After serving three years in the U.S. Army (refusing assignment in Vietnam and subsequently being reassigned as a clerk in Germany), he took a degree in anthropology from University of California, Santa Barbara and went on to graduate studies in language (Chinese) and anthropology at Columbia University, but dropped out in 1972 to go to the Fo Kwang Shan Buddhist monastery in Taiwan.

In the years following, he lived in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Since 1989 he has traveled extensively in China, both as a journalist and on his own. In 1993, after 22 years in East Asia, he returned to the US. In 1999 and 2000, he taught Buddhism and Taoism at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. He now lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

His book Road to Heaven prompted Edward A. Burger to seek out and study with Buddhist hermits in the Zhongnan mountains of China and direct the 2005 film Amongst White Clouds.