Myoho Pulai has been a Buddhist since 1978, and has been a Shingon Buddhist practitioner for sixteen years. She was a volunteer chaplain at Folsom Prison for four years, and went through extensive monastic training, taking her final vows to become a Shingon monk in 2009. She is also a photographer, and had been a freelance writer and columnist for local publications in Sacramento, California and Flagstaff, Arizona.