Chapter 183 — Hard to Cross
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 6
Master Pu Cheng's gaze flickered. "You are a man of great wisdom, benefactor. Since you have seen through it, why not see through these worldly attachments as well and enter the Buddha's fold? By this old monk's reckoning, all that is in your heart comes down to a single word: 'stillness.' What say you?"
Ming Li was silent. After a long while he rose, made a bow to Master Pu Cheng, and said mildly, "For your guidance, Master, I am deeply grateful. But though some understanding may have arisen in my heart, it is not that I have seen through the ways of the world. To me, these worldly attachments are precisely what I cannot bear to cut away."
Master Pu Cheng shook his head. "The Buddha says: form is emptiness! All things in this world are thus—gratitude and grievance, love and hate, beauties and foes, all of them are but the one word 'form,' which confounds the mind and disturbs one's calm. Why must you cling so, benefactor?"
Ming Li drew a breath toward the heavens, gave a great laugh, turned, and departed, saying in a clear voice as he went, "Master, you are mistaken. Form is emptiness—then emptiness too is form. You would have me see through the ways of the world, yet do you not know how the ways of the world can be seen through? I stand between heaven and earth, and gratitude and grievance, love and hate—these are my whole life's circumstance. You would have me see through them into calm; yet how do you know that what lies beyond the seeing-through would still be me?"
His voice gradually sank low and at last was heard no more; the man had already gone far from that meditation room. Fa Cheng was silent a long while, then said to Master Pu Cheng, "Master, you have guided him again and again, and yet, alas..."
Master Pu Cheng said calmly, "He has comprehended the cultivation of the Dao and the dharma; in the future I fear he will be the foremost figure in the world. But such a figure cannot see through his own inner demon. What comes after will depend upon his own fate."
Fa Cheng bowed his head, pressed his palms together, and recited the Buddha's name, and spoke no more.
Ming Li left the Little Fan Yin Temple. As he stepped through the temple gate he suddenly halted again, paused a moment, then turned to the right; after a few steps he indeed saw a great stone, half a man's height, lying on the ground.
He went up to the stone and examined it carefully, but saw only that it was covered in mottled marks; there was not a single word or phrase upon it, nor any trace of human carving, and he could not tell what mystery this stone held.
Ming Li frowned and pondered a moment; then his gaze suddenly fixed—something on the stone had caught his eye.
The stone was mottled all over, plainly scarred by who knew how many ages of wind and frost, blade and sword; yet in that one place there was faintly discernible the shape of a pattern. Only, the years were so deep that it was hard to make out.
Ming Li reached out and gently brushed the dust from the stone, examining it closely; after a long while he at last recognized it as the shape of a seashell—only, with the passing of countless years it had turned to stone and become one with the great rock.
Then Ming Li looked the great stone over again carefully, but found no other oddity.
His gaze returned once more to that seashell. Could it be that what Master Pu Cheng wanted him to see was this most ordinary seashell? And what mystery lay in it?
In his heart he went over Master Pu Cheng's words once more, his gaze fixed on the seashell, and slowly it began to brighten. The Sumeru range rose high, and for a thousand li around there was no sea or deep ocean; yet this stone was plainly a thing of Mount Sumeru. Ten million years ago, perhaps this place had been a vast ocean—who could say it was not so?
A man's life, set against the turning of heaven and earth and the vicissitudes of the world, is but a grain in the vast sea, a mustard seed within Sumeru.