Part Two: Life with Master Hsuan Hua
Venerable Master, Hsuan Hua
MUDRA LOVE: What happened when you arrived at Gold Mountain?
RICHARD JOSEPHSON: As soon as I arrived at the temple, I saw a picture of Hsu Yun hanging on their wall. A few years earlier I had seen a picture of Hsu Yun on an altar in Hawaii. I knew he would be my Master. But then I forgot about that photo.
I asked the people at Gold Mountain if the Master was there, but they said no, another Master who received the Dharma transmission from Master Hsu Yun had taken his place after he passed away. Again, I asked if I could meet the new Master, but they told me he was away lecturing in South America and would not return for another two or three months.
So, I stayed at the temple and waited for the Master.
ML: Do you remember your first encounter with Master Hsuan Hua?
RJ: Well, when Shr Fu (Master Hsuan Hua) finally arrived no one had seen him for a long time so everyone gathered around him to talk. The monastery was undergoing construction at the time because of an earthquake so monks were carrying sheet rock up to the third floor. There was a large stack of sheet rock in front of the couch where Shr Fu was sitting, so I knelt before him and proceeded to carry the sheet rock one-by-one up to the third floor until it was all gone.
I did not say a word to Shr Fu, but I certainly felt his presence.
ML: What was Shr Fu like?
RJ: He was like a mother and friend to me in many ways. We might have been friends in past lives who played together or maybe even were parents to each other. I was one of the few disciples that could joke with him and play around, but he was also my teacher and precept door.
My father, Heng Kung in meditation at Gold Mountain Monastery.
I also felt close to him in meditation, a feeling of being one. Sometimes, we would even talk during meditation, having whole conversations and getting lost in them. We needed very few words to understand each other. We would just sit and look at each other.
He would come into my room, which was right next door to him for many years and because I was usually meditating when he came in, he would whisk me off with his dust broom. He would say a word a two, sometimes just a gesture, and that would be my entire instructions for the day.
ML: You stayed with the Master from 1972-1983 were you a fully ordained Buddhist monk?
RJ: Pretty much—I took lay precepts as a novice monk in 1972 and then became a fully ordained monk a few years later.
ML: When it was finally time to leave- you left without telling anyone, not even your Master. Why?
RJ: Because I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything. We were just too close that I didn’t feel there were any words that were adequate to say goodbye, so I just left.