Hsin Tao

Hsin Tao was born in Burma, where his family had emigrated from Yunnan in China. At the age of 9, he joined a guerrilla group and engaged in warfare for the next four years. Then, when he was 13 years old, he followed the Republic of China Army to Taiwan. He became interested in the Yiguandao religion when he was 15, still serving in the Army. He was discharged at the age of twenty.

He was ordained as a novice monk in 1973 at the age of 25 under Venerable Master Hsing Yun at Fo Guang Shan, and entered Tsung Lin Buddhist College at the same time.[4] The next year, he went to a mountainous area of Taipei city, Waishuanghsi(外雙溪), and meditated there for over eighteen hours a day. The following year (1975), Hsin Tao sought out an even more remote location, in Yilan County, to continue his practice. At the age of 31 (1979), he moved to Longtan, Yilan, where he continued to meditate, for twenty hours each day. Three years later (1982, age 34), he began a six-month retreat, including long fasts, with neither food or water. In 1983, he moved to a mountain overlooking the eastern coast of Taiwan in Fulong. His daily diet was nine "hundred flower pills" (百花丸, a type of Chinese medicine) and spring water.

He later founded the Ling Jiou Mountain Monastery in 1983. Through the Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Foundation, he founded the Museum of World Religions (世界宗教博物館) in the Yonghe District of New Taipei City, Taiwan, in 2001. He founded the Global Family for Love and Peace[4] in New York, United States, in 2002. He is also interested in interfaith dialogue and currently sits on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute.[5]