“Don’t belittle this first step. The journey of a thousand miles begins on the ground under your feet. But neither should you think you’ll be enlightened just by attending a seven-day retreat.”
Suddenly Yi Kong seemed to notice me, and our eyes met before she glanced away. My heartbeat accelerated to allegro. Had she really seen me? Did she recognize me among the crowd after all these years? Would she, as before, want me to enter her temple as a nun? Now she asked the audience to meditate for five minutes before her Dharma talk. While everyone’s head was lowered and their eyes half closed, I carefully studied my nun mentor’s face, feeling my mind start to wander…
During my adolescence and into my twenties, years when I disdained and ignored men, Yi Kong really became my only friend. In the famous novel Dream of the Red Chamber, men are compared to mud, but women to water, as they are supple, tender, and nurturing.
When I dreamily turned the pages of the novel, sometimes I’d wonder: Would a man like the hero Jia Baoyu-refined, talented, pure, true, and nice to all the women around him-exist in real life? What about the beautiful nun Miao Yu, Wonderful Jade, who wrote poetry, secretly longed for a man, and gathered snow from plum blossom petals to brew tea for Jia Baoyu instead of fulfilling her passion for him? Oh, how I wished I were like those beautiful, brilliant women in this Dream of the Red Chamber!
I had always preferred the company of females. Like the best kind of yunwu-cloud and mist-tea leaves picked before the rainy season, women are shapely, delicate, pleasing to look at, intoxicating to smell, enjoyable to savor. And of course, for me, the only female who embodied all this was Yi Kong.
Although Mother knew nothing about my close friendship with the nun, she sensed the infatuation in me. Once I overheard her asking Father, “Our daughter looks dreamy. Do you think she’s in love or something?”
I almost chuckled. How could I tell my parents that I was infatuated with a nun?
Yet the relationship between Yi Kong and myself was not without tension, tension that had nothing to do with us, but with the villagers’ convictions. Those who worshipped Yi Kong would say, “Look at Yi Kong; she’s so beautiful, wise, compassionate, and a nun-how can she not be the reincarnation of Guan Yin?” But another group would argue, “Meng Ning came out alive from the haunted well! Who else could survive this except the reincarnation of Guan Yin?” Once two women broke into a loud quarrel right in front of the statue of Guan Yin inside the nunnery. Another time, two elderly men competed to donate offerings to us until Yi Kong insisted we return all the gifts and money.
Mother, of course, took my side. She pinched her eyes into slits, her voice sharp and intense. “It’s easy to shave one’s head and put on a robe, but how many, like you, could survive that fall with no injury? I’m sure if she were the one who fell, her bald scalp would have cracked open like an egg hit over a wok and her brain would have splashed like vomit all over her robe!”
I felt terribly sad. How unmerciful to fight so mercilessly over the Goddess of Mercy! Didn’t the villagers know it was Yi Kong who’d thrown the Guan Yin pendant down to me? But when I told them this, as before, they just thought I was being nice and adored me more. Sometimes I became confused. If I were really the reincarnation of Guan Yin, why couldn’t I stop Father from gambling and fighting with Mother? If Yi Kong and I were both the reincarnations of Guan Yin, why didn’t that stop the villagers’ childish disputes?
I finally left the villagers’ squabble behind when I turned nineteen and received a scholarship to go to college. The same year, Father won seventy thousand dollars at the racetrack, enabling our family to move back to the city of Tsim Sha Tsui. Six months later, he lost all that money, so we had to move again-to a slum in Kowloon city. Then the trip to the temple became long and expensive, forcing me to reduce my visits.
A year later, Yi Kong began to take over the supervision of the Golden Lotus Temple after its chief nun, Wisdom Forest, had become ill and passed away. Whenever I visited her, Yi Kong would express her wish for me to be a nun in her temple. One time she asked, “Meng Ning, do you know you have a perfectly shaped head? I’m sure if it’s shaved, it will be an object of admiration for many monks and nuns.”
Another time she said, “Meng Ning, you have the rare quiet nature of a high nun. My Shifu, Wisdom Forest, said that if a person has the karma to possess this quality, she should not waste it in the dusty world.”
Later, when Yi Kong knew that although my interest in being a nun was serious but I had not quite made up my mind to shave my head, she’d change to a joking tone and ask, “Meng Ning, when are you coming to play with us? There’s lots of fun going on here.” Of course I understood that by “coming to play with us,” she meant when would I become a nun in her temple, and “fun” meant helping with her many ambitious projects.
Being the only child in the family, it was hard for me to tear myself away from my parents and throw myself inside the temple gate. Chinese deem it extremely unfilial for an only child to become a monk or a nun-unless his or her parents have passed away. Otherwise, who would take care of the parents during their old age? Who would carry on the family name? Who would inherit the family’s possessions?
6. The Fire
Yi Kong’s voice, pealing like temple bells, woke me from my wandering thoughts. She had just begun her Dharma talk on self-centered thinking.
“We all like to judge. And no matter whether we feel superior to what we criticize or feel miserable ourselves, we still like to keep the game going. Because in judging-our spouse, our friends, our partners, even strangers on the street-we can make ourselves the center of things.” She paused. “With our mind full of judgments, prejudices, and egotism, we’ll always think things like Why does my sixty-year-old aunt always dress like a young woman? Why does my friend’s father date a young girl half his age? I hate my mother-in-law’s cooking; it’s horrible.”
Whispers and suppressed laughter scattered among the audience. Yi Kong waited patiently for the noise to subside, then paused to scrutinize the audience in the front rows, then those in the middle, and finally those in back, as if challenging us all to face the truth.
“We also fail to realize that what we need is not this self-centered thinking, but functional thinking-to plan our future, to run our business, to study for examinations, even to prepare a good dinner.”
She went on to talk about how meditation could help to rid us of our attachment. “When you meditate, you’ll discover self-centered thoughts are like monkeys jumping from tree to tree. Meditation is to help stop this monkey business-”
The audience laughed loudly, cutting off Yi Kong’s speech and dispelling the solemn atmosphere. I saw several boys laugh; one arched his back like a cat ready for mischief; an elderly woman giggled, cupping her mouth. I continued to look around and suddenly saw Michael Fuller. He was also looking at me, slightly turning away from a nun who talked intently to him. It was Compassionate Speech, probably now assigned to translate for him.
Yi Kong broke the spell of our stare by speaking again. “We have to empty our self-centered thoughts and learn to let go! Detach!-”
Right then a loud “Fire! Fire!” broke out like a bad dream in the peaceful hall. People looked around and whispered to one another. When more “Fire! Fire!” was heard and the smell of smoke began to fill the air, people sprang up, then pushed and screamed. As swift as a cat, the eye-twitching nun dashed onto the platform and pulled Yi Kong down, knocking over the Goddess of Mercy statue. Yi Kong wanted to say something, but was already being pushed by her captor toward the exit. But it was too late; now everybody-one body and one mind-dashed toward the gate like lunatics chased by lightning. The eye-twitching nun shielded Yi Kong with her plump torso and shouted, “Give way! Let Venerable Yi Kong pass!” The same people whose faces lit up and smiled with ecstasy when they caught sight of her now turned a completely deaf ear to the plea.