is Hsuan Hua?

                                                                           

Hsuan Hua

Hsuan Hua was born in a village on the Manchurian plain during the year of 1918.  At a very young age he opened a school for children and adults and began practicing reverential bowing (shows honor and respect).  He spent every day outside, rain or shine, making more than eight hundred reverential prostrations (placing the body in positions) to show his respect for all of the good things in the universe.  

At the age of 21, Hsuan Hua had just spent the last three years of his life honoring the memory of his mother by meditating in a hut next to her grave.  While doing this he decided he should go to America to teach Buddhism.  To do this, he had to enter the San Yuan Monastery, where he became an ordained Buddhist monk.  After becoming a monk, he spent ten years studying Christianity, Daoism, and Islam.  He also studied Buddhist scriptural traditions.  Once he had satisfied his need for studying and learning, he traveled, spending some time with the 108 year old Venerable Hsu Yun and then spending time in Hong Kong.  Finally, he made his way to the United States in 1962.