Highway Dharma Letters: Two Buddhist Pilgrims Write to Their Teacher

Highway Dharma Letters: Two Buddhist Pilgrims Write to Their Teacher The Second Edition of News from True Cultivators by Heng Sure and Heng Chau With a Foreword by Huston Smith Foreword to the Second Edition I have written forewords to more than forty-five books, but I say with- out hesitation that I have never been as honored—and humbled—as I am to have been invited to write this one. This is the most neglected book of the twentieth century—I say this categorically and with complete confidence. Come to think of it, though, this stands to reason, for humility requires that authentic spirituality and public relations stand in inverse ration to each other. (“When you pray, go into your closet.”) Humility shows itself also in the fact that the “News” in the title takes the form of daily letters written to the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, by his two disciples who made the eight-hundred-mile journey from Gold Wheel Temple in South Pasadena to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas near Ukiah. They covered the distance in the traditional penitential way: three steps followed by a full prostration. One took a vow of complete silence for the duration of the pilgrimage and three years beyond; the other managed practical affairs, did all the talking, driving, cooking, and dealing with occasionally hostile visitors, while still finding time to bow. Having said that this is the most overlooked book of the twentieth century, I want only to add that I find it one of the most inspir- ing. To be able through these letters to look in on (and participate if only vicariously) in the daily lives and dealings of these two True Cultivators makes for as uplifting reading as any I have come upon short of Scriptures. So to these two True Cultivators I bow with palms together in a deep gassho. —Huston Smith, May, 2009 iii Preface Three steps, one bow: that was how they made their pilgrimage. They would take three steps along the narrow shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway, then bow down to the ground, so that knees, elbows, hands, then forehead rested on the gravel. Then they would rise, join their palms in the gesture of prayer, and take three more steps, then bow again; rise, take three more steps, bow yet again—hour after hour, day after day, for two years and six months and 800 miles. Their prayer was for peace in the world, and their inner work was to repent of their faults and cleanse their minds of self. Heng Sure was the monk in the lead. He had grown up in Toledo, Ohio, as Christopher Clowery, and in college had learned Chinese. While enrolled in a Masters Degree program at UC Berkeley, he had found his way to Gold Mountain Buddhist Monastery. There, in what had been an abandoned mattress factory in San Francisco’s Mission District, an eminent Chinese monk, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, had undertaken the mission of creating a community of American Buddhist monks and nuns. Soon Christopher Clowery, too, had shaved his head, had acquired the Chinese monastic name Heng Sure, and had donned the sash of the ordained Buddhist monk. Heng Sure read of the ancient practice of three steps, one bow in an account of a journey made in the 1890’s by the venerable Master Hsu Yun, who later became known in China as the most distinguished enlightened master of the twentieth century. Master Yun had bowed across the breadth of China; it had taken him five years. Inspired by Master Yun’s account, and wishing for a space of time to focus on repentance, Heng Sure asked his teacher, Master Hua, for permission to make his own bowing journey. Master Hua consented, but told him to wait. v preface He had to wait a year. What was needed, Master Hua told him, was a companion on his pilgrimage. It was to be Heng Chau. Originally from Appleton, Wisconsin, Martin Verhoeven had come to Stanford on a fellowship in history, but soon moved to Berkeley to study martial arts. When he had become an adept at several traditions, his teacher finally told him, “Chan meditation is higher than any martial art.” Martin crossed the Bay to study meditation at Gold Mountain Monastery. When he heard about Heng Sure’s plan to make a bowing pilgrimage, he asked permission and made a vow to go along. Within a week, he had taken the vows of the Buddhist novice monk and had acquired his own monastic name. Heng Chau would be Heng Sure’s protector along the highway, the one to cook and set up camp, and, since Heng Sure had vowed to keep silence, Heng Chau would be the one to talk to whoever asked them questions along the way. On May 7, 1977, the two monks bowed out the door of Gold Wheel Temple in South Pasadena. Master Hua saw them off, saying, “Be the same on the highway as you were in the monastery.” The external destination of their journey was to be the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a new Buddhist community that Master Hsuan Hua had just established in Mendocino County, a hundred miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. They soon found, however, that the external journey was merely the setting for an internal journey towards inner transformation. The strenuous physical work of bowing many hours, day in and day out, quickly became the vehicle for the work of self- examination, repentance, and mental purification. For this work they needed sincerity, vulnerability, and determination, and above all they needed the guidance and the example of their teacher. Heng Chau explained later: “Left to our own limited self-awareness and habitual inertia, it would be nearly impossible to effect the change of heart so essential to progress on the path.” He added: “But the teacher can only work at this level if the student is open. Our experience of being in the presence of our teacher was of an almost naked vulnerability, where vi preface every thought, feeling, impulse, desire, fear, and doubt was transpar- ent and fully manifest.” On the road, the two pilgrims followed their monastic discipline strictly. Having slept sitting up in the back of an old 1956 Plymouth station wagon that served as their shelter, they rose at 4:00 a.m. for morning chanting. After an hour of seated meditation, they went out- side to bow. They took their one daily vegetarian meal before noon, then returned to their bowing until sunset. After a second hour of meditation, they studied the Avatamsaka Sutra by the light of an oil lamp. Heng Sure translated the Chinese text into English as they read—his only speech of the day. This sutra, which describes in detail the practices and vows of the sages and bodhisattvas, became for the monks a road map of mind that complemented their map of the Coast Highway. Master Hua had instructed them as they set out: “Heng Chau can’t use his martial arts on the pilgrimage. Heng Sure’s vow is to pray for an end to disasters and wars, so how can you involve yourself in violence? If either of you fights or even indulges in anger, you will no longer be my disciples.” As the reader will discover, the two monks soon had an opportunity to apply that instruction. Their first week of bowing led them through the tough, gang-ruled streets of Los Angeles. It was by no means the last time they had to maintain composure and to keep on bowing to the ground while being taunted by toughs whose boots were a few inches from their heads. They were to find, though, that although some people who saw them on the road were hostile, berating them, threatening violence and sometimes attempting it, the greater number were merely curious. Often curiosity developed into respect, and some of those who were moved by the pilgrimage became the monks’ pro- tectors, bringing them food and supplies until they had bowed their way out of range. In their letters to Master Hua, the two monks reported everything important that had happened on the highway—the mistakes and the vii preface growth, the trials and the remarkable encounters, the gradual spiritual progress and the occasional setbacks, the hard work with the body and in the mind. In Heng Chau’s words, “The letters were intimate conver- sations, even confessions, to our teacher. They were meant to replicate the experience of actually being in his presence, sitting at his feet as we opened our hearts.” Master Hua would answer their letters by visit- ing them from time to time along the highway and offering guidance, admonishment, encouragement, and practical advice. Heng Sure’s and Heng Chau’s letters to their teacher are the contents of this volume. The monks did not write the letters with the thought that they would be published. Rather, the letters were a medium in which the two monks attempted to speak with open hearts about their experiences on the road. As such, the letters preserve an unadorned account of an authentic spiritual journey. —David Rounds viii The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua: A Brief Portrait “I have had many names,” he once said, “and all of them are false.” In his youth in Manchuria, he was known as “the Filial Son Bai”; as a young monk he was An Tsu (“Peace and Kindness”); later, in Hong Kong, he was To Lun (“Wheel of Rescue”); finally, in America, he was Hsuan Hua, which might be translated as “one who proclaims the principles of transformation.” To his thousands of disciples across the world, he was always also “Shifu”—“Teacher/Father”—a composite term capturing the unique relationship between a spiritual teacher and his disciple.

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