Nan Huai Jin ^{Master Nan}

Master Nan Huai Jin (Nan Huai-Chin) is one of the most renowned and revered lay Buddhist Masters in China. A great teacher in all three traditions of spiritual cultivation in China, namely the Confucian tradition, the Buddhist tradition and the Taoist tradition, he has written more than 30 books in these subjects. His books are always insightful and lively. He speaks with the authority of first hand experience - being a great scholar, a great action master and a great teacher at the same time. Someone with such an aggregate of qualities are hard to find in this arid age in which words and deeds rarely match. These are no empty words! For a glimpse of his experience, we note that he studied the ancient Chinese martial arts in his youth and mastered the works of Confucian and Taoist sages at the age of seventeen. Later on he taught at the Central Military Academy and studied social welfare at the Jin Ling(Nan Jing) University. In 1942, at the age of twenty four, he went into a three-year cultivation retreat in the Er-Mei Mountains, one of the four sacred Buddhist pilgrimage sites in China. It was there that he verified his experience against the Chinese Tripitaka and composed gathas for each of the thirty two chapters of the Diamond Sutra (Published in his book What is the Diamond Sutra All About.) In 1945, he left for Tibet to learn from Tibetan Masters and was conferred the official title of Vajra Master by the Hutuktu (high ranking incarnate) Kung Ka of the Kagyu tradition. He is also the most eminent student of the renowned lay Chan Master Yuan Huan-Xian, making him an adept in both the Chan and the Tantric traditions.

His books are extremly popular in China and some of his more popular books went into 20th edition in Taiwan. There is no question that his teaching has transformed many young intellectuals and is one of the main forces of genuine buddhist resurgence in China. His books are also well respected by the academicians. In the words of Thomas Cleary, the famous scholar and translator of Chinese cultivation works."There is no question that Master Nan's work is a cut above anything else available from modern authors, either academic or sectarian, and I would like to see his work gain its rightful place in the English speaking world. ... [His] studies contain broad learning in all three main traditions of Chinese thought, Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist. Although this comprehensive purview was common to the greatest minds of China since the T'ang dynasty, it is rare among scholars today."