Venerable Master Miao Lien was born in China in 1922 and became a novice monk at the age of nine. At twenty he took the Bhikshu Precepts and was ordained at the Baohua Mountain Temple in Nanjing. He then went to the Lingyen Mountain Temple in Suzhou to receive orthodox monastic training. At twenty-eight, he withdrew for twenty years into the Lantau Island and Castle Peak hermitages in Hong Kong.

There he studied the Buddhist canon, recited the name of Amitabha Buddha, and completed twenty sessions of Pratyutpanna-Samadhi, a difficult practice which required him to prostrate and pace around the Buddha Hall while reciting the Buddha’s name without stopping or resting for 90 days.

In 1975, he traveled to Taiwan to publish The Mahaprajna-Paramita Sastra. While preaching the Dharma in Taiwan, he vowed to build a monastery that would reproduce traditional Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan and transform the land into a Buddhist country, and ultimately the whole world into a Pure Land. In 1986, he initiated construction of Taiwan Lingyen Mountain Temple, a spiritually inspiring and majestic monastery dedicated to training the Sangha and delivering all sentient beings from suffering. With the blessings of the Buddhas and support from the laity, additional branches of Lingyen Mountain Temple soon rose from the ground in various corners of the world, including Canada, the United States, and Australia.

The Venerable Master represented purity and virtue, had a profound knowledge of Buddhism, and lived his life in the most simple and disciplined manner. In keeping with his compassionate vows, the Venerable Master traveled internationally even in his old age to help oversee temple construction, propagate the Dharma, and educate the Sangha. He devoted his entire life to the propagation of Pure Land teachings, and exerted every ounce of his energy to strengthen and prolong the Sangha lineage. All who met him were deeply touched by his spirit of sacrificing himself to relieve the suffering of others.

On June 25, 2008, at the age of eighty-eight, Venerable Master Miao Lien entered Nirvana in a state of tranquility at the Lingyen Mountain Temple in Nantou, Taiwan. He had been a fully ordained monk for sixty-eight years. Physical existence is transient, but the legacy of compassion and virtue the Venerable Master painted during his lifetime will continue to extend beyond the limits of time and space to find manifestation in every Bodhi Mind.