The Five Brothers' Dream

Now it must be said that the region around Heavenly Mountain was a place of deep hills and winding waters, where villages lay scattered at the foot of ridges, beside streams, and beyond groves of bamboo. The people of the monasteries and Daoist abbeys often visited one another as well. For generations, those who lived there had depended on the mountain for food and on Heaven for their harvests, and so there were many things in their hearts that they revered and feared.
When Heaven was about to send rain, they worshiped the Dragon King. When a child cried through the night, they petitioned the Earth God. When fishing boats set out to sea, they invited the blessing of Mazu. When business was poor, they burned incense to the God of Wealth. If an illness lingered without healing, someone would say the mountain spirit had been offended. If a household was restless and troubled, they went to ask Wong Tai Sin or drew a spirit lot before Immortal Lü.
They believed in Buddhas, and they believed in Daoist gods; they also kept the ancestral tablets of Confucian custom upon their altars. At New Year and on festival days, incense smoke curled through the main rooms of every household. Ancestors, deities, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas were often crowded together upon the same offering table, and no one thought this strange.
The villagers nearby would say, “Burning one more stick of incense never does any harm.”
Near Muyang Abbey there were several blue-tiled houses, an old alchemical furnace, and a faded Eight Trigrams banner hanging before the door. On the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month, the mountain road became lively. Those who sold incense and candles laid out red paper and gold foil; those who sold talisman water weighed down yellow papers with stones; fortune-tellers set up little tables on which they placed copper coins, tortoise shells, bamboo lot cylinders, and ink stones for character divination. Others shook bells to “dispel calamity” on behalf of the devout.
When the wind blew, banners of every color snapped and fluttered. Written upon them were phrases such as “Spirit Lots of Immortal Lü,” “Blessings Bestowed by the Dragon King,” “Divination and Character Reading,” “Severing Peach-Blossom Entanglements,” “Seeking Wealth Fortune,” and “Protection and Peace.” Seen from afar, it was as though the entire mountain were covered with signboards set out by the gods themselves.
To those who came to worship, Master Jichan and Perfected Zitian seemed bound by a quiet intimacy that words could neither describe nor explain. It was a feeling more than a fact, one that everyone sensed but no one could define.
When Daoyin was young, she often followed her senior Dharma brothers and sisters down the mountain to buy rice and salt, and there she saw all the varied conditions of the human world.
There were women holding feverish children, kneeling before spirit altars and weeping, asking only that the child survive this one ordeal. There were old men carrying chickens, begging the Dragon King not to send great floods that year. There were young daughters-in-law secretly drawing lots, asking whether their husbands had changed their hearts while away from home. There were peddlers kowtowing before the God of Wealth, muttering, “If I make money this year, next year I will surely come back to fulfill my vow.”
Fortune-tellers wore old spectacles and stroked their beards. Whenever they saw someone, they would say, “There is a shadow over your brow. You must be careful in the coming days.” If the other person’s face changed, they would slowly lower their voice and add, “But it is not without remedy.”
When the elder apprentices heard such words, they sometimes could not help laughing.
But Daoyin could not laugh.
She saw the eyes of those people. In them were poverty, illness, desires left unfulfilled, and the fear of losing what little they had. She was still young then, and did not yet understand the depth of worldly suffering. She only felt that every stick of incense along the mountain road was a panic in someone’s heart with nowhere to rest.
Some entrusted their hopes to Buddhas. Some entrusted them to gods. Some placed them upon a talisman, a divination stick, or a sentence from an oracle. The more gods there were, the more confused the human heart seemed to become; the more gates of teaching appeared, the fewer roads there seemed that a person could truly walk.
Once, she stood outside Muyang Abbey and watched a fortune-teller pronounce someone’s fate. The man spoke in a tone of mystery and authority, one moment speaking of karmic obstacles from a former life, the next of calamities written into destiny. Then he told the person to spend money on talismans.
Daoyin listened with full attention. After returning to the abbey, she asked Perfected Zitian, “Master, is what they say also Buddhadharma?”
Perfected Zitian was drying scriptures beneath the corridor. Hearing this, she paused.
“What do you think?”
Daoyin considered for a moment and said, “They also speak of cause and effect. They also speak of averting disasters. But… when I listen, it only makes people more afraid.”
Perfected Zitian nodded.
“That which helps people awaken comes close to Buddhadharma. That which makes people fearful, greedy, and confused is often merely borrowing the names of Buddhism and Daoism to earn a living. Within folk belief there is kindness, but there is also superstition. One must not look down upon the suffering of beings, yet one must not mistake superstition for right faith.”
Daoyin asked softly, “Then what should we do?”
Perfected Zitian said, “When you see people worshiping gods, there is no need to laugh at them. When you see people lost in superstition, do not follow them into confusion. You must read the scriptures and understand the reasons of the world. You must know that Buddhadharma teaches people to purify their own minds. It is not a trade made with ghosts and gods through incense smoke.”
Daoyin remembered these words for a very long time.
From childhood, Daoyin was unlike ordinary children.
Most of the young disciples at Muyang Abbey, when they were three or four years old, were playful by nature. They smiled at the sight of sweet cakes, chased chickens and dogs, feared the dark at night, and feared their master’s scolding by day. Daoyin, however, would often sit alone beneath the corridor, gazing at the clouds beyond the mountain. Her eyes were very bright, like a single point of starlight reflected in a well at dawn.
When others asked her, “What are you looking at?”
She would answer seriously, “I am looking at the road by which I came.”
Her little companions laughed at her.
“Weren’t you carried up here from below the mountain?”
Daoyin shook her head.
“No. I came from the twenty-eighth heaven. I am not an Earth person. A little flying saucer brought me to the human world.”
Had such words come from an adult, they would have seemed absurd. But spoken from the mouth of a little girl only two or three years old, they made people both laugh and fall strangely silent.
A senior sister at the abbey teased her. “Then what did the flying saucer look like?”
Daoyin tilted her head and thought for a while, then gestured with her little hands.
“Round and bright, like a silver plate. It had no wheels and no wings, but it could walk by itself among the clouds. There were no lamps inside, yet everywhere was full of light. It put me down on the mountain, then flew away.”
“Then why did you come?”
Daoyin lowered her voice.
“I forgot. But I know I did not come here to play.”
After saying this, she spoke no more. She only lowered her head and fidgeted with the edge of her robe, like a little traveler returned from a distant journey who had suddenly forgotten where the gate of home might be.
When Perfected Zitian heard such words, she neither reproached Daoyin nor readily agreed with her. She only called the child to her side after evening recitation, stroked her head, and said, “Whether you say you came from Heaven or from the human world, it is all right. Since you have come here, you must learn to be a good person and cultivate your mind well. If Heaven is where you came from, then the human world is where your lessons are.”
Daoyin half understood and half did not, but she nodded.
In the monastery and abbey, the children were sometimes asked to tell stories. The other young disciples told tales of tiger spirits, white snake spirits, the Dragon King sending rain, or Immortal Lü revealing miracles. Their stories were lively, and everyone clapped along. But when it was Daoyin’s turn, she always spoke of things beyond the clouds.
She said there were palaces in the heavens made of light, and the people there did not need to speak. As soon as a thought moved in the heart, the voice passed across like ripples on water. She said the Milky Way was not dead; there were roads between the stars, just like mountain roads in the human world, only one could not step upon them with feet, but had to travel by light. She also said that some beings from beyond the stars did not look like humans. Their bodies were transparent, and rings of blue light shone above their heads. They specialized in finding lost children in the universe.
Her companions listened, dumbstruck.
One little novice monk could not help asking, “Then do they eat meals?”
Daoyin answered earnestly, “They eat light.”
Everyone burst into laughter.
But Daoyin did not laugh. She felt that what she said was not a story, but old events she had seen in dreams. Only, once those old events reached the human world and were spoken aloud, they became absurd.
She also loved sitting in stillness.
In the rear hall of Muyang Abbey, there was an old meditation cushion whose reeds had been worn smooth and shining. The other children could not sit for the time it took one stick of incense to burn before twisting and turning restlessly. But Daoyin could sit alone for an entire afternoon.
In the quiet hours after noon, the mountain wind passed through the bamboo blinds. Incense ash fell soundlessly in the hall. Sunlight entered slantwise through the lattice window and rested upon her small shoulders. Her eyes were closed, and her face was so peaceful that she did not seem like a child.
When a senior sister passed by the door and saw her sitting there so long, she would call softly, “Daoyin, are your legs numb?”
Daoyin did not answer.
Only after being called again did she seem to return from a very far place. She opened her eyes, empty and luminous, and after a long pause said, “I went up just now.”
“Went up where?”
“To the Heaven of Radiant Sound.”
The senior sister laughed. “You are talking nonsense again.”
But Daoyin was utterly serious.
“There is no sun there, and no moon, but everywhere is bright. People do not speak with their mouths. Once they think, there is sound. The sound there is not hard like ours. It is soft, like water, and also like clouds. Senior Sister, I saw a river there. What flowed in the river was not water, but light.”
The senior sister felt a chill in her heart and did not know how to respond, so she went to tell Perfected Zitian.
After hearing this, Perfected Zitian remained silent for a long while.
That night, she went to the rear hall to look at Daoyin. The little child was already asleep, one hand still resting beside the meditation cushion. There seemed to be a faint glow at the center of her brow, though perhaps it was only moonlight falling upon her forehead.
Perfected Zitian stood at the doorway and listened to the low murmur of the pines beyond the mountain. In her heart, she thought: This child has a strange and uncommon spiritual root. If she is not held and guided by the true Dharma, then in the future she will either attain greatly—or stray greatly.
From then on, she made Daoyin read the scriptures even more.
“Whatever you are able to see, do not cling to it,” Perfected Zitian often said. “If you can fly out, you must also be able to return. Cultivation is not wandering through the heavens for amusement. It is learning to settle the heart.”
Daoyin asked, “What if the heart is not inside the body?”
Perfected Zitian answered, “Call it back with the sound of scripture. Draw it back with the breath. Keep it in the human world with compassion.”
Daoyin remembered these words for the rest of her life.
What she feared most was the sound of automobile horns below the mountain.
At that time, the mountain roads were narrow, and only occasionally would a vehicle pass from the town. The metal body of the car would sway around the bends, and then suddenly a horn would sound, sharp as an arrow. Other children would merely cover their ears, but Daoyin’s face would abruptly turn pale. She would stand motionless, as though her soul had been shaken loose. When a senior sister pulled at her, she did not respond. Her eyes stared straight into the air, and there was no color in her lips.
Once, when everyone went down the mountain to buy rice, they had just crossed the stone bridge when a truck roared past them. The blast of its horn shook the whole valley with echoes. Daoyin’s body went limp, and she nearly fell. Perfected Zitian happened to be walking with them. She immediately supported the child, pressed one hand against the center of her back, and softly recited the Buddha’s name.
Only after a long while did Daoyin begin to cry.
“Master,” she said, clutching Perfected Zitian’s sleeve, her voice thin as wind, “that sound just now scattered me. I saw myself break into many pieces. One piece flew up into the clouds, one piece fell into the water, and one piece went somewhere I could not know.”
Perfected Zitian gently patted her back.
“It is good that you have returned. Do not be afraid. Sound too is a condition. Scattering too is a false perception. Listen to me recite the Buddha’s name, and gather your heart back.”
Beside the mountain road, bamboo leaves rustled in the wind. In the distance, the stall selling incense paper was still calling for customers. Before Muyang Abbey, banners fluttered in the sunlight, bearing the names of Immortal Lü, the Dragon King, the God of Wealth, and Wong Tai Sin, like many human wishes suspended in the air.
Daoyin leaned against her master’s chest and slowly stopped crying, yet still felt that her soul was like a startled little bird, fluttering within her body for a long while before it was finally willing to settle.
After that, Perfected Zitian no longer allowed others to laugh at her carelessly.
She told the disciples, “Some children have subtle and sensitive consciousness. When they hear a clap of thunder, it is like a mountain collapsing. When they see a thread of light, it is like a door opening. You must not tease her, and you must not treat her as something supernatural. If she speaks of heavenly things, hear it and let it pass. If she can read the scriptures, do good, and follow the rules, then that is her true root.”
And so Daoyin grew up in those mountains.
On one side was the liveliness of folk belief before Muyang Abbey: divination stalls, incense candles, banners, talisman water, and human voices. On the other side was the cool clarity of chanting within South Heavenly Temple: morning bells, evening drums, meditation cushions, old scriptures, and the gentle yet stern gaze of the aged Dharma masters.
Her heart was like a small star fallen into the dust of the western Guangdong mountains, always longing to fly back to the heavens, yet being tied little by little to the human world by the sound of scripture.
Sometimes at dusk, she would sit alone on the meditation cushion in the rear hall. Outside the window, the clouds glowed like burning golden sand, and the mountain wind stirred the curtain shadows. When she closed her eyes, she seemed once more to see that small silver flying saucer resting beyond the twenty-eighth heaven, shining quietly, as though waiting for her.
But then Perfected Zitian’s voice would suddenly reach her ears.
“Daoyin, come back. It is time for evening recitation.”
She would open her eyes.
Before her were the wooden fish, the scripture book, the incense smoke, and the dim lamp of the mountain hall.
She joined her palms lightly and answered in a low voice, “Master, I have returned.”
No one knew whether this “I have returned” meant returning from Heaven to the human world, or from delusion and dream to cultivation. Only much later, when Daoyin had wandered across ten thousand miles and dreamed again of old affinities in the Heaven of Radiant Sound, did she understand that those strange and wondrous words of her childhood were not entirely childish fantasy.
Perhaps they were a remnant glow from former dust, a strand of heavenly music not yet dispersed, which had fallen early into the lonely and winding destiny of this life.
Later, whenever there was a mountain fair, Heavenly Mountain was still lively. Bells, drums, handbells, and hawkers’ cries mingled together; incense smoke, paper ash, and mountain mist twisted into one. Before Muyang Abbey, banners rose like tides. Inside South Heavenly Temple, the chanting flowed like water.
Daoyin grew up in such mountain winds. On one side, she saw the confusion of beings seeking gods and asking oracles. On another, she heard the coolness of old Master Jichan lecturing on scripture. And within the Daoist abbey, she cultivated quietly by herself. Gradually, and strangely enough, Daoyin, who later received the Dharma name Miaoyin, gradually came to embody both the Buddhist and Daoist traditions.
Very early on, she understood that faith was not the banners fluttering in noisy places, nor the auspicious and inauspicious words spoken at divination stalls. Faith was that single point of light by which the human heart, adrift in the bitter sea, became willing to turn back.
Behind Muyang Abbey there was a grove of old pines, deep and green.
The pines all grew between the mountain rocks. Their trunks were twisted and strong, their gray bark scaled like dragon skin, yet their crowns spread over the earth like blue clouds. The early autumn sunlight filtered through the pine needles and scattered in broken flecks. When the wind blew, countless needled branches swayed lightly, making a fine sound like distant waves. The air was filled with the faint, clean fragrance of pine resin.
Perfected Zitian brought the two children to an old pine.
Beneath the tree, several bamboo baskets, small pottery bowls, and a slender bamboo knife had already been placed.
Perfected Zitian smiled and said, “Today I will teach you how to make pine incense.”
Ma Xinde’s eyes lit up.
“Can pine trees grow fragrance too?”
Daoyin could not help smiling.
“It is not that they grow fragrance. When a pine tree is wounded, it releases resin. After the resin is dried, it can be made into pine incense.”
Her voice was gentle and soft, yet her explanation was clear and orderly, rather like a little teacher.
Perfected Zitian nodded.
“Correct. When a tree is wounded, it releases resin. When a person suffers, wisdom may also grow.”
Though the two children did not truly understand, both nodded earnestly.
Perfected Zitian first took the bamboo knife and gently shaved away a layer of old bark beside a scar that had already healed over on an ancient pine.
After a short while, a clear, crystalline drop of resin slowly seeped out.
In the sunlight, that drop of pine resin shone with a faint golden glimmer, like amber.
“Look.”
Perfected Zitian placed the pottery bowl beneath it.
“You must not wound the tree too deeply. Take only a little.”
Daoyin learned very quickly.
She knelt beside the tree, her two clean white hands holding the bamboo knife steadily. With great care, she scraped lightly along the bark.
Her movements were so gentle that it seemed she feared waking a sleeping bird.
Before long, drops of pine resin fell into the pottery bowl.
She turned back and smiled. “Master, is this right?”
Just then, the sunlight fell upon her face.
That little face still held the round softness of childhood, yet already possessed a few traces of otherworldly beauty. Her skin was so fair it was nearly translucent; her dark eyes were clear as a mountain spring; her long lashes trembled faintly, reflecting the light and shadow of the pine grove.
She wore no jewels and no fine clothes, only a gray Daoist robe washed almost pale with age, and yet she seemed to have merged entirely with the green mountain and the pine wind.
Ma Xinde stared at her blankly.
He said quietly, “Daoyin, you really look like a little fairy from a painting.”
Daoyin’s face immediately reddened.
“Master says one must not call me a fairy.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am only a little Daoist girl.”
This one sentence made both Perfected Zitian and Zhao Youlan laugh.
Yet as Zhao Youlan looked at Daoyin, a trace of pity rose involuntarily in her eyes.
Daoyin had been born into a scholarly family. When the Cultural Revolution had just begun, her parents suffered persecution and fled from the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region to western Guangdong. When the child was two years old, her father and mother died one after the other of illness. Before their deaths, they entrusted someone to bring her to Muyang Abbey.
At that time, she had been thin as a little bamboo twig, crying night after night for her mother.
Later, it was Perfected Zitian who fed her spoonful by spoonful with rice broth. It was also the morning bells and evening drums of the monastery that accompanied her as she grew little by little.
Now, she no longer cried.
Each day she learned characters, recited scriptures, planted vegetables, swept the courtyard, and always smiled when she saw people.
It seemed as though she had been born a child of the mountains.
Yet Zhao Youlan always felt that a child of five or six should not be so sensible.
So sensible that it made one’s heart ache.
Perfected Zitian seemed to perceive her thoughts and said softly:
“People in the world pity her for having no father and mother.”
“But this poor Daoist feels that she has the mountain for a father and water for a mother.”
“If Heaven and Earth are willing to raise a child, they will not treat her poorly.”
Zhao Youlan nodded silently.
In that moment, she suddenly felt that although Daoyin had no blood kin, she possessed a quiet blessing deeper than many children who had both father and mother.
The two children placed the pine resin they had gathered into a pottery pot.
Perfected Zitian then taught them to add a little mountain ash and simmer it slowly over a gentle fire.
The pine resin gradually melted. The liquid, at first transparent, slowly became golden and thick. A clear and distant fragrance of pine rose softly.
The wind passed through the pine grove.
The whole of Muyang Abbey seemed steeped in that ancient and pure fragrance.
Daoyin stirred gently with a bamboo twig and suddenly asked, “Master, will this incense burn away later?”
Perfected Zitian looked at the white smoke curling upward and smiled faintly.
“The incense will burn away.”
“But its fragrance will remain in the hearts of those who have come.”
Ma Xinde half understood, yet he remembered these words carefully.
Without their noticing, the sunlight had begun to slant westward.
Zhao Youlan rose to take her leave.
Daoyin escorted them all the way to the gate of Muyang Abbey.
Ma Xinde reached into his clothes and took out a hawthorn candy he had been reluctant to eat throughout the journey, carefully placing it in Daoyin’s hand.
“This is for you.”
Daoyin ran back into the house and returned with a tiny cloth pouch.
Inside were several pieces of the pine incense she had made with her own hands that day.
“This is for you.”
“When you smell pine incense in the future, remember Muyang Abbey.”
The two children stood before the mountain gate, and neither turned away at once.
Only when Zhao Youlan called softly, “Xinde, it is time to go down the mountain,” did Ma Xinde finally begin to leave.
He looked back every few steps, waving again and again.
Daoyin also stood beneath the osmanthus tree, waving her small hand all the while.
The setting sun shone through the bamboo grove, tinting her little figure with a faint layer of gold.
The wind lifted her wide sleeves and sent several newly fallen pine needles drifting through the air.
None of them knew that this reluctant farewell between children was merely one soft stroke written by fate. Many years later, when they had all grown into adults and remembered this wisp of pine fragrance, this pine grove, this autumn afternoon, they would finally understand that some meetings appear ordinary, yet are enough to leave an undying fragrance throughout the long course of a life.
Of this human story that began that day, later generations left these verses among the ridges of Heavenly Mountain, where they are still recited:
Seek within benevolence, righteousness, ritual, wisdom, and faith;
Gentleness, kindness, reverence, and restraint mark the noble child’s way.
With lofty will he carries on the ancestral work;
In poetry, books, rites, and music, his grace shall shape the age.
Red blossoms and green willows veil the hidden orchid;
Empty awareness and Chan sound awaken subtle fragrance.
Buddha, Dao, spirit, and immortal stand written in the book;
The five sons of the country rise to honor, while dreams speak their mournful prophecy.