The eighth day of the fourth month. Clear. Auspicious for flight and ritual.
Before dawn had fully broken, the Crane Dancer came to the rooftop of the highest pavilion in Pure Land Monastery. He wore crimson armor, the battle gear of Kapilavastu a thousand years ago, and beside him lay three enormous gray cranes. A pale band of light was slowly appearing on the horizon. Once the sun rose, he would be able to fly.
The vast body of the Temple of the Night-Lord covered half the sky. It was hard to imagine that it had once been only one small part of Kapilavastu City. Seeds carried by birds had taken root atop the temple, sprouting into swaying green shade. The faces of the apsaras and vajras lay under shadow. The great temple gate stood open toward the sunrise, yet for centuries no one had set foot inside.
Pure Land Monastery, Faxiang Monastery, and Huayan Monastery stood to the east, west, and north of the Temple of the Night-Lord, all three crowded with people. The monks of Faxiang and Huayan had cast off their robes and caps and put on silver helmets, forming wedge-shaped battle arrays, the old royal emblem of a thousand years before. Upon the altar were piled spoils once looted from many lands: nine-eyed dzi beads, three-eyed dzi beads, two-eyed dzi beads, treasure-vase dzi beads, tiger-stripe dzi beads, tama dzi beads, and every other kind besides, glittering brilliantly.
Only the monks of Pure Land Monastery still wore monastic robes. They had put on the faceless masks of repentance and sat cross-legged before the great waterfall. Each of them pinched the thumb and middle finger of the left hand together, while holding the right palm flat, raising a handful of new soil from Kapilavastu. Together they formed the ritual array drawn on the scroll. Seen from afar, it was two Sanskrit characters.
Compassion.
At the horizon the sun struggled for a few instants, then suddenly leapt free. At once the red clouds surged and ten thousand shafts of light broke out.
It was time. “Fly,” he said. The Crane Dancer swung himself onto the largest gray crane and flicked the colored streamers in his hand. The gray crane spread its wings and sang with its neck thrown high. Wind moaned beneath the Crane Dancer’s ribs as he rose steadily into the sky.
For centuries upon centuries, no one of Kapilavastu had flown in this sky.
The Crane Dancer drove his three gray cranes in circles around the Temple of the Night-Lord. As he looked at walls and bricks once familiar to him, his memories too seemed to come alive again. In those days all Kapilavastu City had bathed in blue Buddhist radiance, and every person had been gentle and humble. At each child’s coming-of-age rite, a monk from the Temple of the Night-Lord would lead them before the vajra or apsara corresponding to their birth date, and from its eyes divine their future, then determine their vocation. In his own year, the Crane Dancer had seen his older self riding three gray cranes through the sky.
That moment had finally arrived. The gray cranes beat their wings and rose to the middle heaven. Beneath them the great waterfall in Bacha Gorge thundered, and faintly one could hear Buddhist music coming from the three great monasteries. Smiling slightly, he took from his robe another scroll. Inside it was the original scripture of Poshan Poyin Di, looted a thousand years earlier by soldiers from the Eastern Land. The Crane Dancer flew toward the dim shadow cast by the sculpted mass of the Temple of the Night-Lord. At the instant before collision, it was as if some hand held them up, and the gray crane halted in midair. The Crane Dancer stretched out his right hand and slowly unrolled the scroll. The sigils upon it streamed with the wind.
Liberation in Light.
At once the dzi beads laid upon the altar slowly rose into the air and flew toward the sculpted figures, fitting themselves one by one back into their original places. The vajras and apsaras gave a long groan. Their lowered eyelids slowly lifted, revealing eyes that flashed with piercing brilliance.
In the distance, the three great monasteries were instantly reduced to dust and ash, turning into earth and mixing together at astonishing speed. Then, like shrubs growing, terraces, halls, and broad roads sprang out of that soil. The bodies of the sleepless ones broke apart and fell into the abyss. Only the monks of Pure Land Monastery bowed down to the ground as the earth beneath their feet swallowed their bodies whole.
SF 0809 cover: Guo Xiaoyun