“Ah, Meng Ning, silly girl. Look at all this Mic Ko has done for you, even before you’re married to him. Grandma was right, she could see that you’d fall in love with a nice man, marry, have many children and a good life.” The corners of her lips curled into a mischievous smile. “Besides, you’ve been worrying about money and haven’t found a job yet, and Hong Kong will soon go back to China, so it’s good that this Mic Ko comes along now, not to mention he’ll give you free medical care!”
“Ma, you think I’m marrying Michael because of this?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But it’s still a bonus that he’s an American and a doctor, don’t you think?” Then she added, widening her eyes, “But, still, be careful. This Mic Ko is still a
We laughed.
“Meng Ning, about the bracelet. Why don’t you donate it to that pretty nun who always appears on television?”
“You mean Yi Kong?”
“Whatever you call her.”
“But I thought you didn’t like her.”
“Ah, silly girl. I disliked her because I feared you’d follow her to be a nun.” Mother made a face. “In fact, I like her now; she’s so pretty and gave you so much help. So I think we should pay her back by donating this to her temple. Besides, we can also accumulate more merit-”
“But, Ma…How do you know that she helped me?”
“Ah, you think your mother’s a stupid old woman, eh? Of course I knew, I just didn’t want to embarrass you. How could you have had the money to pay for your father’s funeral, and pay back the debt to the Big Ear Hole? Of course I know. I always do.” Mother winked. “Like your grandma, I have a third eye.”
39. Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust
Two days later, I rode the train to Golden Lotus Temple, passing the sights that had become familiar to me since my teens. But this time I was seeing Yi Kong to announce my wedding. How would she react-angry? worried? detached? Would she agree to conduct a Buddhist wedding for me? I also had determined to donate my jade bracelet to the nunnery, for this was to accumulate merit for Michael, Mother, and me.
I had called Golden Lotus Temple and asked for Enlightened to Emptiness. After I’d told her my wish to visit Yi Kong, she said, “You’ve got perfect timing, Miss Du.” Her voice sent waves of vibration to me from the other end of the line. “For Yi Kong Shifu has just returned from Suzhou this morning.”
Before I had a chance to ask what the purpose of the trip was, the novice’s enthusiasm again swelled in my ear. “This time Shifu has brought back several architects to build an imitation Suzhou rock garden for our temple.”
But wasn’t the nunnery in financial difficulty after its benefactor had disappeared? I thought, but stopped myself from asking.
Yi Kong was already waiting for me when I entered her office.
“Hello, Meng Ning,” she said, looking up at me. Her face beamed, her hands choreographing several tiny antique Buddha figures on her desk. “Please sit down.”
I sat down in front of her large wooden desk. Amidst her curios were set a teapot and two cups; rose petals floated on the steaming amber liquid. The aroma reached into my nostrils, then seemed to travel down my esophagus and deep into my chest. Beside the tea set was a ceramic plate with nuts piled into a small mountain.
Yi Kong said, “Let’s have tea.” As we sipped our tea and nibbled on the nuts, I started to give an initial report of my work at Anyue, then our conversation drifted around her work, her art collection, and her recent trip to China.
I’d been expecting her, as usual, to lecture me on the illusion of human passion and the delusion of human love. But, to my surprise, after we’d finished our second round of tea, she spoke not a single word related to these. Just when I was wondering if maybe this was the right moment to bring up my marriage, she flashed a lighthearted smile. And, instead of posing her usual question, When are you coming to play with us? she said, “You look good, Meng Ning. When are you getting married?”
This took me by surprise. Perhaps she’d acquired psychic powers from her nearly thirty years of meditation and was able to tell that I’d come to announce my marriage. Or, was
“Hmmm…” I stuttered, “soon…Yi Kong Shifu.” Then, following the Chinese saying that when you hit a snake, let it crawl up the stick, I asked, “And, Shifu…I’ll be very grateful if…if…” I mustered up all my courage and blurted out, “You can take the time and trouble to perform a Buddhist wedding for us.”
She looked at me for a few moments with her penetrating eyes, nodding. “Yes.” Then, “What is the date of the wedding?”
“Early next year, February nineteenth.”
“Then I can arrange for the wedding to be held at our new Hall of Grand Heroic Treasures.” She lifted her cup to her lips. “Let’s have more tea now, then I’ll take you to see the murals in the new hall.”
After we had finished our third round of tea and flattened the mountain of nuts, she stood up from her chair and cast me a sidelong glance. “Well, be happy.” Then, “Come, Meng Ning, let’s go.”
I hurriedly followed her out of the office. Together we strolled past the library, the nursing home, the orphanage, the elementary school, and the half-finished construction site. She walked steadily with her back straight and her head held high. On the way, half a dozen workers and passersby stopped to bow to her with their hands held together in the adoration gesture; she returned a nod and a smile. Though she’d put on some weight, her gait was still as graceful as a crane’s. It pleased me to watch her heels mysteriously playing hide-and-seek from under her robe. I wondered what the arches of her feet looked like wrapped inside those soft slippers. The hollow of a bridge, or the curve of a fish?
“Here we are. This is the Hall of Grand Heroic Treasures.” Yi Kong’s voice cut off my idle thoughts. She was already stepping across the threshold into the hall; I quickened my pace to fall into step behind the undulating hem of her robe. Cold air blasted from within, raising gooseflesh on my arms. A mixture of raw wood, wet cement, paint, oil, and turpentine stung my nostrils.
The hall was huge-seven or eight thousand square feet. Round, thick red pillars like giants’ legs soared from its four corners to the high ceiling above. The entire wall was covered with an enormous mural-a whirlwind of pink, gold, and periwinkle. Turning my head in a circle to take it all in, I discovered it was filled with goddesses; hundreds, possibly thousands of them: flying while strumming a mandolin, bowing a fiddle, plucking a harp, tapping a drum. I could almost hear the twang of a plucked string, the lingering echo of a vibrato, the wailing of a fiddle, the distant thunder of a drum. The goddesses’ supple bodies and limbs curved in graceful arcs; their clothes with long-flowing ribbons rippled in between ornamental clouds. I could almost feel the sensuous caress of the silk strips against my bare arms.
“Very impressive,” I said, dropping my gaze back to earth, to Yi Kong.
Except in some rare, lavish art books, I had never seen frescos so beautiful and complex. The entire wall from floor to ceiling was filled with Bodhisattvas, gods and goddesses, people of all sorts, birds and auspicious animals. This huge mass of human forms and animals moved gracefully in a seemingly endless procession. Elegantly dressed Guan Yins marched abreast with sumptuously attired emperors, empresses, and lords. Some Bodhisattvas rode on white elephants, others on lions, with birds hovering above and peacocks trailing behind, fanning their thousand-eyed feathers. Farther back in the procession strolled poets and scholars, followed by servant boys with stacks of books weighing down their backs. Farmers held spades; fishermen, buckets filled with squirming fish; woodcutters with axes resting on thick shoulders walked here and there. Sailors and pirates fresh from the sea hastily fell in line to join the long queue, soon approached by prostitutes with pouting lips and flirtatious smiles.
I let out a gasp. “Yi Kong Shifu, I’ve never seen a modern Buddhist painting so magnificent.”
But as we came closer to the mural, I discovered that lurking in corners and shadows were the outcasts: beggars, lepers, cripples and, almost hidden from sight, the ugly and the diseased, the old and dying.
Suddenly I realized something. For my whole life I’d been obsessed with beauty, especially female beauty, beginning with my girlhood crush on Yi Kong. Chasing after these floating, transitory images had unsettled my mind, so that I’d neglected what was really meant for me in this life. But hadn’t my obsession with beauty later extended itself to men? I didn’t think I would have fallen in love with Michael-despite his rectitude and compassion-if he had been unattractive. I wouldn’t have gone out with Philip Noble if he’d had greasy hair and a crude face. I wondered: Would I have forgiven my father despite what he did to our family, if he had been wrinkled and ugly? If Lisa was plain-looking, would I have so easily been taken in by her?
And yes, also Guan Yin. Whenever I visited a temple, I’d always prayed just to Guan Yin, so I could admire her elongated eyes, curving brows, and crescent-moon lips. It was not so much her compassion as her beauty that I’d worshipped.
At last I saw that I’d missed the real lesson from my fall into the well. Spirituality for me had always been connected to things beautiful. Enlightenment was a jeweled paradise, a multicolored wonderland where beautiful celestial maidens danced to ethereal music and drank sweet elixirs. I’d ignored that it also includes hell-smelly and filled with trash, filth, rotting flesh. Though I’d been told many times over that enlightenment leads not to heaven, but to where I was now, I’d never accepted it. Enlightenment happens in the Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust-where sin and virtue, dreams and nightmares, truth and delusion, nun and not nun,
Yi Kong was right to teach that we shouldn’t discriminate. Life just is. So it’s pointless to reject the world, hoping to escape
So, what’s all the fuss about?
I was feeling expansive when Yi Kong softly said, “Let’s look some more,” and resumed walking.
I reached to touch the Guan Yin pendant hanging around my neck.
Yi Kong cast me a meaningful glance. “Time never stops. It’s been seventeen years since the day I threw the pendant to you into the well.”
Then I thought of something else and blurted out, “Yi Kong Shifu, since you’ve always talked about the illusion of human passion, then you must have experienced-”
“No, nothing like that.” She cut me off, her voice calm, her gaze as clear as a cloudless sky.
A light dawned in me, illuminating what had been in shadow before. There are different ways for people to see their “original face”-to perceive their different callings in life. Hers was to shave her head to become a nun-perhaps a worldly nun who gathered large donations for charitable projects. Dai Nam’s karma was to taste bitter love, then become a recluse, far from this dusty world. And mine was to be awakened to the spirituality of this Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust through the love and compassion of a man. All of us: Dai Nam, an ascetic nun meditating on a high mountain; Yi Kong, ambitiously gathering large donations and carrying out huge projects; Enlightened to Emptiness, who, though happy in the empty gate, knew she would never have the chance to love; or me, simply a woman in the world, about to be married and starting a career-we were just a few of the myriad sentient beings struggling with our own problems and striving for enlightenment in this unsatisfactory world.
As we continued walking, my thinking shifted. I no longer felt small in my teacher’s strong presence. Our karmas were about to diverge. Yes, Yi Kong had been my mentor and I would always respect her for that. But already the hold she’d had over me was weakening. Now I could feel sympathy for those parts of her life as a nun I’d only recently understood, like the need to attract donations from vulgar businessmen like Sunny Au. From there, my magnanimity continued to expand to the late Professor Fulton and his daughter Lisa, Philip Noble, even the taxi driver…
Feeling free, I smiled.
Yi Kong cast me a curious glance.
