The five sacred mountains of China are T’ai-shan in the east, Hua-shan in the west, Heng-shan in the south, another Heng-shan in the north, and Sung-shan in the center. Heng-shan in the south is the highest of them. It has Chiu-i-shan to its south, Tung-t’ing Lake to its north, and the Hsiao and Hsiang rivers flow round it. Its five peaks, Chu-yung the Fire Spirit, Tzŭ-kai the Violet Baldaquin, T’ien-chu the Pillars of Heaven, Shih-lin the Rock Granary, and Lien-hua the Lotus Peak have their tops hidden in the clouds and wreathing mists around their shoulders, so that on a hazy day it is impossible to make out their shape.
In ancient times the great Yü, after he had controlled the floods, went up this mountain and set up a memorial stone on which he recorded his feats, and the superb characters are still clear and easy to read. In the time of Chin, Lady Wei became a Taoist adept and by divine appointment she came to live on this mountain with a troupe of fairy boys and girls; and so she is called Lady Wei of the Southern Peak. There is not space to tell here of all the wonderful things that were done in the mountain.
In the time of the T’ang dynasty an old monk from India came to China and took a liking to the Lotus Peak in the Heng-shan range and built a monastery for his five or six hundred disciples, to whom he expounded his copy of the Diamond Sutra. He was the venerable Liu- ju, usually known as the Great Master Liu-kuan. He taught the people and dispersed the evil spirits so that men said that a living Buddha had come on the earth.
Among his hundreds of disciples some thirty or more were advanced adepts. The youngest of them was called Hsing-chen. His complexion was pure as driven snow, and his soul was as limpid as a stream in autumn. He was barely twenty years old, but he had mastered all the scriptures, and Liu-kuan loved him so much for his grace and wisdom that he intended him for his successor.
When Liu-kuan expounded the law to his disciples, the Dragon King from Tung-t’ing Lake used to transform himself into an old man dressed in white and come to sit in the lecture hall to hear the sermons. One day Liu-kuan said to his pupils: ‘I am growing old and feeble. I have not left the monastery gates for over ten years. I am no longer able to go out. Will one of you volunteer to go to the Dragon King’s water palace and return his compliment for me?’
Hsing-chen at once asked if he might be allowed to go. Liu-kuan was delighted and sent him off with his orders. He was dressed in a heavy robe and carried an official staff with six jangling rings attached to the top. So he gaily made his way toward Tung-t’ing.
Just after Hsing-chen had set out, the gatekeeper of the monastery came to the Teacher and told him that the Lady Wei had sent eight of her fairy girls and that they were waiting outside the gate. He ordered them to be admitted. They presented themselves in due order where he was sitting, circling him three times and scattering fairy flowers before they delivered Lady Wei’s message:
‘Sir, you live on the west side of the mountain and I live on the east. We are near neighbors, but I am so busy that I have never once had opportunity to attend at the monastery and hear your teaching. So now I am sending some of my maids to greet you and offer you gifts of celestial flowers and fairy fruit, and some gems and silk brocade as tokens of my respect and devotion.’
Then each girl knelt down and raised the gifts of flowers, fruit, gems and silks high over her head as she presented them to the old man. He handed them to his disciples who set them out as offerings before the image of Buddha in the temple.
Liu-kuan joined his hands in reverent greeting and said: 'What has an old monk like me done to merit the favors of an immortal?’ Then he entertained the girls appropriately and dismissed them.
They took their leave of him and left. Outside the monastery gate they began to talk among themselves about how the entire mountain had originally been their domain, but since Liu-kuan had established his monastery with its enclosure, there were parts where they could not go freely, it was a long time since they had had a chance to see the Lotus Peak section. ‘Now that the Lady has sent us here on this lovely spring day and it is still quite early, let’s go to the top of the peak and loosen our robes, wash our ribbons in the waterfall and make a few poems. Then when we go back home to the palace we can boast about it to our companions!’
Joining hands, they strolled up to the ridge to see the source of a waterfall. Then they followed the watercourse down as far as the stone bridge, where they decided to rest for a while.
It was springtime. The valleys were full of all kinds of flowers, surrounding them like a pink mist. A hundred species of birds sang like an orchestra of pipes and piccolos. The spring air was intoxicating. The eight girls sat on the bridge and looked down into the water. Streams from several valleys met there to form a wide pool under the bridge. It was clear as a polished mirror and their pretty dark eyebrows and crimson dresses were reflected there like paintings from a master’s hand. They smiled at their reflections and chattered together happily without thought of returning home and did not notice when the sun began to slip behind the hills.
At the same time Hsing-chen had reached Tung-t’ing Lake and gone through the waves to the Crystalline Palace. The Dragon King had heard that a messenger was on his way from Liu-kuan and so he appeared outside the palace gate with his whole train of courtiers, to meet him. After they had gone into the palace, the Dragon King sat on his throne and Hsing-chen kowtowed before him and presented his master’s message. The Dragon King replied graciously and gave a banquet. Hsing-chen noticed that the food, all of fantastic dainties, was entirely unlike what men eat. The king himself offered a cup, but Hsing-chen declined it: ‘Wine inflames the mind. It is a strict law of Buddha that monks should not drink it. Please do not force me to break my vows.’
But the Dragon King replied: ‘Of course I know that wine is one of the five things that Buddha forbids; but my wine is quite different from the wine made by men. It neither arouses the passions nor befuddles the mind. Please do not refuse it.’
Hsing-chen was not able to hold out against this, and he drained three cups before he took leave of the Dragon King and left the palace, riding on the wind to the Lotus Peak. When he came down at the foot of the peak his face was burning and he began to feel dizzy from the wine. He thought to himself: ‘If Liu-kuan sees me in this condition there will be no end to his anger.’
So he went toward the stream, took off his robe and laid it on the white sand while he swirled his hands in the water and bathed his flaming face. Suddenly a strange fragrance was carried to him on the breeze. It was like neither incense nor flowers. It entered his mind and intoxicated his spirit, like something he had never imagined before. He thought: ‘Whatever wonderful flowers have bloomed upstream? Their scent has come down with the current. I must go and see what they are.’
He put on his robe again, arranged it neatly, and then began to walk up the river. So it happened that the eight fairies sitting on the bridge came face to face with Hsing-chen. He at once dropped his staff, joined his hands and bowed deeply: ‘Gracious ladies, I beg your pardon. I am a disciple of the master Liu-kuan of Lotus Peak, and I have just been on an errand for him. Now I am on my way back. This bridge where you are sitting is very narrow and there is not room for a man to pass by ladies sitting there. Will you kindly step down for a moment and allow me to cross over?’
The fairies replied: ‘We are attendants of the Lady Wei, and we are just on our way back from delivering a message from her to the Master, Liu-kuan. We stopped here to rest for a little while. The Book of Rites says that men should pass on the left and women on the right, but this bridge is extremely narrow. Since we were here before you came, we suggest you find another path.’
Hsing-chen said: ‘The stream is deep and there is no other path. Where else do you suggest I should go?’
The fairies said: ‘Bodhidharma is supposed to have crossed the sea on a reed. If you have really studied with Liu-kuan, you must have great powers, too. Why are you disputing the right of way with a group of girls, instead of passing over this little stream?’
Hsing-chen laughed. ‘I see what you are after. You want me to pay some sort of toll. A poor monk has no money, but I have eight pearls, and I will offer you those as a payment.’
He snapped off a branch of peach blossom and threw it at the girls. Eight flowers fell to the ground and immediately changed into sparkling fragrant jewels. The eight fairies each picked up one of the jewels, looked at Hsing-chen and, laughing gaily, at once rose in the air and rode away on the wind. Hsing-chen stood for a long while on the bridge looking in all directions, but he could not see where they had gone, and soon the shimmering mists had dispersed and the fragrance had faded away.
Hsing-chen was deeply troubled and could not quieten his soul. He returned and told Liu-kuan what the Dragon King had said. Liu-kuan upbraided him for taking so long to get back. Hsing-chen said: ‘The Dragon King detained me with his kindness so that I could not refuse and get away. It made me late in leaving.’ Liu-kuan asked no more questions, but sent him away to rest.
Hsing-chen went to his cell. As he sat alone in the twilight, the voices of the eight fairies kept sounding in his ears and their beautiful forms kept appearing before his eyes as though they were there in the room with him. However hard he tried, he could not collect his thoughts as he sat distractedly trying to meditate. He thought: ‘If a man studies the Confucian classics while he is young and then serves the country as a general or a minister of state, he gets to wear a brocade coat and hang a seal of office on his jade girdle; he sees lovely things and hears wonderful things, he takes pleasure in beauty and leaves an honorable reputation for his descendants. That is the way for a man worthy of the name. We poor Buddhist monks have only a bowl of rice and a cup of water, volumes of scriptures and a hundred and eight beads to hang round our necks. All we do is expound doctrine. It may be holy and profound, but it is appallingly lonely. Suppose I do master all the doctrines of Mahayana and succeed to the chair here on the Lotus Peak carrying on Liu-kuan’s teaching, once my spirit and body have been parted on the funeral pyre, who will know that Hsing-chen ever existed?’
His troubled mind kept sleep at bay until deep into the night. If he closed his eyes he saw the eight fairies; if he opened them the girls would disappear without trace.
Then he pulled himself together: ‘The law of Buddha for purifying the heart is the highest course in life. I have been a monk for ten years and have avoided the smallest fault. These deceitful thoughts will do my progress irreparable damage.’
He burned some sandalwood, composed himself on his prayer-mat, and was concentrating quietly on the Thousand Buddhas as he told the beads of the rosary round his neck, when one of the boys called from outside: ‘Have you gone to bed, brother? The Master wants to see you.’
Hsing-chen was alarmed and thought: ‘It must be something serious for him to call me at this time of night.’ He went with the boy to the lecture hall.
Liu-kuan had gathered all his disciples. He was sitting on the lotus seat, looking fearful and solemn. The lanterns and candles filled the hall with light. He rebuked Hsing-chen harshly: ‘Hsing-chen! Do you understand your sin?”
Hsing-chen, very frightened, knelt at the foot of the dais and answered: ‘I have served you for more than ten years and I have never willingly disobeyed you. Now you are accusing me, and I do not wish to hide anything from you, but truly I do not know what I have done wrong.’
Liu-kuan grew angrier: ‘A monk has three things to study: his body, his speech and his will. You went to the Dragon Palace and drank wine. That was sin enough. On the way back you lingered at the stone bridge and dallied in idle chatter with eight girls, then threw flowers at them and toyed with jewels. After that, when you got home you dwelt on their beauty and thought about worldly riches and honor and mentally rejected the pure way of life of a monk. You have sinned in all three respects at once. You cannot stay here now.’
Hsing-chen wept and beat his head and begged: ‘Master! I have sinned, I know. But I drank wine in the Dragon Palace because I could not refuse my host’s insistence. I talked with the fairies at the bridge because I had to ask them to get out of the way. I was tempted in my cell, but I repented and controlled myself. I have no other sins! If I have committed other sins, please instruct me and set me right. Why do you drive me away so cruelly and give me no chance to correct myself? I left my parents when I was only twelve years old to come to you and be a monk, and you loved me like your son. I respect and serve you as my father. The relation between teacher and disciple is sacred. Where can I go if I leave the Lotus Peak?’
Liu-kuan said: ‘I am making you go because you want to go. Why should I send you away if you wanted to stay? You say “Where shall I go?” You must go where you wish to go.’
Then he shouted: ‘Mighty Ones!’ Immediately the commander of the yellow-turbaned constables of hell appeared and bowed to receive his orders. Liu-kuan said to him: ‘Arrest this sinner, take him to hell and hand him over to King Yama!’
When Hsing-chen heard this he sweated with terror. Tears streamed from him as he put his head to the floor and implored: ‘Father, father! hear me, please! When the holy Ananda slept with a prostitute, Sakyamuni did not condemn him, but admonished him. I sinned through carelessness, but I did not go so far as Ananda. Why are you sending me to hell?”
Liu-kuan spoke severely: ‘Although the holy Ananda slept with a prostitute, his mind was never shaken; you set eyes on female beauty only once and completely lost your heart. You cannot escape the suffering of transmigration.’
Hsing-chen still wept, and did not want to move. Liu-kuan spoke to comfort him: ‘If your mind is not purified, even though you are here in a mountain monastery, you will never attain perfection. But if you stay faithful to the way of Buddha, even though you get buried deep under the dust of the world, you will surely come back one day. If ever you want to come, I will fetch you back. Go now, and trust me.’
Hsing-chen then bowed to the image of Buddha, took leave of his master and brethren, and went with the constables to the nether world, past the Gate of Hades and Terrace of ‘Looking Back in Regret,’ till they reached the city walls of hell, where the sentries asked why they had come. The constables answered: ‘We have brought a sinner according to the orders given by the Master Liu-kuan.’
The demon soldiers opened the gates and let them in, and they went to the presence-chamber where the reason for Hsing-chen’s arrival was announced and Yama dismissed the constables and spoke to him: ‘Although you lived on Lotus Peak, your name was already written in the roster on the incense table before King Ksitigarbha, Guardian of Earth and Deliverer from Hell. I understood from this that you had already achieved perfection and would win grace and salvation for many souls. What is the reason why you have come here?”
Hsing-chen was bitterly ashamed and hesitated before he replied: ‘I have sinned against my teacher by letting myself be misled by the South Peak fairies when I met them on the road, so I have been sent here. Do as you must.’
Yama sent some of his attendants to Ksitigarbha with the message: ‘Master Liu-kuan of the South Peak has sent his disciple Hsing-chen to hell for punishment, but he is not like other culprits. What shall I do with him?’
The Bodhisattva replied: ‘A man seeking perfection must find his own way. Why do you ask me?’
But Yama was intent on judging the matter properly. At that moment, however, two demon soldiers came in and said: ‘The yellow turban constables have come again at Liu-kuan’s order, with eight fairies under arrest.’
Hsing-chen was amazed at this news. Then he heard Yama say: ‘Bring them in!’
The constables brought the eight women in and Yama made them kneel before he asked: ‘Fairies of South Peak, indeed! You fairies have an infinite world of ineffable delights. How it is that you have come here?’
The fairies answered shamefacedly: ‘Lady Wei sent us to the Master Liu-kuan with a message and on the way back we stopped to talk with the young novice Hsing-chen at the stone bridge. This made the master very angry. He said we had defiled Buddha’s demesne, and sent a letter to Lady Wei telling her to send us to your Majesty. We implore you to be compassionate and send us to a pleasant place to live.’
King Yama called nine messengers to stand before him and commanded them: ‘Take each of these nine people and lead them back to the land of the living.’
Yama had barely finished speaking when a great wind suddenly arose in front of the palace and swept the nine people into the air and whirled them away to different corners of space. Hsing-chen was carried hither and thither on the wind behind his messenger until he touched down on firm ground. The noise of the wind died down, and both his feet were steady. When he had collected his wits and looked around, he found he was closed in by thickly-wooded mountains with clear streams flowing peacefully by. Here and there between the trees he caught glimpses of bamboo fences and thatched roofs, about ten houses altogether. The messenger made him wait outside one of the houses while he himself went in. While waiting, Hsing-chen heard someone in the next-door house say: ‘The wife of the hermit Yang is pregnant. She’s over fifty years old. It’s amazing! It’s past her time, but I haven’t heard the baby crying. I’m worried.’
Hsing-chen realized he was to be born again in Yang’s house and thought to himself: ‘I am going to be born into the world again. I have no body now, only a spirit. My flesh and bones have been cremated on the Lotus Peak, where I left them. I was too young to have any disciples and so there will have been nobody to collect up my relics.’
He fell to thinking like this in considerable distress when the messenger came out and beckoned him to follow, and said: ‘This is the township of Hsiu-chou in the province of Huai-nan of the empire of T’ang. This house is the home of the hermit Yang. He will be your father. His wife’s surname is Liu, and she is to be your mother. You were destined from your previous life to be the son of this family, so go in quickly and do not lose this good opportunity.’
Hsing-chen went in and saw the hermit wearing a kerchief of coarse hemp and a rough coat, sitting on the wooden floor by a brazier stirring a medicinal concoction. The smell of it filled the house. The woman’s moans could be heard coming quietly from the inner room. The messenger urged him to go into the room, but Hsing-chen hesitated, so the messenger pushed him from behind. Hsing-chen fell over and lost consciousness, calling out for help as he fainted. The sound stuck in his throat and would not come out as words: it was only the crying of a new-born babe. The midwife said: ‘It cries so loud, it must be a boy.’
The hermit Yang was still stirring the medicine for his wife when he heard the baby cry. With mingled alarm and joy he hurried into the room, to find that she had already safely given birth to a son. Overcome with happiness he bathed the child in scented water, put it to rest and then attended to its mother. When Hsing-chen cried because he was hungry they gave him milk, and as soon as his stomach was full he stopped wailing.
While he was very tiny he still carried traces of memory about the Lotus Peak in his mind, but as he grew up and came to love his parents, he completely forgot all about his previous life. The hermit saw that his son had fine bones, and one day, stroking the child’s forehead, he said to his wife: ‘This child is a heavenly being come to live among men.’ So he named him Shao-yu, which means ‘brief sojourner’, and gave him Ch’ien-li, which means ‘a thousand leagues’, for his literary name.
They loved him dearly and by the time he was ten years old his face was as pretty as a piece of jade, his eyes shone like stars, his character was gentle and strong and he was wonderfully intelligent. He was a model child, destined to become a great man.
The hermit said to his wife: ‘I was not originally a man of this world, but because I was joined to you by our karma, I have stayed a long time in this world of dust. A long long time ago I had a letter from my friends the immortals of P’eng-lai-shan, asking me to go to them, but I could not go and leave you alone. Now that heaven has helped us and given you a brilliant son of more than ordinary ability, you have someone else to look after you. You will have riches and honor in your old age. So do not grieve when I leave you.’
One day a group of immortals came to the house, some riding white deer, some on blue cranes. Then they departed toward the deep mountain valleys. The hermit Yang made a sign with his hand toward the sky, to summon a white crane which he mounted, and flew happily away. He had gone before his wife could utter a sound.
She and her son grieved beyond words. The hermit occasionally sent a letter through the air, but he never again returned to his home.