Venerable Master Hsing Yun was born in Jiangdu, Jiangsu Province in 1927 and passed away in 2023.
He was the 48th descendant of the Linji Chan school. He arrived in Taiwan, China in early 1949. In 1953, he stayed at the Buddhist Chanting Association of Yilan, which laid the foundation for his work in promoting Buddhism. He founded Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order in 1967 to promote culture, education, charity, sadhana, and other causes. He established more than three hundred temples worldwide and twenty-seven Fo Guang Yuan Art Galleris, founded The Merit Times and the BLTV, and established sixteen Buddhist colleges around the world. He also founded Pu-Men Senior High School in Taiwan, China, and five universities, namely Nanhua University, Fo Guang University, University of the West in the United States, Nan Tien Institute in Australia, and Guang Ming College in Philippines, which were integrated into the first transnational and trans-continental international “Fo Guang Shan University Consortium”.