Wen’s mother was in poor health and often suffered from back pain, yet she was always too reluctant to spend money and kept putting off a visit to the hospital. Wen went to Beichan Temple to burn incense and pray for his mother’s health, bowing devoutly before every Buddha image there. When he returned home, however, his mother had developed a new ailment. Yellow spots had appeared on the coating of her tongue, and anything she tried to eat tasted so bitter that she could hardly swallow it. Wen and the rest of the family became alarmed and forced her into the hospital for treatment.
The doctors could not determine the cause of the spots on her tongue, but during the examination they discovered gravel-like stones in her gallbladder. If it had gone untreated much longer, the entire bile duct would have been blocked, and they would have had no choice but to remove the gallbladder altogether. After treatment, the fragments in her gallbladder were expelled smoothly from her body. Her back stopped hurting, the spots on her tongue quietly faded away at some unknown moment, and the taste on her tongue returned to normal. Only then did Wen remember that the spots on his mother’s tongue had seemed to form the shape of a lotus blossom.