The Five Brothers' Dream

After the Ma family migrated south to Qianzhou, their fortunes were no longer what they had once been. Yet there was one thing that had never been lost in wind or rain.
That was the traditional virtue and ancestral discipline of the family.
When Grandfather Ma Ziqiang suddenly passed away, Ma Rende had not yet been born. Later, what he knew of his grandfather’s appearance was pieced together bit by bit from the words of his mother, Zhao Youlan, and his grandmother.
The one who truly accompanied Ma Rende through his childhood was Old Madam Ma.
The old madam’s maiden family had belonged to a line of physicians in Jiangnan. For several generations they had hung the medicine gourd and brought relief to the world. At home they had kept hundreds of volumes of ancient medical texts, including the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, the Treatise on Cold Damage, and the Compendium of Materia Medica. From childhood, she had followed her father in learning to recognize herbs and distinguish their properties. Though she had not practiced medicine openly, she understood the nature of medicinal plants deeply, and was especially skilled in seasonal nourishment and the care of women and children.
After settling in Lingnan, areas around the Southern Ridges, she would carry a bamboo basket into the mountains alone every morning.
In spring she gathered honeysuckle. In summer she collected lotus leaves and lophatherum leaves. In autumn she dug five-finger fig root and rough-leaved holly root. In winter she stored aged tangerine peel and old ginger. After returning home, she slowly dried them in the courtyard, sorting them by kind into earthen jars.
All year round, a faint fragrance of medicine drifted through the yard.
When Zhao Youlan first married into the Ma family, though she was full of learning and literary refinement, she knew nothing of herbs in the Southern Mountains. But the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was harmonious, and Youlan was often guided and cared for by the old madam.
The old madam would always move over a bamboo stool and let Youlan sit beside her. As she sorted the herbs, she explained them slowly.
“This is fish mint. It clears the lungs.”
“This is mugwort. It warms the womb.”
“This is chicken-bone grass. It dispels damp heat.”
She often said, “A healer does not only treat illness. A healer follows the four seasons and nourishes the human heart.”
Zhao Youlan was intelligent and willing to learn. Within a few years, she could recognize the plants and trees all over the mountain, and had also learned many simple prescriptions.
When neighbors occasionally suffered from headaches, fever, or minor ailments, she followed the old madam’s methods and boiled a bowl of herbal medicine for them. Often, it brought relief.
For this reason, the villagers laughingly called her “half a physician.”
The old madam, however, merely waved her hand.
“Medicine can only heal the body.”
“To heal the heart, one must still rely on kind thoughts.”
She believed in the Buddha all her life.
Before the family’s Buddhist shrine, a green lamp was kept burning year after year. Every morning, she recited the Heart Sutra. On the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, she always brought Zhao Youlan to South Heavenly Temple to pay respects to the Buddha.
Nearly all the monks inside the mountain gate knew her.
Perfected Zitian of Muyang Abbey had been acquainted with the Ma family’s women for many years.
Almost every renunciant has, in the first half of life, some unbearable past, and Perfected Zitian was no exception. Life is suffering, yet one must still find joy within suffering. This was how the Perfected One comforted herself, and it was also how she often comforted others.
She and Old Madam Ma would frequently sit beneath the bamboo grove, one speaking of medicine, the other of Chan. With a pot of clear tea, they could pass an entire afternoon.
The old madam often said, “When the principles of medicine are understood deeply, they approach the principles of Buddhism.”
Perfected Zitian would always smile and answer, “And when the principles of Buddhism are understood deeply, they also pass through medicine.”
That year, in late autumn, the old madam reached the end of her allotted span and passed away peacefully.
Before her death, her expression was calm. She left no final words, but only asked Zhao Youlan to help her sit upright. Facing the direction of South Heavenly Temple, she joined her palms and softly recited the Buddha’s name.
Then she slowly closed her eyes.
Outside the window, a gust of autumn wind passed through, and the osmanthus blossoms in the courtyard fell with a soft rustling, covering the ground in gold.
That day, many people from the town came to see her off.
The villagers remembered her lifelong kindness, and remembered how she had given medicine to help others. Whether they had known her well or not, all were willing to accompany her on this final journey.
Ma Rende was only three or four years old then.
He remembered the adults tying paper flowers and weaving funeral wreaths before the mourning hall. Women sobbed softly. The air was filled with the fragrance of sandalwood, pine incense, and fresh white chrysanthemums.
He and many other children sat in a corner of the courtyard, making paper flowers one by one.
Their hands were clumsy, yet each child worked with unusual seriousness.
For the adults had said that these were the final gifts for the old grandmother.
On the day of the funeral procession, dawn had only just begun to brighten.
The long mourning procession set out slowly from Qianzhou toward Heavenly Mountain.
At the front, someone held high the soul-guiding banner, its tail unfurling in the wind. Behind it came banners of many colors, gently rolling in the mountain breeze. According to local custom, those banners were blue, yellow, white, red, and other shades, yet they did not seem noisy or garish. Instead, in the morning mist, they carried a solemn dignity.
Paper flowers were like snow. Pine branches kept their green.
The sound of chanting drifted in waves with the mountain wind toward the distant peaks.
Ma Rende held onto the corner of his mother’s clothing and walked step by step within the procession.
The mountain road was long.
When he grew tired and looked back, he saw the long line of people like a slowly flowing river, stretching from the foot of the mountain all the way into the depths of cloud and mist.
At that moment, he understood for the first time that when a person departed this world, the sorrow did not belong only to the family.
On the surface, Chinese people are Confucian; in flesh and skin they are Daoist; yet in their bones, they are still Buddhist.
If a person has treated others with sincerity and acted with kindness in this life, then those who accompany her on the final journey are not only blood relatives. There are also neighbors, mountain winds, ancient temples, and all those who once received her grace.
After the burial, Perfected Zitian personally planted a camellia before the grave.
She said softly:
“When the flowers bloom, it is not that the person has returned.”
“It is that the human world still remembers her.”
Many years later, whenever Qingming Festival came, Ma Rende would follow his mother up the mountain to sweep the grave. Every time, he could see that camellia blooming quietly. Its red blossoms shone against the green pines, like his grandmother’s kind smile. It had never truly gone far with the passing years, but had remained always in the wind of Heavenly Mountain, and also in the hearts of the Ma family’s descendants, generation after generation.