BHIKSHUNI HENG CHIH:
This is Loni [formerly Bhikshuni Heng Yin]. Loni left home with me, so when we hear people talk about the two nuns, Loni was the other nun. She is a very intelligent woman. She memorized the whole Shurangama Mantra in one month. Later, because of her causes and conditions, she married after going back to lay-life. She has a son who, she told me yesterday, Shr Fu said was even smarter than she. So we will see how deep his good roots are. But it's for sure that Loni's are very deep.

LONI BAUR: Namo Amitabha! I didn't know until yesterday that I was going to speak. Dharma Master Chih is a very persuasive individual, and you just heard her telling you all the wonderful things about me.

BHIKSHUNI HENG CHIH: I have to interrupt; Loni is not telling the truth now because it's a deal. If she talks, then there is a payoff.

LONI BAUR: I was just going to say she omitted quite a bit of stuff that probably nobody wants to hear about. I feel like the Dharma Protector that Shr Fu always used to put over to the side because he was uncomfortable sitting close to Shr Fu. I feel uncomfortable sitting up here.    

In 1965 I was studying philosophy and living in Seattle, Washington, and I became interested in studying Eastern philosophy and Chinese language. About that time I met some friends. One of them was Ron Epstein, whom you probably have heard from already, and I also met Dharma Master Chih at that time. In those days, there were a lot of hippies and I was one of them. So I decided that rather than staying in Seattle and learning Chinese out of books, I would hitchhike to California and meet this teacher that Ron Epstein had told me about. The first time I went to Waverly Place in Chinatown and when I (and this is true for a lot of people) got close to meeting a really true teacher, I became really nervous. I made it all the way to the front door of the Buddhist Lecture Hall at 125 Waverly Street. I had a hippy dress, a headband, a guitar, and I looked at the door and I suddenly got extremely sick I ended up in a hospital. I took the airplane back to Seattle. A month later, I came back again. This time I made it in the door. However, I was so nervous and scared that it took me about a half an hour to get up the stairs. The stairs made the most awful noise and I didn't want anyone to hear me coming. I took a step and I waited and it went squeak, squeak, squeak. I got to the door and I got inside and I met Shr Fu and had tea. Then I left, and in one day, I won't say all of my habits, but 90% of them were abandoned. I kept coming back, and eventually left home. Dharma Master Chih and three other people and I all took the airplane to Taiwan, to Hai-hui Monastery.    

Dharma Master Chih and I had many adventures while we were there. First of all, it rained every single day. It was a 12th century temple on top of the mountain. There was no hot water; there was no heat. We got sick and Dharma Master Chih got into a long, I won't say argument, but discussion, about why the bed should be removed from our room. Because if you took the precepts, you could not sleep in a high, broad bed. We slept on the floor. Dharma Master Chih was always able to sleep sitting up. I always started out sleeping sitting up and sometimes I made it so that when I woke up, I was sitting up. But most of the time I was in some strange position. We finally got the bed out of the room. We went through the ordination ceremony and came back and began translating Sutras. Shr Fu was very insistent that his lectures and Sutras be translated into English. There were a lot of people at the Buddhist Lecture Hall then .... students. There were some who had degrees in Chinese and they were extremely well educated. I wasn't. But I translated anyway and Dharma Master Chih and I worked very hard translating. In those days, a lot of people might not even remember, but we were using things called the typewriter and carbon paper and a lot of white-out and we finally managed to translate the Sixth Patriarch Sutra that the Ven. Master had lectured for us. My early memories of being around the Ven. Master: I did not know Chinese, but when I listened to him speak, I knew that what he was saying was what I needed to know and so I learned Chinese as fast as I possibly could. My other early memories are of arguing with the educated members of our group that it was possible for people like me, a twenty-year-old girl, to learn Chinese. The opinion from some quarters was that teaching girls Chinese was sort of like teaching Chinese to cats. I knew that if I came up here today and started talking, we could go very late. So we will have a translation.  

BHIKSHUNI HENG CHIH: Shr Fu said it was hard in the beginning. We were working; and we were buying our own air tickets .... We were giving all our money to Shr Fu and that was going to be for our air tickets to go to Taiwan. At that time we didn't know there was this connection. So we had to work almost up to the time to go, so there would be enough money for the air tickets. When it came time to apply, we still had hair and we were supposed to be novices getting ready to take our full precepts, right? So, Shr Fu said, "It's OK." So he had us dressed up in a Catholic hat so our hair was all covered up. He said, "It's OK; they won't know. They'll figure it's some new style of Buddhism in America." So, we shaved our heads about the night before we got on the plane.

I wanted to tell you as we sit here in this lecture hall, if you look around I you, you'll see all the Buddhas on the wall and in the back room .. and there are a lot of them The other neat thing about them is, if you look at each one of them carefully, they all have a different expression. It must have been the in early or mid 1970s when I lived at Gold Mountain I Monastery. Every once in a while we would get a phone call from Shr Fu. He would tell me to drive down to Mission Street in San Francisco (we had this station wagon) and buy fifteen 100-pound sacks of plaster. I didn't ask questions. I went down there and loaded them into the station wagon and drove them out to the location they were supposed to be, which was just an ordinary house. A door would open, and I would I drag them inside and shut the door. I did that for a long time, and I had I no idea why. One day Shr Fu asked me to come inside, and I came in. It was just an ordinary-sized garage, and it was full of these little Buddhas. There were several molds that he had made of different sizes, and there were Buddhas who were not painted yet. There were Buddhas who were not sanded yet, and there were a lot of them. I said, "Well, who's doing all this?" He said, "I'm doing it myself. If you want to do something, you do it yourself. That's the best way. And I said, "Oh, okay." He said, "I'm making 10,000 of them." A few years later when we purchased this property and we all came up here, word got out that there were going to be 10,000 Buddhas in the Buddha Hall. I knew where they where and I knew who made them. It's these kinds of things that ordinary people don't do. There was also a set of paintings that he made. One day when I went in that garage, I saw some oil paintings. There were several of them there and they were each a picture of Shr Fu sitting in the Forty-two Hands and Eyes meditation, each one represented in a different painting. They were not done; maybe there were eight of them there. I said, " Oh, you painted these!" "Yeah." "What are you going to do with them?" He said, "I don't know yet. I think maybe we need to raise some money in the future. What I might do is make them all fly around the room, and then people would pay a lot of money to have them." He was joking. But those pictures are here and they are on the grounds. I think you might be able to see them yourselves. Each one is quite extraordinary.      

~ To be continued