Hsuan Hua
1918 CE–1995 CE · Modern · Shuangcheng, Manchuria (then Jilin Province; now Shuangcheng District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China)
Born 1918 (16 April per most sources; one Wikipedia revision gives 26 April) in Shuangcheng County, then part of Jilin Province in Manchuria — the area is now administratively within Harbin, Heilongjiang. Birth name Bai Yushu (白玉書). Died 7 June 1995 in the Los Angeles area (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, per CTTB sources; some sources say Long Beach). Sources agree on the years 1918–1995.
Hsuan Hua was a Chinese Buddhist monk widely regarded as a leading figure in bringing orthodox Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism to the United States in the twentieth century. He is traditionally counted as a lineage holder of the Guiyang (Weiyang) school of Chan and received dharma transmission from the renowned master Hsu Yun, while also upholding the Pure Land practice of reciting the name of Amitābha Buddha. After settling in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s, he founded the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association and, in 1976, established the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas near Ukiah, California, one of the earliest Chan monasteries in North America. He emphasized strict monastic discipline, scriptural study and translation, and the ordination of Western disciples, helping to train some of the first native-born American Buddhist monks and nuns. His many recorded lectures and the large scriptural-translation effort he initiated remain influential within his communities.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
Shuangcheng, Manchuria (then Jilin Province; now Shuangcheng District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China)
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Shuangcheng, Manchuria (then Jilin Province; now Shuangcheng District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China)
Shuangcheng, in northeastern China (Manchuria) — at the time part of Jilin province, now a district of Harbin in Heilongjiang — was the birthplace, in 1918, of Hsuan Hua, the Chan master who later moved to the United States and founded the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in California, a major centre of Chinese Buddhism in the West.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Hsuan Hua’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Buddhist world
- Balangoda Ananda Maitreya· 1896 CE–1998 CE
- Nyanaponika Thera· 1901 CE–1994 CE
- Dudjom Rinpoche (Jigdral Yeshe Dorje)· 1904 CE–1987 CE
- Mahasi Sayadaw· 1904 CE–1982 CE
- Yinshun· 1906 CE–2005 CE
- Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu· 1906 CE–1993 CE
- Walpola Rahula· 1907 CE–1997 CE
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche· 1910 CE–1991 CE
- Dipa Ma· 1911 CE–1989 CE
- Philip Kapleau· 1912 CE–2004 CE
- Ajahn Maha Bua· 1913 CE–2011 CE
- Alan Watts· 1915 CE–1973 CE
- Robert Aitken· 1917 CE–2010 CE
- Charlotte Joko Beck· 1917 CE–2011 CE
- Ajahn Chah· 1918 CE–1992 CE
- Ruth Denison· 1922 CE–2015 CE
- Geshe Lhundub Sopa· 1923 CE–2014 CE
- Jiyu-Kennett· 1924 CE–1996 CE
- S. N. Goenka· 1924 CE–2013 CE
- Seung Sahn· 1927 CE–2004 CE
- Taizan Maezumi· 1931 CE–1995 CE
- Tarthang Tulku· 1934 CE–
- The Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)· 1935 CE–
- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche· 1939 CE–1987 CE
Jewish world
Scientists
Luminaries & Explorers world
Christian world
Rulers world
- Ronald Reagan· 1911 CE–2004 CE
- Richard Nixon· 1913 CE–1994 CE
- Gerald Ford· 1913 CE–2006 CE
- Julius Nyerere· 1922 CE–1999 CE
- Deng Xiaoping· 1904 CE–1997 CE
- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi· 1919 CE–1980 CE
- Yuri Andropov· 1914 CE–1984 CE
- Konstantin Chernenko· 1911 CE–1985 CE
- Nelson Mandela· 1918 CE–2013 CE
- Emperor Hirohito (Showa)· 1901 CE–1989 CE
- Georgy Malenkov· 1902 CE–1988 CE
- Leonid Brezhnev· 1906 CE–1982 CE
- Gamal Abdel Nasser· 1918 CE–1970 CE
- George H. W. Bush· 1924 CE–2018 CE
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.