Dharma Master Chi Hoi (“Ocean of Wisdom”) was born in 1926 in a village near Beijing. At the age of seventeen he was initiated at Chi Fu Monastery, in the Hong Luo Mountains north of Beijing. For three years, Chi Hoi learned the teachings of the Pure Land school and practiced the “recitation of Amitabha Buddha.” In 1944 he entered a Buddhist academy in Beijing to study literature, history, and logic in addition to religion. Chi Hoi then learned the Buddhist doctrines of the Tien-t’ai school from the venerable Master Tan Shu in Hong Kong’s Southern China Buddhist Academy between 1952 and 1962. He was later appointed the forty-fifth dharma successor of the Tien-t’ai school. He also studied the Abidharma-kosa-bhasya and Mind-only theory at Hong Kong’s Nai Ming Academy since 1962. Chi Hoi’s philosophical perspective is based on the fundamental principles of both the Pure Land and the Tien-t’ai schools; his approach to enlightenment likewise combines the faith and devotion to Amitabha Buddha espoused by the former and the one vehicle teaching and emphasis on meditation from the latter.

In 1967 Dharma Master Chi Hoi came to the United States to preach Buddhism and in 1972, founded the Buddhist Wisdom Lecture Hall of Fo Shan Monastery in San Francisco. Chi Hoi devotes his time not only to writing Buddhist literature, but also to traveling around the world to lecture on various sutras as well as Buddhist philosophy. Master Chi Hoi wishes to introduce Buddhism to all, and to bring harmony and serenity to the modern mind.