The Brother and the Pilgrimage to Mount Putuo
Sure enough, before long the Master informed me that on such-and-such a day I should go to Mount Putuo — to stay there for more than twenty days, then return promptly. Receiving this notice, I had some concerns. First, going away for so long — my husband would certainly not agree. The child was barely two years old, and leaving him with a young housekeeper alone made me uneasy. Second, money. Mount Putuo was far from Shanxi, and the Master had said to fly, which would cost a significant sum I simply didn’t have.
Here I must speak of my younger brother.
Among the four of us siblings I am the third child. My mother was a teacher, my father an ordinary government official. My older sister and brother both worked as civil servants in the city government. My younger brother had graduated in traditional Chinese medicine and been assigned to a pharmaceutical factory in the city. After half a year he resigned and opened his own small private clinic. He was easy going and treated people very warmly. Though he had no particular reputation, many patients were willing to come to him. Working for himself gave him freedom over his time, and in his leisure hours he practiced hard qigong, tai chi, read Buddhist sutras, and practiced Chan samadhi.
I described to him all the meditative states that had appeared since I first started sitting — one remarkable encounter after another. He listened with no particular interest in the experiences themselves, and then asked me calmly: “What principles did this Master speak to you about?” I said I had understood something in my heart but couldn’t put it into words. He asked me to try to express something of my understanding, however briefly. After listening, he said: “Though I cannot claim to fully understand the sutras, from what you’ve described his teachings don’t seem to contradict the doctrines of Buddhist scripture. It probably isn’t something conjured by a demon.” My inner thought was: it had never crossed my mind that a demon might take the form of a monk to deceive me — and having read fewer sutras at that point, I was less likely to think in those terms anyway.
But my brother’s affirmation settled my heart like a reassurance — at least he believed what I was telling him was real, and he was considering it with genuine seriousness. From then on throughout the entire course of my cultivation I would often go and talk with him. Sometimes I would barely begin describing a meditative phenomenon when he would pick up right where I left off and describe the rest of it — that genuinely surprised me. He said he believed it would be exactly like that. Yet in his own sitting he saw nothing — just a dark void without even a point of light — and yet he knew what I was experiencing.
He often teased me: “Why do you have so many little-woman habits?” And I teased him back: “You’ve been sitting all these years and you’re like a piece of dry wood — not a spark of spirit.”
Of course, when the Master now asked me to go to Mount Putuo, the first person I went to for help was my brother.
He quickly came up with a plan: I would work on my husband. During the days, the child would be looked after alternately by my mother and my eldest sister. In the evenings, my brother’s wife’s younger sister — who worked nearby and wasn’t yet married — would come and stay at our place with the child. As for money, my brother planned to sell the apartment he had just gotten when he married, move back in with our parents along with his wife, and then use the proceeds to accompany me to Mount Putuo himself.
I couldn’t think of a better solution, so we each set to work. Except for my eldest sister, who agreed readily, not a single person was in favor of the plan. My parents, though not opposed to my practice in principle, felt that eating vegetarian, making offerings, and reading sutras at home was entirely sufficient — why leave home to practice? My mother was also afraid the practice would break up our family. But my brother and I held firm, working on everyone’s thinking without stopping. The departure date approached, the apartment was sold, and matters were settled.
The evening before we left, my husband came home very late, quite drunk. The next morning as we were setting out, he suddenly appeared from his work unit, said nothing at all, simply carried my suitcase downstairs for me, tears brimming in his eyes. My heart was filled with mixed feelings that defied any simple name. I went to bow farewell to my parents and then set out on the first leg of my pilgrimage — Mount Putuo, the sacred site of Guanyin Bodhisattva.
We flew to Ningbo, spent a night there, then took a boat. When the boat arrived at Mount Putuo we stayed at a guesthouse near the shore. In samadhi I had seen the South Sea countless times, had seen Guanyin Bodhisattva robed in white, and had heard the thundering sound of those ocean tides. Today I was finally here in person. Standing before the boundless expanse of sea, listening to the rising and falling of the waves, my heart grew spacious and still. The anxiety, restlessness, and exhaustion of recent days were all washed clean by the sea.
The second day we prepared to go to Luojia Mountain. At the pier, the wind and waves were too strong and all boats had been stopped. We stood on the pier and waited. Eventually one private boat was willing to go out, though at a ten-yuan increase in fare. We joined a group of about ten or so travelers to charter the small vessel. The cabin was tiny. We squeezed together and sat on the cabin floor.
The boat set off. The waves were rough. It was my first time on such a small boat. I felt excited and curious, not thinking of any danger. The others on board were likely local Buddhists — almost everyone held prayer beads and carried incense bags, and the moment they boarded they began chanting “Homage to Guanshiyin Bodhisattva.” I thought: this truly is Guanyin Bodhisattva’s sacred site — the locals’ devotion is so sincere.
As we approached the middle of the sea the wind and waves suddenly grew much fiercer. The wooden boat pitched violently, and to keep the waves from flooding the cabin a thick curtain was hung over the entrance. Inside it was dark and stuffy. I felt the small boat losing its direction, spinning in place almost, the rocking becoming more and more extreme. The people in the cabin were thrown together in a heap. Some began to be sick. A clear-eyed child who had been serenely chanting quickly reached into his incense bag and produced a stack of plastic bags, distributing them to everyone’s hands. A lifesaver — truly. There was barely time to say thank you before nearly everyone buried their faces in the bags, retching with full commitment.
I felt as though my intestines themselves were coming up. While everyone was lost in this misery, the boat slowly came to a stop. We had arrived!
Once ashore, it began to rain. Some of the passengers were arguing with the boat owner about something. My brother and I hurried off with our map to find the monastery. After about ten minutes, we both sensed something was off. My brother asked a nearby vendor for directions. The vendor said: this isn’t Luojia Mountain. To reach Luojia Mountain you have to take a boat.
The two of us gazed out at the rain-shrouded sea and suddenly came to our senses. The boat had turned back halfway due to the waves and returned to the dock. Neither of us was familiar with this island, and we hadn’t recognized that where we had disembarked was the same place we had departed from. We looked at each other — and burst out laughing.
Two days later, with the sea calm again, we finally took a speedboat to Luojia Mountain as we had hoped. That night back at the guesthouse I slept deeply, but I suddenly woke in the middle of the night — the entire room was bathed in a piercing white light. A white statue of Guanyin Bodhisattva stood in the center of the room, towering and majestic, her head reaching the ceiling. This was the first time I had ever seen Guanyin’s form without entering samadhi. I glanced urgently at my brother sleeping in the other bed — he seemed deeply asleep. I didn’t dare call out to him, just stared at the figure, feeling as though I could barely breathe. The room was perfectly silent. I could hear my own breath and heartbeat.
Then the figure was gone. The room went dark, and from outside came the sound of ocean waves, one after another. I didn’t dwell on it much, only felt it strange — what was the condition that had prompted Guanyin to appear in this way? Then I fell back asleep.
The Mount Putuo pilgrimage concluded in full. Besides paying respects at every monastery on the island as the Master had instructed, all remaining time was spent in sitting meditation. At Mount Putuo I hadn’t noticed any particular change in my body’s energy channels.
Here I want to add something I had forgotten to mention. From around the time I was in my teens I would sometimes suddenly feel myself growing very large or very small — just a strange sensation, nothing I thought was particularly significant, and I never mentioned it to my parents. As I grew older, occasionally while sitting at a table with a group of people eating, I would space out for a moment, and suddenly the faces around me would have all transformed: some into dogs, cats, or pigs, some with tails still swishing on the bench. I didn’t find it alarming — just often marveled: life is truly remarkable, how this world can shift simply by looking slightly differently.
After the Master began teaching me sitting meditation for a while, I suddenly became able to see through human bodies — the skeleton, the internal organs — though it was unstable. Sometimes I tried to look and couldn’t; other times when I had no intention of looking I would be surrounded by people’s hearts, livers, spleens, and lungs, which I found quite irritating. The Master told me: this is the penetrating vision of the heavenly eye. Your heavenly eye energy is insufficient, hence the instability — it will stabilize in time.
Indeed, as my samadhi deepened I gained control. When I didn’t want to see, the heavenly eye could close. And after the Master had explained to me the Five Eyes and Six Supranormal Powers, I was able to accept calmly and understand what was occurring within me. As for supranormal powers, the Master instructed: “Don’t play with supranormal powers. First, your energy channels are not yet fully opened, let alone transformed. Using supranormal powers consumes a great deal of energy — that makes it even harder to gather the energy needed for further physiological transformation. Second, playing with supranormal powers easily invites outer demons and entangles you in others’ karmic circumstances.” I asked: “But in the sutras, don’t many Bodhisattvas freely engage in supranormal powers?” The Master smiled: “If you’ve realized emptiness, you can do as you like. Besides, what you have now can barely be called supranormal powers — it’s just a minor ability.” At the time I thought having supranormal powers wasn’t a bad thing. Even a minor ability made it easier to generate genuine faith in the Dharma, kept the practice from feeling tedious, and the meditative experiences strengthened confidence in cultivation.
But everything has its advantages and disadvantages — having minor supranormal powers makes going astray all the more likely. Because releasing the grip of greed, anger, delusion, pride, and doubt from the heart is not something supranormal powers can help with. If we ultimately cannot cut off habitual tendencies and open wisdom, then no matter how great our supranormal powers, we cannot attain genuine freedom of body and mind, nor can we freely engage with those powers as we please.