Myths and Legends from Around the World

by Robin Brockman

  “I have identified the illness from which his majesty suffers,” the monk said after a few days studying him, reading, meditating and discussing his case with his baffled colleagues. “I am pleased to say that it can be cured with ease.”

  “Magnificent!” cried the queen, much relieved. Already she sensed her daughters and sons-in-law were eyeing the throne and muttering among themselves. She loved her husband, however, and needed him alive and well. Like him, she too had been wondering what had brought such a terrible affliction on them, for she suffered when he did, though she would not have expected such a thing when they were young, even at the height of their lust for each other.

  “I am afraid it is not a cure that an apothecary will have to hand,” the monk explained.

  “What is this treatment?” asked the king. “Will it be painful? What will you do to me? Is it long and difficult?”

  “It is simple, quickly done and only involves rubbing you with an ointment made of ingredients that will cure you. It has no other effect.”

  “It will not burn, or chill me? There is no cutting, no binding, no scrubbing with caustic solutions?”

  “No. The application of the ointment only. It is worn only for a few seconds and washed off. Then you are cured. It is simple. The ingredients are very difficult to come by, however.”

  “What are they?” the queen enquired. “We will pay anything, send anywhere for them.”

  “It is not a question of payment,” the mysterious monk replied, with a shake of his head. “Nor is it a matter of sending far. The necessary things may be found near or far. The basic elements are everywhere about us, but the right ones …” the mendicant monk shrugged.

  “Tell us what we must find,” the king said weakly.

  “Yes,” the queen concurred with urgency.

  “You must have the hand and the eye of a human being …”

  “Send to the hall of corrections at once,” the queen said to an attendant.

  “Sometimes two eyes and two hands …” the monk went on.

  The queen nodded to the pausing attendant, who started out again.

  “Wait,” the monk commanded sharply. “It cannot be just the hand and eye of anyone. The person whose hand and eye you need must give them willingly.”

  “Willingly?” the king groaned. “There are no such persons in the hall of corrections, nor in all the kingdom. All the world.”

  “Some inducement may be found,” the queen said thoughtfully. “For the poor, what would one hand and one eye be against …”

  “It may be two,” the dying king pointed out.

  “Two poor beggars …” the queen began again, but the monk stopped her short.

  “They must be the hands and eyes of the same person, if two are indeed needed.”

  “Where in all of creation would a man like me find someone like that?” the king howled in agony. “Oh, priest, you mock me in my misery.”

  “We will search nevertheless,” swore the queen. At once the word was put about but, as the king suspected, nowhere was someone willing to become blinded and handless for his sake.

  The monk did not go away and saying he would make his own inquiries he risked staying, even though everyone who knew the king supposed he would have the holy man tortured and killed for getting his hopes up and then dashing them. It seemed the old tyrant was too sick to bother, though.

  At last the monk announced that he knew of one who would give the king a hand and an eye, two if need be. The king must send to the Monastery of the Immortals, for there was one there who was willing to do this for him and asked nothing in return.

  Hardly able to believe this, the queen sent a delegation at once to go and fetch the eye and hand. In the meantime, two assassins fell over each other attempting to slip into his lodging and kill the monk, but he had vanished. It had been Miao Shan in disguise of course, all along. The ambitious brothers-in-law were both disappointed but they hoped to eliminate the monk if he returned to apply the remedy when the ingredients arrived. But the monk was never seen again.

  The king's ambassadors duly found themselves at the Monastery of the Immortals and there they were taken to Miao Shan who appeared now as herself. She bowed to them and they to her, impressed by her radiance and calm. With her own fingers she plucked out her left eye and with her own right hand she took an axe and chopped off her left hand. Bleeding profusely she presented them to the king's men.

  Rushing back to the ailing monarch, the ambassadors were shocked and profoundly impressed. The ingredients were dried and ground down to a powder and made into a paste as the monk had left instructions for them to do. Mixed with a few more ordinary things, the paste was applied to the king's person and then washed away.

  Miraculously half of the king's body was restored to health, the sores vanished and he felt much better. Realizing what was needed the ministers were sent again to the Monastery of the Immortals and again Miao Shan calmly tore out her right eye and stood while her right hand was cut from her.

  Again the body parts were dried, ground, mixed and applied and when they were washed away the king was plainly cured, his appetite and colour were back, his skin smooth once more and glowing with health.

  “Tell me all about the wonderful man who sacrificed his two hands and eyes that I might be cured,” he commanded his ambassadors.

  “It was a woman,” the senior one said a little awkwardly.

  “Well, then, tell me about her. Was she young or old? A nun? A wise woman? What class of person was she? What did she look like?”

  “She …” the minister stuttered. “She looked remarkably like your third daughter, Miao Shan, sire. And she was of the age Miao Shan would be …” the man trailed off, not finishing as he gaped at the tears in his sovereign's eyes. He had never seen the king cry, even at the height of his illness, even in the depths of despair at ever recovering, even when under the worst of the pain he had endured in battle.

  The queen, nearly fainting, sat beside her husband, very pale, tears also running down her cheeks.

  “Take us there at once,” the king ordered them.

  The journey was long and arduous for the old couple. They had much time to think and contemplate their lives, their relationship with their daughters and their treatment of Miao Shan. Far worse than the cold or rugged travel was recalling their past and remembering what they had done to their saintly little girl.

  When they finally reached the Monastery of the Immortals the king and queen were conducted in to see Miao Shan, who stood at an altar in a small walled garden. There they beheld her, somehow still bleeding from her wrists, with blackened holes where her eyes had been. On her face was a calm, serene expression.

  Recognizing the daughter they had thought was dead, and seeing her condition, her parents abased themselves before Miao Shan, begging for forgiveness. Smiling, she spoke with gentleness and compassion.

  A flood of comfort and peace came over the grieving parents, and as she stepped towards them they got to their feet and embraced her warmly.

  “I am an evil man for what I have done to you,” the king cried. “And for the way I have lived.”

  “And I am no better,” the queen sobbed.

  “The sacrifice you have made for me is too much.” Miao Shan's father said. “You have suffered always because of me, and now more than ever can be imagined.”

  “I have suffered nothing,” Miao Shan said softly. “And I have done nothing but express a daughter's love. The trials of this human body, the loss of any part of it, are nothing. People are given other bodies, other lives. I have had many. Now, though, I will have a body of light, and live in another world.”

  “Let us stay here with you and devote ourselves to service and finding the right path,” her father pleaded.

  “Yes,” her mother agreed. “We do not wish to go back to the way we were before.”

  “You will not,” Miao Shan told them. “Return to your kingdom. It is too late to undo what has been done, it m
ust be lived with and corrected by effort and time. Rule with justice, compassion and understanding and serve your people. Encourage righteousness in them by example. Teach them the ways of the Buddha.”

  Suddenly they saw before them the eyes of their daughter shining brightly upon them, and her hands reached out to comfort them, then to bid farewell. It was not the physical body of Miao Shan they now saw, but slowly moving away from it another body, rising from the physical one, which fell to the floor at their feet. Their eyes were drawn to the glowing form that ascended to the heavens, the music of the spheres resounding beautifully in their ears as Miao Shan disappeared.

  Returning to their kingdom, they did as Miao Shan had instructed them to do. They also built a shrine to her where her last earthly form was buried. For the rest of their long lives her parents and her sisters revered her memory and the lesson of her life. Through them many people were set on the true path, and when they died they themselves had learned much and advanced well towards enlightenment.