| UNIBUDS Navigation
|
|
| Contents
Significance of Ulambana Festival |
“First
American Buddhist Monk to Complete A Three-Steps-One-Bow
Pilgrimage”
"During my first year of studying Buddhism, I worked part time as an orderly at the Jewish Home for the Aged in San Francisco. Seeing all the suffering, sickness and death there gave me a very strong impression of the vanity of self-centered existence. I saw very clearly that, although we people of the West have a great flair for life, we have no idea how to prepare for a dignified exit from this world. We have a thousand false values ingrained in us which we cling to desperately right up to the last minute. Buddhism, I found, could help prepare us for this important transition. After a year as a Buddhist layperson, I shaved my head and became a novice monk. A year later, in 1972, I became a fully ordained Bhikshu, a Buddhist monk." Starting in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, Hung Ju and Hung Yo, bowed through the city of Sausalito and then followed the coast for a thousand miles along the edge of the Pacific Northwest. Hung Yo did some bowing, but also took care of their few supplies, sleeping bags, tent, journals, some food, while Hung Ju bowed. They endured severe wind, rain, and cold, as well as wrenched backs, sore knees, and the consequences of using poison oak for toilet paper. The monks stayed in their rain-soaked tent, in abandoned buildings with mice or dead animals, and in a hayloft with goats below. The town of Tomales, California, held up their homecoming parade for half an hour as the gathered crowd watched the two monks pass by. Many new found friends offered food, money, shelter, and toilet paper. Children sought kung-fu lessons. News reporters often interviewed them; teachers brought them into their classrooms to give talks and to answer students' questions; thoughtful people explored the meaning of life with them. Hung Ju continued to bow for peace for the world and for peace within. His autobiographical introduction and other excerpts from the book, 'Three Steps, One Bow' can be viewed at http://www.drba.org. "Speaking for both myself and Hung Yo, we would like to transfer any merit we may have acquired from this journey to living beings throughout the universe, hoping that they may quickly obtain the absolute, perfect enlightenment." |
Timothy J. Testu, formerly Bhikshu Hung Ju, is most remembered for a 1100-mile pilgrimage he took as a Buddhist monk from San Francisco, California, to Marblemount, Washington, October 1973 to August 1974, bowing every third step.