During a visit last fall to the Temple of Great Awakening, the sprawling complex built by the Buddhist organization Fo Guang Shan in Yixing, the Venerable Master Hsing Yun, the group’s founder and one of modern China’s most prominent religious figures.
Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum in Taiwan
About Master Hsing Yun
Venerable Master Hsing Yun is a Chinese Buddhist monk, author, philanthropist, and founder of the Fo Guang Shan monastic order, which has branches throughout Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Ordained at the age of twelve in Jiangsu Province, China, Hsing Yun has spent over seventy years as a Buddhist monk promoting what he calls “Humanistic Buddhism”—Buddhism that meets the needs of people and is integrated into all aspects of daily life.
In 1949, Hsing Yun went to Taiwan and began to nurture the burgeoning Buddhist culture on the island. Early on in his monastic career, he was involved in promoting Buddhism through the written word. He has served as an editor and contributor for many Buddhist magazines and periodicals, authoring the daily columns “Between Ignorance and Enlightenment,” “Dharma Words,” and “Hsing Yun’s Chan Talk.”In 1957, he started his own Buddhist magazine, Awakening the World, and in 2000, the first daily Buddhist newspaper, the Merit Times.



