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That period of karma with my Buddha: the past like smoke

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    ?

    Author: Shi Yuchun

    The memory of my hometown fades day by day in the wash of time.

    The days of flowing water will only make people feel lifeless.  When you are free, hum a few times of Qin opera, and forget about everything.  This is not perfect, and there are still many shortcomings.  If you are in the country, you can be unrestrained, open your throat, and roar!  It's not good in the city at all, there is no such free space for people to express themselves.

    When life becomes blank, people become headless flies.  I always try to find a destination and a space when I am wandering and helpless, not to put the body, but to park the soul.

    The so-called support of the soul, for me, apart from books, there are probably only distant nostalgia left.

    The past is like smoke, and it seems to have melted into dust.  Only when the sun shines into the heart, if you observe carefully, can you see the little particles floating in the ray of light.  Many times, the harder I try to catch them, the faster they slip.

    In childhood memories, apart from water, there is Buddha.

    Buddha, in the life at that time, is not a belief, but a fairy tale.  All of this was not caused by the Flying Immortal, but by the influence of my grandmother.

    My mother would sometimes say to me:

    When you were young, your mother-in-law (we call grandma Po, not the second in Mandarin, but the first in Mandarin) didn¡¯t care much about you, why do you still love her so much?

    These words sounded like instigation.  In fact, it's all true.  Besides, no matter how many grievances my mother has with the family, she never asks us to be disrespectful to any elders.

    What I can remember is that I was on the warm kang in the old house, snuggled up to my grandmother, listening to the old man tell me stories, talk about the state of the world, talk about gods, and Taoism.

    Grandma's beliefs in her life were simple and pious.  In the concept of the elderly, gods and ghosts belong to the same world.  If there is a difference between the two, it is probably the difference between a sage in the world and an ordinary person.  Despite the differences, my grandmother's devotion to Buddha and her respect for the dead remained the same.  Grandma has never read a book, but she always adheres to the etiquette of "sacrificing to the gods as if they exist".

    Grandma has little feet.  In my memory, the elderly seldom move. Most of the time, they are either lying on the kang of the old house or sitting on the dismounting stone in front of the old house.

    There is one thing that my grandmother insists on: burning incense, chanting sutras, and prostrating in front of the Buddhist altar every morning and evening; every time before worshiping the Buddha, she must simply wash her hands.

    Grandma's wish is that someone can inherit her incense, so that the gods will not be left out in the end.

    How did I become attached to Buddha?  Going to search the memory again, even if you try your best to scrub it, you can't reveal any pictures and texts.  Perhaps, liking and being infatuated don't need a reason, and I don't know why it is so?

    If you have to find some reason, I think it should be out of love for grandma.

    Thinking about it carefully, I was very skinny when I was a child, even a bit bad.  I can fight and run wildly with the children in the village like savages.  Even how many times she was so angry that her mother shed tears.  However, in front of my grandmother, I have always been an obedient child.

    The streets of our village run east-west.  It is said that before the "breaking the four olds", both the east end of the village and the west end of the village were temples, and the scale was not small.  Unfortunately, because of the destruction, when I was very young, there was no trace of it.

    When I was eight or nine years old, I don't know who suggested it. The old people in the village suddenly thought of restoring the old temple fair.  The temple is gone, but temple fair ceremonies can still be held.

    Next to the old house is the warehouse of the agricultural cooperative period.  During the period of the Republic of China, this was the garden of my family.  At that time, big families had gardens.  I heard from my grandmother that this neighborhood used to be my family's ancestral hall.  In my first memory, it should be before I was four years old. My father once held me in front of the warehouse door to receive the meat distributed by the agricultural cooperative, probably before the disintegration of the cooperative.  At that time, it was still busy here.  It was also the place where the chaff mills and hay cutters in the production team were stored.

    Later, as soon as the agricultural cooperatives were disbanded, the place was deserted.

    Later, someone made more than half of the place into a yard, but left a very narrow yard unused.  Because the houses here can also shelter from wind and rain, some of the old people suggested that the gods be temporarily placed here.  Thus, the warehouse became a temple.  This temple carries my memory; this temple also fulfills my Buddhist destiny.

    The innocence when I was young always pinned my hopes on things that adults couldn't understand.  I grew up by my grandmother's side, listening to "Huang's Daughter Vs King Kong", "Vow at Xiangshan Temple", "Eighteen Levels of Hell", and other anecdotes and strange events in the world that are similar to Liaozhai stories.

    Some people like to criticize the simple beliefs of the old people as superstitions.  I think, most of the time, it's just asimple scriptures.

    Speaking of simple scriptures, in later days, I also learned "Twisting the Grass Rope":

    Say you can, you can;

    Sit down and twist the straw rope;

    Twist Ding Lang to engrave the mother;

    ?Twist Wang Xiang to lie on the ice;

    ?Three-twisted and three-clouded Yellow River Formation;

    ?Twist Tang Monk four times to get scriptures;

    ? Five-twisted Xiangzi with Lingyou;

    ?Six-twisted Meng Jiangnu cried on the Great Wall;

    Seven twists and seven immortals paired with a cowherd;

    ? Eight twists and eight immortals come across the sea;

    Nine twists, nine immortals, nine dragons;

    It takes ten twists to twist the straw rope.

    These "Buddhas" seem as simple as nursery rhymes today, but at that time, each sentence was a fascinating story told to me by my grandmother.

    Just like this, I followed my grandmother to worship the Buddha and participated in Buddhist activities. Finally, one day, I also wanted to have my own Buddhist altar.

    I can't remember where the first gods and Buddhas came from.  I just remember that the Avalokitesvara that I have been offering all the time and is still worshiped at home was picked up by my father when he went out.

    Father has a very bad temper, and for things he doesn't like, whether it's the king of heaven or Lao Tzu, he only has one word - scold.  My father didn't believe in ghosts, so my father's dislike of the so-called "pretending to be gods and ghosts" young people in the village naturally expressed his dissatisfaction and indignation by cursing.  However, my father took it as a matter of course for the elderly.  Every time my grandmother burned incense and paper, she wanted to write a vow, and my father would write to Mo respectfully.  My father naturally wouldn't say anything about my grandmother's worship of Buddha. As for my worship of Buddha, my father even gave me considerable support.

    There is a statue of Avalokitesvara in the grandmother's shrine. It is still a mystery whether it is a copper body or a golden body.  This was picked up by my father when he was leveling the land where the old temple in Dongtou of the village was located.

    Coincidentally, the plaster-body Guanyin I enshrined was also picked up by my father.  My Buddha statue is about the same size as my grandmother's, but when I got it back, Guanyin's folded hands were missing.  Even so, in my heart at that time, that Guanyin was still the supreme god.

    Grandmother works as a Buddha and recites confession every night.  I don't know what the old man thinks about his life.  At that time, my life was just a beginning. When I burned incense for my grandmother and worshiped the Buddha, if it was night, I would also read the confession.  My confession at that time, thinking about it today, was just a formality.  At that age, there is neither matter to confess nor capacity for reflection.

    Father once went to a neighboring county and bought two incense burners made of plaster: the body of the incense burner is round, with two faucets as ears, the body of the incense burner is painted gold, and the two faucets are decorated with different colors, which is very beautiful.  Of these two incense burners, one is for grandma and the other is for me.  After having my own Buddhist altar and a formal incense burner, my Buddhist rituals have become very real.  At that time, for me, all of this was such a happy thing!

    The incense and watch (yellow paper) I used to worship the Buddha were all prepared by my mother.

    ?From about the second grade of primary school to the graduation of junior high school, I persisted in the activities of worshiping Buddha for seven or eight years.

    Every morning when I get up, I wash up first, then burn incense and watches in front of the altar, recite simple scriptures, and bow down. After all this is done, I pack my schoolbag and go to school.  Sometimes, if you wake up late in the morning, you just give up.  The evening ritual didn't seem to have been interrupted much.

    In the third grade of junior high school, my grandmother passed away.

    After that, I started to study away from home.

    My Buddha worship activities are over.

    Even so, my relationship with the Buddha is still there, and my love for the Buddha is still there!

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