by Sun Shuyun
As the legends surrounding Xuanzang grew, they soon overwhelmed and replaced the reality. Hua told me there were half a dozen murals featuring my hero painted much later in the Yulin Caves, some 170 kilometres east of Dunhuang. There, he is accompanied by the fictional monkey; and to cross the river after he had lost his elephant, he had to rely on a giant turtle as described in The Monkey King. According to the missionary Mildred Cable, who passed through Dunhuang in the 1930s, Priest Wang built a shrine for Xuanzang and ‘every pilgrim who would follow his footsteps offered incense at his shrine and craved his protection from the dangers of the way’. Just as Xuanzang had prayed to the Bodhisattva Guanyin for divine intervention or inspiration, later travellers appealed to him for the same reason – an honour which Xuanzang would never have dreamed of.
At the end of a memorable day at the caves, I caught the Research Academy’s shuttle bus back to Dunhuang with Hua. A few stops from where he and all his colleagues lived was the other wonder of Dunhuang: a clear spring in the shape of a crescent moon in the middle of sand dunes that make a thundering noise when you slide down them. I wanted to see them. They would make a perfect end to a perfect day. Hua suggested that I visit the Thunderbolt Monastery nearby as well.
I did not know there was a monastery in Dunhuang today.
‘It is new, built in the last decade, but the name is an old one,’ he explained. ‘Xuanzang stayed there when he was in Dunhuang – at least it says so in The Monkey King.’ He paused. ‘Have you stayed in a monastery?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘It will be an experience for you. Perhaps you can understand your monk better,’ he said seriously. ‘And if it proves too much for you, you can always escape to the caves.’
I had planned to do this and thought I would come to it at the end of my journey, in a big monastery somewhere, where there was a famous master. I knew it was possible: I had seen lay people and nuns doing it. For nuns and monks, it is called canxue, or seeking good knowledge of the Dharma by finding the master, the monastery and the regime that suit them best for their awakening. For me it would be part of my own pilgrimage. Six months into my journey, I had seen, as Xuanzang had, how Buddhism once flourished in the most hostile environments, inspired so many people, created the most sublime objects of art and devotion, disappeared in terrible violence, and was embraced again by the most deprived and disillusioned. I had learned how his grasp of the Dharma made Xuanzang fearless and unassailable in the face of all adversities and temptations. In Sarnath, Bodh Gaya and Kushinagar, I had experienced the most profound feelings of devotion and piety, but as an observer, not a believer. I know I cannot be a Buddhist – I cannot yet accept the fundamental law of Buddhism, karma and rebirth; and I still prefer to think and to understand rather than just to believe. But it would be a great help to me if I could spend some time with the monks, to experience the monastic life, to get a clearer idea of Buddhism, and to find out whether I could reach the deep emotion and sense of belonging I so longed for.
I decided that I would like to have my monastic experience here in this ancient centre of Buddhism and pilgrimage, near the caves which had inspired so many people throughout the centuries. But I knew I could not just walk in off the street and ask to stay – I needed an introduction. By now I had met any number of monks. I called one of them and pleaded for help, and eventually my path was cleared. I was admitted to a cell in the Thunderbolt Monastery.
Clack. Clack. A crisp, dry sound, not loud but piercing in the absolute quiet of the monastery in the dark. What could it be? I groaned and tried to go back to sleep. The strange noise penetrated my ears again. Then I realized I was in my cell and it was the wake-up call, a monk clapping two pieces of wood. But my eyes seemed glued shut. I went back to sleep. Suddenly there was a thunderous noise above my head, ‘Please get up.’ The light was on, so bright that I could not open my eyes. When I finally succeeded, I saw a moon-like face hovering over me. It was Shan Ren, whom I had met yesterday evening. The abbot had told her to look after me during my stay. How did she get in? I remembered that I could not lock the door from inside. Outside my curtainless windows, it was still pitch-dark.
‘Hurry up, you are late,’ Shan said softly, and tossed my haiqing at me, the long ceremonial black robe for Buddhist devotees. She had brought it for me, together with my bed sheet, quilt and thermos. ‘Do you know what they say if you are lazy and stay in bed after hearing the wake-up call? You will be born as a snake in your next life.’
‘Who cares?’ I grumbled.
I threw some cold water from the washbasin on my face, and slipped into my haiqing. It was too big – I was almost lost in it. Clack. Clack. Clack. The monk on duty came round again. I should be out of my room by now. I picked up my prayer book and rushed for the shrine hall, all the time rubbing my eyes, touching my haiqing here and there to make sure the strings were tied properly. I was totally conscious of my lack of calm and grace in my Buddhist garb. I was supposed to walk gently and slowly, holding my head high and my hands in front of me. Now I was almost running, with my robe billowing out behind me.
The doors of the shrine hall were wide open, with the drum beating loudly like raindrops on a glass pane. It was to drive away any residue of sleepiness we might have. I bowed to the statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha in the centre before I entered and found my place behind Shan Ren and two other women. Facing us were six monks, one in front of the ‘wooden-fish’, a percussion instrument, another in front of the gong, a third one beating the drum, and the three others standing. We turned to the Buddha and bowed, stood up and then prostrated ourselves three times. I managed to trip on my robe when I stood up from my second prostration. After I had regained more composure, it took me a while to locate the correct line in the prayer book; I had to ask Shan Ren for help. The monks were chanting. We implored ‘the most heroic, mightiest and most compassionate one’, the Buddha, to help us eliminate our topsy-turvy thoughts and attain enlightenment as soon as possible. Then I found myself reading words that I thought I knew but which did not mean anything at all to me. It was a magic mantra, but what was the magic and what was it supposed to do for the monks? The book did not say. Soon I was totally lost, with no idea which pages the monks were reading from, let alone their meaning. They went on for over thirty minutes before they stopped to regain breath. Then they began the Heart Sutra. This was familiar, and I quickly found the right page again. But I was too confused to concentrate. It was a bad start; it felt like my first day at school.
The monks raised their voices a notch and tilted their heads upwards. They chanted in a resonant drone issuing from the depth of their bodies and, perhaps, hearts. It was monotonous, lulling, hypnotic. The beauty of their chanting reached me at last and dissolved my confusion, surrounding me with calmness, bringing my wandering mind back to holy thoughts. I was not religious, I did not believe chanting some mystic mantras would bring me luck, reduce my sins, avert calamities, protect me from evil spirits and deliver me to the Western Paradise, but I could still appreciate their beauty and how they managed to bring out a yearning deep inside me – perhaps it was the nearest I could come to a spiritual experience. I watched the monks. Their eyes were shut. They looked as if they were expecting the moment of awakening to the truth – everything is indeed empty and there is nothing to be attained by attachment, hatred and delusion. If the illumination did not come, the recitation would no doubt serve them well as they went about their daily life, which was fraught with chores, choices, temptations and irritations, just like ours.
We went straight from the morning service to the dining hall. We bowed to the statue of the Amitabha Buddha facing the entrance and took our bowls and chopsticks from a fridge-like machine where they were kept away from clouds of flies. We sat down at a round table and a woman filled our bowls with millet porridge and fried aubergines. After a short prayer, the serious business of eating began: the monks attacked their food with the same intensity as they recited the Heart Sutra. Nob
ody talked and when they wanted another helping, they made some mysterious signs with their chopsticks. I could not figure out which sign meant what. Luckily I did not have to ask for more: I was struggling to keep up with the rest of the congregation. When they put down their bowls and said another prayer, I just managed to swallow my last mouthful of porridge without choking. If I did not want to starve, I would have to learn a new language.
Shan Ren followed me out. ‘You don’t know how to ask for more food, do you? I forget to tell you yesterday.’ She looked serene and peaceful, her voice gentle and mellow. She had very smooth, delicate hands, as I noticed when she was turning over the pages of the prayer book. She was in her sixties, or perhaps older. The beige wool jacket she wore was simple but well made. She was different from the other devotees in the monastery, more self-possessed, more serious, more contemplative.
She taught me the chopstick sign language – if I wanted more solid food, I should hold the chopsticks upright in the bowl as if they could stand up in the porridge; if I wanted more liquid I should use a scooping motion; if I did not want any more I should push the bowl to the edge of the table and put the chopsticks down beside it, not on top, as you would normally.
I told her what really puzzled me was the way the monks ate. ‘Why do they eat so fast? Aren’t they worried about indigestion?’ I asked.
She smiled, pointed to a passage in my prayer book which described five contemplations for meal times: ‘Take food according to how much merit you have earned; consider whether you really deserve what you are eating; keep your mind pure, avoiding greed in particular; food is medicine for the body; and you eat to achieve enlightenment.’ ‘You are not supposed to linger over your meal as if you were interested in how it tastes,’ she said. ‘You just bolt it down. Keep your mind on higher things. It’s a kind of meditation.’
Before she went off, she said, ‘I hope I didn’t frighten you this morning. I did knock on your door. You were too sleepy. You must feel like going back to bed now, poor girl. But you will get used to it in a day or two.’
I went back to my cell in the monks’ quarters. It was minimal: a hard bed, a stool, a table with a candle on it in case of electricity failure, and a plastic washbasin. It was perhaps not unlike a monk’s cell in mediaeval China. But the little it contained was revealed for all the world to see – the two big windows at the front and back had no curtains. I felt a bit uneasy, both for the monks living opposite me and for myself. It had not bothered me last night: I slept with my clothes on. But now I wanted to lie down for a few minutes: getting up at four o’clock in the morning was too much; I could hardly think straight. But to be seen sleeping in on my first day in the monastery was not a good idea. I had to talk to Shan Ren about it.
I decided to struggle to keep awake. I knocked on the abbot’s door – I wanted to find out the order of the day and what I was supposed to do. He was in his thirties, with a serious look that made him seem much older than he was. He was very helpful when I had registered with him, as was required of all visitors to the monastery. He inquired how I had managed so far and I told him of my inauspicious start. Then I asked him what all the mantras in the morning service actually meant. I knew they were supposed to protect the monks and their monasteries, and also the country and all sentient beings. But what did the words mean, especially the longest one, which seemed to go on for ever?
He asked if I knew the story of the Sitatapatrosnisa Dharani, or Lengyan Zhou – its name in the prayer book. Obviously I did not. He explained that it came from a tale about Ananda, the Buddha’s favourite disciple: he was out begging, and asked a young woman in the street for a jar of water. She fell instantly in love and begged her mother to use her magic powers and cast a spell on Ananda. She was just about to embrace him when Wenshu, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, arrived, sent by the Buddha who had divined that Ananda was in danger of breaking his vow. The Bodhisattva brought him into the presence of the Buddha. Ananda was ashamed and in tears: ‘How did it happen? I’ve been listening to you preaching all these years. How could I have been carried away so easily?’
The Buddha told Ananda that listening was one thing but to understand was another. Craving was our poison, which must be removed. If he could achieve that, he could do anything. Then he taught Ananda the Lengyan Sutra, one of the most comprehensive sutras in the Chinese Buddhist canon, analysing in great detail how the mind works, the different paths to enlightenment and the obstacles on the way. At the end of the sutra is the spell that is supposed to protect one from all evils, sexual desire included. The sutra is so important that it is said that when it is gone, Buddhism will disappear too.
‘Getting rid of sexual desire,’ the abbot explained in his slow, deliberate voice, ‘is the first commandment for a Mahayana Buddhist monk. We think it is difficult to achieve because it is basic to human nature. But we must succeed. Failing in this, the Buddha said, was like trying to make rice out of sand; one will never become enlightened.’ That was what they had been chanting for twenty-five minutes. Most of the monks were young, in the prime of life. Sexual desire was thought to be at its height in the early-morning hours. If the weak could not overcome it by inner strength, the long recital would exhaust them and leave them at peace.
Was it the same in Xuanzang’s time? I asked.
‘The prohibition must have been the same. But they didn’t resort to these long recitations of the mantras. That and the morning and evening services came much later, in the thirteenth century. We know Xuanzang had no problem – didn’t he refuse the hand of the beautiful princess? But we have to work hard to follow the Buddha’s advice and master our bodies,’ the abbot said. ‘Meditation also helps,’ he added, pointing to three posters of a human skeleton on his walls, two in colour and one in black-and-white. ‘When you think about it, we are just a pile of bones, really.’
I was glad to have this long answer to my first question; clearly everything in the monastery had a meaning and a purpose, all designed to help the monks in their quest for enlightenment – I just had to learn what they were. My next question was how I should spend my days. ‘Really you should be working to earn your keep. “No work, no food” is the usual rule. In India or Thailand the monks beg for alms; but in China from the very beginning the emperors thought it was a disgrace, so monks must work to ensure their survival. But we don’t have land here any more, just a tiny vegetable plot – and a layman looks after that.’ I asked whether I could help in the kitchen. He said there were already two women doing that. ‘You told me yesterday you had come to find out about the life of the monks. Concentrate on that. We are a tiny monastery, struggling just to keep going as a religious sanctuary. There are no great teachers here. I hope you won’t be disappointed. But perhaps you will learn what you need by living among us.’ As I got up to go, he said, ‘You should spend time with Shan Ren, and the old abbot. They are good people. I think you can learn something from them.’
I took the abbot’s advice and went to look for the former abbot, who was taking a stroll in the orchard filled with apricot trees. A thin, robust man in his eighties, he had helped to build the Thunderbolt Monastery from scratch. ‘I went from village to village, begging for donations. Money, trees from their back yards, a sack of flour, bricks, offers of free labour – nothing was too small. I don’t know what possessed me. Looking back, I can’t believe I have done it, and the cuttings we planted in the desert have grown into a little forest,’ he said, pointing to the rows of apricot trees.
He turned to the Dunhuang Research Academy for help to decorate the monastery. They told him they had far more important work to do. He had no money to commission painters nor did he have rich and powerful donors as in the old days. But he dreamed of a monastery covered with murals like the Mogao Caves. ‘It is the best way to teach people about the Dharma. It is so direct, so vivid and so moving,’ he said. He first visited the caves with his parents when he was thirteen and he could never forget the shock: ‘It was like entering paradi
se.’ He found refuge in the caves again during the 1930s and the 1940s, hiding himself from conscription. Poverty and the necessity of supporting a big family forced him to seek a livelihood away from Dunhuang, but when he finally retired in 1981 at the age of sixty-three, he decided to become a monk, realizing his childhood dream. There was no monastery in Dunhuang at the time – all had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. His mission was to build one and decorate it with murals. Two painters were so moved by him that they offered to help. One spent two years copying the Western and Eastern Paradises from the Mogao Caves, charging him only for the materials. They hang on the two side walls of the shrine hall. In my confusion in the morning service, my mind wandered a lot to them; for a while I even thought I was in the caves. The other painter completed the murals for the Bodhisattva temples and the front walls of the shrine hall, and then became a monk himself.
Having learned the story of the murals, I could not stop looking at them during the evening service. I was captivated; they were so beautiful you could hardly distinguish them from the originals. They are also the theme of the evening prayers: how to reach the Western Paradise and become enlightened through divine intervention, granted in response to prayer. First is the Amitabha Sutra, a detailed description of the wonders of the Western Paradise. Then we repent our sins, repeat our vow of belief in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, and pledge our sincere wish for enlightenment. We implore the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to take pity on us. Miraculous mantras, magic spells and the Heart Sutra are also invoked to help us along the way. Out of compassion, we pray not only for ourselves but for everyone, including those imprisoned in hell who are supposed to reach paradise through merit transferred from the monks, and by the mercy of the compassionate Bodhisattvas. As a last reminder of the transience of the world, we recite an admonition from the Bodhisattva of Benevolence: ‘The day is done, and life dwindles accordingly. Like fish without water, what joy is there? Endeavour to make good progress, as if fighting a fire burning on one’s own head. Remember the impermanence of all things and do not slacken off.’
