News From True Cultivators Letters to the Venerable Abbot Hua by Heng Sure Ph.D. and Heng Ch’au Ph.D. English translation by the Buddhist Text Translation Society Buddhist Text Translation Society Dharma Realm Buddhist University Dharma Realm Buddhist Association Burlingame, California U.S.A. News From True Cultivators - Letters to the Venerable Abbot Hua Published and translated by: Buddhist Text Translation Society 1777 Murchison Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010-4504 © 2002 Buddhist Text Translation Society Dharma Realm Buddhist University Dharma Realm Buddhist Association First edition 1983 Second edition 2002 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-88139-425-4 Printed in Malaysia. Addresses of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association branches are listed at the back of this book. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heng Sure, Bhikshu, 1949- News from true cultivators : letters to the Venerable Abbot Hua / Bhikshus Heng Sure and Heng Chau ; translated by Buddhist Text Translation Society ... [et al.] p. cm. ISBN 0-88139-425-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Heng Sure, Bhikshu, 1949---Correspondence. 2. Heng Ch’au, Shramanera--Correspondence. 3. Hsuan Hua, 1908---Correspondence. 4. Buddhist monks--Correspondence. 5. California--Description and travel. 6. Spiritual life--Buddhism. I. Buddhist Text Translation Society II. Title. BQ739.C2 H46 2002 294.3'092'2--dc21 2002002193 Contents Preface . .ix The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua . xiii Heng Ch’au, the Dharma Protector. 5 Licoln Heights baddies. 8 Where do you think you are, Mecca? . 12 Moonies in Beverly Hills . 14 Mindfulness of a cultivator . 16 Too much hate in this world . 17 We are trying our best to go home. 22 Easy to say and hard to do . 24 Looking “dumb” in T’ang dynasty robes . 27 Two “monks” assault a teenager . 35 A narrow escape at highway one. 38 Off by a hair’s breadth, off by a thousand miles . 48 Broken precepts begin with false thinking . 53 Amitabha! . 56 Buddhism in America. 61 Is this it? It this all there is?. 67 Seven miles of the most dangerous road . 71 How can you go wrong? . 77 I could chew one verse for weeks . 82 But there’s nothing left to climb on . 86 The UFOs are coming! . 89 Ripping band-aids off the old wounds . 92 The Monk and the Militants . 97 Don’t cry, just die . 104 Finding the false within the true . 109 Causes and Conditions with Vairocana Buddha . 111 Pain to the extreme! . 114 As one thinks, so one receives in return . 120 San Francisco! . 125 Any truth would have to be a simple one . 131 Don’t pick up germs off the street . 135 The “Ego” sutra . 138 Just watch how it grows . 142 You’re only kids, of course you didn’t believe. 148 Don’t think . 154 To serve the Buddhadharma . 156 Kindness is supreme . 162 Bodhimanda in a wilderness . 166 It’s all made from the mind alone . 170 The Bodhisattva Path is home . 173 The “Fly” invades planet Earth . 179 The Big Play. 186 Everything’s a test . 190 An old woman who spent her life in darkness . 194 My self-nature contains all dharmas . 196 Some day, you’ll know that Ch’an is the highest . 200 I cultivated greed, hatred and stupidity. 204 The five flavors dull the palate. 209 The modern world trains one to fight . 219 “Psst,” just like a flat tire . 223 The Old Fool. 228 Buddhadharma Fair!. 237 A man’s got to have gone through a lot of changing . 243 They are doing something and nothing . 246 Don’t kill . 248 How could you ever keep the lawns mowed? . 254 Hiding in the closet, watching and waiting . 256 I bet it was hard not being a monk . 262 Those who gossip will fall into the Hells . 265 Beauty and health fades away . 271 To be a monk or a skunk . 273 There’s no place to run or hide . 282 Basically, there’s not even one Buddha . 287 How come I got a water balloon? . 292 Following the rules . 296 What we give away is ourselves . 300 In cultivation, everything is voluntary . 303 Thirteen miles from home. 307 You may walk the heavenly road. 311 Bowing is to get rid of selfishness . 314 ix Preface Three steps, one bow – three steps along the side of the highway, then a bow to the ground, so that knees, elbows, hands, and forehead touch the earth, then rise, join the palms together, and take three more steps, then begin another bow. Hour after hour, day after day, for two and a half years, this was how they made their pilgrimage. In China, devout Buddhists sometimes undertake the arduous and prayerful practice of three steps, one bow, for the last few hundred yards of a journey to a sacred site. But this was California, and these two pilgrim-monks were young Americans. Dressed in their robes and sashes, carrying no money, armed with nothing but discipline and reverence, they walked and bowed 800 miles along the narrow shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway. Progressing a mile a day, they bowed from downtown Los Angeles north along the coast, through Santa Barbara and along the Big Sur, through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate, then 100 miles farther north to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a newly founded religious and educational center in Mendocino County. As they bowed, their prayer was that the world would be free of disaster, calamity, and war. The silent monk in the lead was Heng Sure. Originally from Toledo, Ohio, he had found his way in 1974 to Gold Mountain Buddhist Monastery in San Francisco. There on a side street of the Mission District, an eminent Chinese monk, the Venerable Master x Buddha Root Farm Hsuan Hua, was living in obscurity as he carried out his pioneering work of transplanting the Buddhist monastic tradition to the West. Moved by Master Hua's virtue and wisdom, Heng Sure joined other young Americans in taking a monastic name and the full ordination of a Buddhist monk. During his subsequent studies, Heng Sure read of a bowing pilgrimage made in the 1880's by the Venerable Hsu Yun (“Empty Cloud”), who was the most distinguished Chinese monastic of his generation, Master Yun had bowed every third step across the breadth of China; it had taken him five years. Heng Sure knew that Master Yun had been patriarch of the Wei Yang Lineage of the Chan School, and he knew that his own abbot and teacher, Master Hua, was the current patriarch, having received the lineage transmission from Master Yun in 1949. Inspired by this close connection, Heng Sure asked Master Hua if he could undertake his own pilgrimage of three steps, one bow. Master Hua approved, but said, “Wait.” Heng Sure had to wait a year. What he needed, Master Hua said, was the right companion and protector. It was to be Heng Chau. Originally from Appleton, Wisconsin, Heng Chau had come to Berkeley to study martial arts, and he had become an adept in several traditions. When his tai-chi teacher finally told him, “Chan is higher than any martial art,” Heng Chau crossed the Bay to study at Gold Mountain Monastery. He soon heard about Heng Sure's vow, and he asked if he could bow with him. Within a week Heng Chau took novice precepts and made a formal vow to bow beside Heng Sure, as well as handle the logistics of cooking, cleaning, setting up camp, and talking with strangers. Thus the pilgrimage began. Master Hua saw them off as they left Gold Wheel Monastery in Los Angeles on 7 May 1977. To Heng Chau, the martial artist, he said, “You can't use your martial arts on the pilgrimage. Heng Sure's vow is to seek an end to calamities, disasters and war; so how can you yourselves be involved in violence? If either of you fights – or even indulges in anger – you will no longer be my disciples.” For protection from the dangers of the Preface xi road, Master Hua instructed them to practice instead the four uncon- ditional attitudes of the Bodhisattva: kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. It was by no means the last time that the two bowing monks would need their teacher's advice. On the road, the two pilgrims followed their monastic discipline strictly – eating one vegetarian meal a day; never going indoors, sleeping sitting up in the old 1956 Plymouth station wagon that served as their shelter. In the evenings after a day of bowing they studied the Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Adornment Sutra) by the light of an oil lamp. They translated passages into English and attempted to put into practice the principles of the text in their day-to-day experiences on the road, as their teacher had encouraged them to do. The monks guarded their concentration by avoiding newspapers, by leaving the car radio silent, and by keeping to a strict meditation schedule. Heng Sure held a vow of silence for the entire journey, and it became Heng Chau's job to talk with the many people who stopped along the highway with questions. Occasionally the visitors were hostile, and some threatened violence, but the greater number were curious, and often the curious became the monks' protectors, bringing them food and supplies until the monks had bowed their way out of range. Everything important that happened on the highway – the mistakes and the growth, the trials and remarkable encounters, the dangers and the insights, the hard work with the body and in the mind – the pilgrims reported in letters to Master Hua.