Dunhuang Dream by Xu Xiaobin

Author:Xu Xiaobin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

2

Xingxing lost her way on that dark and windy night.

The thick clouds in the sky seemed to be continually descending, melding with Sanwei Mountain, making everything black as ink. The distant outlines of the trees whistled liked strange beasts, as if something cold and heavy were going to pounce on her. She suddenly felt naked and that an animal’s cold nose was right on her heels. She could scarcely breathe. She flew. She saw the same two dispirited dogs staring at her, looking like ghosts and goblins.

She suddenly recalled the Dharani of the Future Life.

It was related to something that had happened many years before. When her maternal grandfather died, her grandmother said to her mother that she was going to recite the Dharani of the Future Life to see his spirit across to the other world. Her grandmother knelt on a mat before the altar niche and recited it all night long.

She had learned about the Dharani of the Future Life from her grandmother and could even recite a few lines of it. The sacred Dharani of the Future Life was the magic spell used as the last resort for anyone on death’s door. If her grandmother knew what she thought, she’d turn over in her grave.

But the Dharani was very effective. By the time she had repeated it sixty times, she could detect that the clouds had lost some of their inky darkness and were growing light around the edges. She could almost see a golden light streaming through the lowering clouds. She recalled the story her grandmother had told of the opening of Heaven’s door. Once each year, the Buddha shows himself, usually on a day in the seventh lunar month. Or it was in the middle of the seventh month now . . .

The Buddha rode in a golden chariot. To his left was Samantabhadra and to his right was Maitreya. Why did the Buddha and the Apollo both ride in golden chariots? But Apollo was unaccompanied, perhaps because it was easier for him to pursue whatever goddess had taken his fancy. In what way did the Buddha appear? In his spiritual body, in his body of bliss, or in his body of incarnation?

It is said that in ages past, the Buddha never appeared. His features could not be fixed, because, according to the early Buddhism, he had transcended human form. During the time of King Asoka in India, just a few men showed their desire to become monks by worshiping the Buddha’s footprints. When the Buddha began to be represented in art, it was symbolically through visual metaphors of the Wheel of the Law, a throne, or the Bodhi tree.

The actual image of the Buddha appeared only during the Gandhara period.1

She felt that beginning then, the Buddha had lost legitimacy. When she thought of the Buddha now, she would rather think of him as a Bodhi tree, a lotus flower, even a sea or even imagine him as a pure and innocent newborn baby.

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