When Wu Aizhen returned to City A, it happened to be New Year’s Day. Although holidays no longer stirred much excitement or enthusiasm in modern city-dwellers, a festive air still filled the city. From the sudden surge of cars and crowds on the streets during the long holiday to the red lanterns newly hung along the roadsides to celebrate the new year, everything reminded people that a new year had begun.
Wu Aizhen stood at the living-room window. Outside, a fine, pattering rain was falling, as if tenderly bidding farewell to the old year. A trace of melancholy crept into her heart; the swift passage of time made her feel again how fleeting life was and the impermanence of all things. The drifting threads of rain still touched the sensitive, delicate feeling within her… In this state of mind, she received a call from Akikawa Yamaguchi. He had arrived in Macau and was sending someone to City A to pick her up immediately.
The car finally stopped. The driver said politely to her, “We’re here, miss.” It was the second time the driver had spoken to her during the entire trip, after asking for her ID at customs and security.
As soon as she got out of the car, she saw Akikawa Yamaguchi striding toward her from the neighboring building, taking the steps two or three at a time. When he reached her, there was not a trace of a smile on his face. He gazed at her with a grave, caring expression, as though she had just been released from a prison after enduring endless suffering. Then, without a word, he gently put his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go eat first,” he said, his tone as tender as a dream.
Wu Aizhen felt dazed, as though from the journey until meeting Akikawa Yamaguchi she had been moving through a dream. They had a candlelit dinner in a room filled with countless roses. Akikawa Yamaguchi’s handsome face and attentive gaze hovered before her; he studied her expression, her eyes distant and unfathomable. He gently drew her hand to his lips and kissed it, but Wu Aizhen only smiled vacantly. The candlelight flickered softly. Akikawa Yamaguchi patted her cheek lightly, signaling her to eat. He smiled, perhaps at her blank expression. A vague unease had been lodged in the depths of Wu Aizhen’s heart from the beginning. She scanned the room, staring at Akikawa Yamaguchi’s face, and she realized what was wrong: once again she sensed a darkness lurking beneath it all. The roses in the candlelight had a blood-like, spectral quality, and Akikawa Yamaguchi’s smile seemed like a glint reflected from the shadows. Two bodyguards stood outside the door; everything was on alert. The entire room felt like a trap laid for love. The ceiling was strangely high, and the whole space pressed in on her, suffocating. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell? Carsick?” Akikawa Yamaguchi was cutting a piece of steak as he ate and asked. He thought she was acting more and more oddly. “No,” she answered softly. She was trying hard to adjust her own sensations. “Do you often eat in this restaurant?”
“Mm. Isn’t it good? This restaurant is ours. I live right upstairs. But tonight, to welcome you, I specially asked them to prepare the private dining room. Don’t you like the atmosphere?”
“No, I just have some unusual sensations. It’s like being in a dream.”
“I also feel you’re a bit off, your expression vacant and distracted, but I thought it was because we’re reunited. Isn’t that so?” He had finished eating and was wiping his mouth with a napkin. Wu Aizhen smiled and didn’t answer.
After the meal — he lived on the eighth floor. Stepping out of the elevator, she saw people in identical clothes standing at the doorway and in the corridor. As soon as they saw them approach, they all bowed deeply. Wu Aizhen guessed they were all Akikawa Yamaguchi’s men.
Entering Akikawa Yamaguchi’s room, the first thing she noticed was the broad tatami woven from beige straw mats. In the center of the tatami stood only a low, black tea table, flanked by two fluffy red cushions. On the table, a set of black tea utensils had been neatly arranged, already washed; both the small table and the utensils looked impeccably clean, gleaming with a dark luster under the light. Wu Aizhen did not kneel on the cushion as a Japanese girl would; she sat down lightly. She had no time to take in the rest of the room because a “pot of scenery” by the table had already seized her attention with soul-stirring beauty. It was an oval basin, dark green inside and out, filled with clear water. A few white pebbles lay scattered on the bottom, contrasting with the dark green base and making the water appear even more crystalline. What astonished her even more was that on the surface of the water floated several red rose petals and scattered flecks of pink-white plum blossoms, while a withered branch of plum blossom wound sinuously along one side of the basin.
“I made this flower arrangement especially for you. Remember when we went to Mount Luofu together? The last line of my fortune poem was: ‘Only then understand the proud plum blooming alone in snow.’ Now I want to interpret it. I want to use icy, flawlessly pure jade, fallen blossoms in clear water, and a gracefully shaped plum branch to interpret our love. May I? This dark jade basin is from the Ming dynasty; there’s an inscription on the bottom to prove it. Very rare.” Akikawa Yamaguchi stared at the dark green basin as if admiring his own work. Wu Aizhen said nothing; the miniature landscape struck her heart with great force. She recalled a story she had once read about the great Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyū. Once, the ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi brought a black iron vessel filled with water and a large branch of plum blossoms and ordered Rikyū to perform an ikebana arrangement in public, intending to give him a difficult task, since arranging flowers in a basin had never been done before. Rikyū calmly took the plum blossoms, crushed them handful by handful, and let the petals and buds fall and scatter over the water’s surface. Then he lightly rested the bare branch against the basin. Hideyoshi and all those present were stunned speechless, overwhelmed by the beauty Rikyū had created. Now, perhaps, Akikawa Yamaguchi was alluding to this classic story to interpret their own love. Sen no Rikyū, at the age of seventy and at the height of his fame and popularity, was ordered by Hideyoshi, out of jealousy and anger, to commit seppuku. The great tea master fell. He who had reached the pinnacle of the way of tea and could create transcendent beauty out of the ordinary saw his life extinguished by the ruler’s tyranny and cruelty—just like the scattered crimson remnants of that plum blossom buried in that cold, lifeless iron basin… And that branch, stripped of all flowers, resembled the tea ceremony he pursued: austere, withered, ancient, simple…
But before her, the luster of this jade basin was soft; the round pebbles on the clear bottom brought out the boundless vitality of the basin’s depths and set off the scattered plum blossoms and rose petals on the water. Though fallen, they were not tragically beautiful. The plum branch by the basin’s edge twisted strangely, like a sinuous dragon peering over and guarding everything inside. Nevertheless, the story of Rikyū still stirred an immense sadness in Wu Aizhen’s heart. Suddenly she thought of Daiyu burying flowers in Dream of the Red Chamber. Perhaps flowers ought to be buried in water, letting their souls fly across the surface. She thought of the love between Daiyu and Baoyu…
The clear water, the blossoms, the jade—all revealed to Wu Aizhen an immaculate, holy, transcendent beauty. Yet the basin already bore faint cracks, clearly visible through the water. The flowerless plum branch was, after all, a withered branch; its beauty was incomplete. Sen no Rikyū had lived in a political atmosphere of coldness, suspicion, and tyranny, and the beauty he pursued withered along with his life, because that beauty, in character, came close to demanding perfection; his transcendence no longer belonged to that age and could no longer be tolerated by that political climate. And now, did this fragile jade basin not also stand for a time and space in which pure, holy love found no perfect soil? In this age, amid the mundane, demanding such holy, immaculate love was impossible. Withered branches and fallen blossoms—a beauty born of incompleteness—could only be appreciated, never a part of any perfect worldly life. As human beings, perhaps one could only find elegance within the vulgar, sanctity within corruption, and permanence, bliss, true self, and purity within suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path, in order to achieve a life and love of perfect wholeness. This was the Buddha’s wisdom, and the cornerstone on which a Bodhisattva enters the path. In the human realm, to demand perfection and purity was already a deviation from the human way, and from the Way itself.
“What are you thinking?” Akikawa Yamaguchi watched Wu Aizhen staring blankly at the miniature landscape.
“In my heart, the love you pursue is pure and holy. So is mine,” Akikawa Yamaguchi said.
“Perhaps it is precisely because we cannot hold onto a pure and holy love within ourselves that we demand it from outside,” Wu Aizhen said softly, a trace of sadness in her expression.
Akikawa Yamaguchi noticed. He shot her a quick glance. “All right! Let’s not talk about love or perfection. Let’s have tea, shall we? Can you come sit a little closer?” Wu Aizhen smiled, roused from her contemplation, picked up the soft cushion, and sat down beside him.
Akikawa Yamaguchi brought out a packet of tea leaves wrapped in several small paper pouches. He opened one pouch, sniffed it himself, then held it under Wu Aizhen’s nose for her to smell as well. Wu Aizhen felt only a hint of minty coolness enter her nostrils; she detected no other fragrance.
“What tea is it?”
“Happiness tea.” Wu Aizhen laughed. “Is there such a tea?”
“I brought this from Japan. A meditation master picked and processed it himself; it takes three years to make. I specially asked him for it before I came. The leaves come from a tree called ‘xinfu,’ so the tea takes its homophonic name—’happiness.’ According to the master, it clears heat and detoxifies, and if you drink it over time, it refreshes the spirit, especially good for the lungs. I hope you’ll like it.”
Akikawa Yamaguchi’s tea-brewing technique was authentic—steady and practiced. He rinsed the cups, washed the leaves, poured the water, and steeped the tea in orderly fashion, clean and efficient, as if entering a realm where no one else existed, fully immersed in a state of leisurely self-contentment. He gently placed a cup of steeped tea before Wu Aizhen. The tea was a dark brown-black, very strong. She lifted it and sniffed lightly; there was still no discernible aroma. Then she slowly drank it down. A wave of bitterness surged from her throat, instantly turning into a coolness that filled her mouth, and then a returning sweetness rose from the root of her tongue. In a moment, her whole mouth was filled with a clean, refreshing sweetness.
“How is it?” Akikawa Yamaguchi asked.
“A rather distinctive flavor.”
“The feeling of happiness,” Akikawa Yamaguchi said.
“When people are happy, they’re never this clear-headed. They easily become dull and forget themselves in their elation,” Wu Aizhen said. “That’s for ordinary people. Heroes like us are not like that.”
“Yes, yes! Great minds think alike.” “All right! Hero, have another cup.” Wu Aizhen laughed, suddenly feeling that she had completely shaken off her earlier gloomy state.
“How are you now? Has everything been resolved?” Wu Aizhen suddenly asked, not sure what exactly she meant but believing that Akikawa Yamaguchi would understand. “Nothing much. A traitor within the company leaked some confidential information, putting me in a very difficult position. The national police were investigating, but the matter has been settled.” As he said this, Akikawa lowered his eyelids. “Was it Harano?” Wu Aizhen asked. Akikawa Yamaguchi raised his eyes and stared steadily at her, but he did not seem surprised. “Yes.” “Will you kill him?” “Why do you care about this?” “I want to know.” “He’ll be dealt with according to the party’s internal rules.” “What are they?” “Seppuku. If he refuses, his hands and feet will be cut off, and he’ll be thrown into the sea to feed the fish.” Akikawa Yamaguchi said this calmly. Wu Aizhen’s mind conjured that cool face and his gentle, submissive smile. The killing intent in his eyes had faded, transforming into a blood-soaked image. Wu Aizhen drew in a cold breath. Akikawa Yamaguchi glanced at her. “Let’s not talk about this, all right?” “Is the underworld really as cruel and terrifying as in the movies?” “Do you think I am that cruel and terrifying?” Akikawa Yamaguchi answered a question with a question. Wu Aizhen looked at him carefully. He sat upright there, still in his black casual outfit, a faint smile on his face. She could not see through what he was thinking; she felt his heart did not reside in any single point of his body. His heart was vast and boundless, spreading through the darkness—that was the desire of the Demon King.
“Your desire is too great. And dark,” Wu Aizhen also answered without answering.
Akikawa Yamaguchi suddenly burst into loud laughter, then stopped and said, “Desire?! Who doesn’t have desire? Don’t you? The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi said, ‘If the sage doesn’t die, the great robber never stops.’ I only want to steal some power, fame, and profit, but you want to realize Buddhahood, become a sage—you want to steal the entire universe and even be remembered for a thousand ages. Have you read the Bible? Why were Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent? It’s because human nature has a fundamental desire: to be the Almighty God, to be the Creator. Adam and Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge because they believed that doing so would make them filled with wisdom like God, omnipotent.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But Adam and Eve lost God’s favor and the paradise of the Garden of Eden because of desire — it was desire that caused humanity’s fall. Laozi said: when people lost the Way, they turned to virtue; when they lost virtue, they turned to benevolence; when they lost benevolence, they turned to righteousness; when they lost righteousness, they turned to ritual propriety. It is because of desire that people lost the Way, and thus began to speak of virtue, of benevolence, righteousness, ritual, wisdom, and trustworthiness. The Buddhadharma also teaches that it is because of desire that sentient beings are born into the Sahā world. But the wisdom of sages like the Buddha, the Bodhisattvas, God, and Laozi is an impartial love that makes no distinctions, a love that in this world rewards good and punishes evil. If people wish to satisfy their desires, they can only do so by returning to this love. Only by returning to this love can that desire to become God, to be all-powerful, be utterly fulfilled. Otherwise, a person whose selfish desires swell unchecked will only become a demonic monster who does evil in the world, harming both others and himself.”
“What is the difference between the desire of a demon king and the love of a Bodhisattva? In this world, love, after all, is also desire.”
“You could put it that way. But in this world, ‘desire’ contains a self, whereas the ‘love’ of a Bodhisattva’s great loving-kindness and compassion is no-self.” (Here “Bodhisattva” refers to those who have realized Buddhahood in other worlds and manifest in this world in the form of a Bodhisattva — not Bodhisattvas who have just progressed from the First Ground to the Tenth Ground. Though their view is correct, Bodhisattvas who have only just attained the fruition still have not broken through the emotional clinging involved in delivering sentient beings at the level of phenomena.)
“If there is no self, who does the loving?”
“Wisdom and compassion do the loving.”
“But wisdom and compassion must have a subject. Whose wisdom and compassion are they?”
“No. Wisdom and compassion are themselves the subject.”
Akikawa drank a cup of tea, thought quietly for a moment, and then said:
“This is the Way of the Tathāgata. The Way itself is the subject — it is both form and emptiness. This lies beyond the grasp of human philosophy. In that case, could you explain to me the principle of the Buddha’s teaching on the nature of emptiness? I know it is not the same as empty space or mere nothingness.”
Wu Aizhen paused in reflection. She placed the cup in her hand onto the table, then said, “This is emptiness.”
“I don’t understand,” Akikawa said.
“I held a cup in my hand, and now I have put it down. If in this act you do not cling to the one who put it down or the thing that was put down, if you do not attach to the appearance of this cup or this hand, you will see emptiness through the act of ‘the hand putting down the cup.'”
As she spoke, she kept her hand suspended in the air.
“The cup has been put down from the hand — think not of the cup, think not of the hand, no cup and no hand…”
Akikawa muttered the words to himself, watching her raised hand as he muttered, deep in thought, staring blankly.
“I understand a little now,” he said. “This is conditioned arising and conditioned cessation — every dharma is like this. A wild goose crossing the vast sky leaves no trace. But if there is a goose, if there is empty space, then ‘a wild goose crossing the vast sky’ leaves a trace in the mind and cannot truly pass. Empty space is not empty.”
“Just so, just so. In that kṣaṇa when you fell into blank absorption, you gained a flash of insight into the principle of the nature of emptiness. In that moment of blank absorption, the external cup and hand, your very body and mind, all fell away — only a luminous mindful awareness remained, and within that awareness, this process was clearly illuminated. This is a sudden awakening. The act of ‘the hand putting down the cup’ was merely a condition, and at the moment of sudden awakening, the condition too was relinquished. Moreover, in that kṣaṇa of awakening there were no stages — it did not come through the analytical thinking you applied afterward. When you emerged from that kṣaṇa of samadhi, you could only rely on analytical thought to speak of it, to re-approach that state. This means you are not yet able to function from the nature of emptiness. One who can truly and perfectly apply the principle of the nature of emptiness sees this hand of mine and simultaneously sees the nature of emptiness.”
Wu Aizhen still held her hand raised in the air as she spoke.
Akikawa looked at that hand and considered for a moment. “I don’t see it,” he said.
“So you see, there are still many distinctions in levels of perceiving the nature of emptiness. Because you cannot yet abide in that state of perceiving emptiness — it was only a momentary flash of insight — when you face actual situations, you are still deluded. But because you have glimpsed the principle of the nature of emptiness, when delusion arises, you can use analysis and the discernment of consciousness to break through some attachments. However, the residual traces still need to be cleansed through cultivation and realization. Otherwise, the mind will still be pulled along by habitual tendencies. By contrast, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who have truly realized and can perfectly apply the principle of the nature of emptiness are able to ‘roam always in ultimate emptiness.'”
“Thank you. This is fascinating. I’m finally beginning to understand many of the koans of the Chinese Chan School. This wisdom is worth exploring.”
Akikawa was delighted. He immediately poured another cup of tea, placed it before Wu Aizhen with great respect, and said, “Teacher, please have some tea.”
Both of them laughed.
“All right. Theory is theory — before reality, it is hollow. I hope that tonight we can be happy people, neither demons nor Bodhisattvas.”
As he spoke, Akikawa pulled open the sliding door behind him. “Go in and bathe first. I’ll be back shortly — I need to go out and greet a few guests.” He kissed Wu Aizhen on the forehead, then said softly, “Wait for me.”
Wu Aizhen entered the inner room and slid the door shut again. It was a bedroom with an attached bathroom. She went first to wash up; the bathroom was spacious, with a round massage bathtub. In a cabinet beside the door hung two bathrobes and fresh towels. On the vanity beneath the mirror sat a vase of vivid roses — freshly arranged today, it seemed. After washing, she draped a robe around herself. It was new, pink, patterned with white lilies, falling just to the bend of her knees. She glanced at the other robe hanging in the cabinet — same fabric, same pattern, but blue.
Akikawa still had not returned. She lay down on the enormous bed — she had never seen a bed this large before. It was dressed with a thin white printed quilt and pillows, very comfortable. She leaned against the headboard and surveyed the room. The wallpaper was yellow, with a faint, elusive lily pattern. On the wall facing the bed hung an ultra-thin television. To the left of the bed were what seemed to be floor-to-ceiling windows, now concealed by coffee-brown curtains patterned with lilies. Wu Aizhen guessed there was a balcony outside. On the right-hand wall hung a painting: a gold-glittering dragon soaring upward from surging, wave-tossed sea, and in the upper right corner of the painting, a blazing red sun. To judge by the dragon’s momentum, it seemed to want to swallow that red sun in a single gulp. Wu Aizhen smiled to herself — this dragon’s ambition truly knew no bounds.
Akikawa returned. Seeing Wu Aizhen half-reclining on the bed, he smiled apologetically. “Oh — I’m a little late.” He turned off the sparkling crystal chandelier overhead and switched on the two wall lamps beside the bed, and at once the whole room was bathed in a hazy pink glow. So Akikawa was fond of this girlish, romantic hue as well? Wu Aizhen thought to herself as she slipped under the covers.
“I’ll be right there.” Akikawa gave her a meaningful look and went to wash up.
Wu Aizhen lay on her back staring at the ceiling. She felt unsettled, though she did not know why. She could not calm herself. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the place, or some other reason.
Akikawa emerged. He had not put on a robe; he was entirely naked. His muscular, well-proportioned build and fair, fine-textured skin gleamed in the pink light with a radiant vitality, full of carnal allure.
He slipped under the covers. Finding Wu Aizhen still in her robe, he smiled and said, “Waiting for me to take it off?” As he spoke, he untied her sash, then gently drew the sleeves from her arms, folded the garment neatly, and placed it to one side of the bed. He did all this with unhurried precision, as though he were preparing tea. Then he turned on his side, propped his head on one hand, and studied Wu Aizhen’s face intently while his other hand lightly caressed her body. When he saw in her a flicker of irrepressible impulse, a mysterious smile crossed his face. He bent down and kissed her softly — kissed everything of her. Wu Aizhen’s body grew warm, and she began to stir gently under his kisses. His excitement mounted, and at once he pressed her beneath him. He watched her beneath him, moaning low in intoxicated rapture, caught between life and death, and a secret pleasure rose in his heart — as though this had been a scheme in his mind all along, and it had succeeded. He kept switching positions, letting one wave of climax barely pass before the next came crashing over her even before she could catch her breath. He watched her writhing beneath him, unable to stop, her face flushed crimson, her body scorching hot. He felt as mighty as a great mountain, wielding a male power to conquer an untamable horse. He watched her yield little by little, submitting to his every manipulation, and a powerful satisfaction swelled within him. But there was no happiness — none of that soft, tender contentment he had felt the first time they made love. That fulfillment had come from the heart, from every cell of his body, while this satisfaction was only a kind of hunger, only the pleasure of eating a grand feast after starving.
Wu Aizhen kept her eyes closed. She felt the waters of the ocean of desire, a deep jade green shot with red, slowly seeping into her limbs and every meridian. In an instant, a thrilling pleasure rose within her — itching, tingling, swelling — and that sensation drew low moans from her throat. She wished he would not stop, wished he would kiss her harder, caress her harder, possess her more violently. The intensity made it impossible for her to stop. She tumbled in the ocean of desire, thrown up again and again, sinking again and again. She could not clamber out. She wanted to sink deep, wanted to die in that ocean. Then suddenly she heard the sound of Buddhist chants drifting from the air, now present, now faint. She listened, and her heart suddenly grew still. The waves of the ocean of desire subsided; the water became clear, like a gently flowing river. A point of white light spread coolly from between her brows and in a flash shot down through to the very seabed, forming a white column of light. Her body was frozen within that light, utterly motionless.
When he stopped, he suddenly found everything insipid and meaningless. He was exhausted — too exhausted to say another word. The woman beside him was like a pillow; he no longer had the slightest desire to touch her, to conquer her.
She stirred. He noticed it and turned over to wrap his arms around her. In his eyes was the temporary intoxication left after the burning of desire. “Sleep for a while. It’s been so long since we were together. Too excited. Too tired.” He closed his eyes, and soon his even snoring filled the room.
She drew his arm out from under her head. She did not know why, but a tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
He turned over. The cherry blossoms on his back were so glaring, so bewitchingly gorgeous. She gazed at them steadily, and she suddenly understood why, the first time she had seen them, they had shaken her so. It was Akikawa’s love — his love, ever-present and everywhere — that had watered them, that had saturated and nourished those seven cherry blossoms, rendering them sacred and beautiful. That day, she had been fortunate enough to see the spirit of the cherry blossoms on the back of a man in the midst of loving her. And today, on the back of that same man, now brimming with boundless desire, she saw the demon of the cherry blossoms. They were beautiful still, but their bewitching beauty carried poison, and it was this poison that was corroding the beauty and the sacredness.
She reached out to touch those blossoms. He slept on, utterly unaware. She remembered how, the first time she had touched them, he had trembled — a tremor that came not only from the body but from the heart.
She suddenly wanted to press her hands over those cherry blossoms, to cover them up. She did not want to look at them anymore. But her hands were far too small. The blossoms sprang out again, vivid, from between her fingers and past the edges of her palms, like tiny golden demons mocking her foolish hopes, her naivety and innocence. Suddenly he turned over, and with effortless ease, he crushed them beneath his body.
At last she grew tired and closed her eyes.
When she woke in the morning, he was already beside her, watching her. She smiled and said softly, “Good morning.” He smiled back, then suddenly said, “I have a feeling that last night felt different from the last time we were together.”
“Different how?”
“The last time we made love, I saw light and flowers. This time, nothing. And last time, afterward, I felt refreshed in spirit, unusually full of energy, as if I’d been recharged. This time, I feel utterly drained — as though my body had been hollowed out.”
“Hm. The state of mind was different, I suppose,” she said lightly.
“State of mind?” He fell silent, thinking. “I feel like state of mind is only one side of it. It probably has something to do with your cultivation. It’s because of your cultivated skill that, with that particular state of mind, we reached the result we did that first time.”
“Yes. To be precise, it involves state of mind, the level of cultivation and realization, and past karmic affinities. Your state of mind was different the two times, and my body and mind, too, cannot abide constantly in a state of fruition. That is why the two experiences were so different.”
“This is very interesting. So after cultivation, lovemaking can actually be different from ordinary passion. That was the first time I had ever experienced a state like that.”
“Yes. When body, speech, and mind are united in lovemaking after cultivation, it is different from the lovemaking of ordinary people.”
“I want to learn this cultivation skill. Can you teach me?”
“All right. First you must learn, in daily life, to be upright in body, upright in thought, and upright in speech. Then purify your body, speech, and mind.”
Akikawa stared at her steadily, his eyes full of doubt. What possible connection could this have with making love?
“I’m not lying to you,” Wu Aizhen said. “Because only through these can you and your sexual organs enter the other person with love, merging body and mind entirely into the sensation of yin–yang union. Otherwise, your sexual organs are stimulated, your brain thinks about experience and concepts, your heart surges with the fire of desire — you are split into three separate parts, and the energy in your body is already scattered and leaking away. How can you possibly merge with the other person? And if the two cannot merge, then sex is merely an exhausting, stimulating, indulgent, and venting physical act, or a way of continuing the family line. A person can never truly find genuine fulfillment through that kind of act. If body, speech, and mind are not purified, even if you have samadhi power, the heart will still be pulled by the stimulation of desire — because that is the desire of life, and the traces it leaves in body, speech, and mind will be the deepest.”
“Is this theory of yours the Secret School’s method of cultivating the non-duality of bliss and emptiness?” Akikawa Yamaguchi asked.
“No. The non-duality of bliss and emptiness arises naturally. It has no stages of visualization. It requires that the cultivator has deeply penetrated the principle of the emptiness of nature and possesses, as a foundation, the samadhi power of body, speech, and mind united at all times — only on that basis can one open the chakras and accomplish the state of the sambhogakaya. Actually, someone who has completely realized the principle of the emptiness of nature can already experience the non-duality of bliss and emptiness through all the phenomena of the world, not only from this kind of practice meant to open the chakras.”
“I don’t really understand,” Akikawa Yamaguchi said. “But never mind — take your time, teach me slowly. We have all the time in the world.” He put his arms around her and kissed her deeply. She felt that right now, he didn’t really want to learn anything…
“Do you feel good? Comfortable? Which time was better — last time or this time?” he suddenly asked again.
“Both were good!” she said after a moment’s thought. “But I feel I’m attached to appearances — attached to the appearance of beauty, goodness, and purity, and attached fiercely. Fixated on the pure and the defiled — that’s why I don’t have the power to transform the poison of the ocean of desire. To emerge from the mud untainted means there is no mud in the heart at all. But this attachment of mine is precisely the mud in my heart. It’s not about my attitude toward things.” Now her thoughts turned again to that bonsai and that pure love, and to the old bhikshuni she had seen in the temple, with that cutting, knife-blade gaze of hers. In truth, what lay hidden in her own heart, in real practice, was no different from that very same stain.
“Why all these principles? What matters is that you feel good,” he said contentedly.
“Where will you go today? Macau is so small, and you won’t go to a casino.”
“Actually, I’d really like to see a casino.”
“To spread your Dharma principles there?” he teased, laughing. “Still, those who lose everything might need your salvation. You could tell them the Dharma truth of impermanence.”
“Isn’t that exactly it? That’s just what I intend to do.”
“Fine! Do as you like, but I don’t have time to go with you today. Will you go to the casino alone?”
“Forget it. I’ll just stay home,” she said. “Wait for you to come back.”
He laughed loudly.
“Hasn’t Keiko been in touch? She came to China with Mayumi a week ago.”
“Keiko is here?” Wu Aizhen asked, startled. “She’s not in school?”
“She’s finished her coursework. She’s in her internship now.”
“Oh! I was on Mount Wutai recently and sometimes my phone had no signal. She may not have been able to reach me.”
“She said before she left that she has an online friend in China, someone you introduced her to. She invited Mayumi to come with her to find him and travel.”
Wu Aizhen thought for a moment. She realized who he was.
“They’ve probably gone to the Buddhist sacred sites. I introduced her to a friend who studies the Dharma. Don’t worry, they’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried about them.” Akikawa Yamaguchi had finished dressing as he spoke. He patted her cheek. “You should get up too. I’ll have someone bring your breakfast up in a moment. I have to join my guests for breakfast. I know you don’t enjoy being with those people, so eat by yourself. If anything comes up, call my cell, or you can order around the two men outside the door any time you need something. Don’t stand on ceremony.”
He left, and a moment later a young man in a blue uniform brought in a breakfast tray. A glass of milk, a sandwich, an egg roll — very simple. She had no appetite, but she sat at the tea table and finished everything. The young man came back to clear the cups and plates, wiped the table, and withdrew.
She wandered around the room alone. The room had a European-style wine cabinet, filled with bottles whose names she didn’t recognize. On top of the cabinet rested an ivory tusk with a gold chain, mounted on a gilded stand. On one wall hung a knife with an exquisitely worked sheath. Wu Aizhen had no interest in knives; she couldn’t tell whether it was decorative or a real blade, but she remembered Akikawa Yamaguchi’s expression as he looked at Tibetan knives in Tibet.
Standing at the room’s window, she could see the back garden of the building, where lush trees encircled a mirror-bright lake. Blue sky and white clouds were reflected in the clear water, and several beautiful geese swam freely across the lake… She stood gazing at them, lost in thought, for a long while…
She turned back into the bedroom. She switched off the bedside lamp and drew back the curtains. Sunlight poured in, filling the room. She cracked the French window open a little to let in fresh air, but unlike in the north, she didn’t feel a cool breeze on her face — the sun just seemed to warm everything, making it feel less gloomy. The dragon in the painting on the wall gleamed dazzlingly in the sunlight. Going closer for a careful look, she saw that the golden dragon’s scales were inlaid piece by piece with gold flakes. It was less a painting, more accurately a piece of craftsmanship. One of the dragon’s eyes was a ruby, round and bulging, glaring at the sun before it. Seen from a distance, the whole dragon was insufferably arrogant, surging fiercely up out of the sea, as if one more stretch of its body and the sun would be swallowed into its mouth — the modeling was lifelike. The waves beneath the dragon were made of a blue and deep-blue metallic powder sprinkled in layers; from a distance they merged into a vast and mighty ocean.
Wu Aizhen touched the dragon’s scales with her hand and laughed. “So fierce. What use is swallowing the sun? Aren’t you afraid of burning your stomach?”
“Who are you calling fierce?” Akikawa Yamaguchi walked in. Seeing her standing alone before the painting talking to herself, he said, “Well, what do you think of this piece? It was a gift from a friend when I took over my father’s post. Still, I also think the dragon was made a bit too fierce, with those red eyes — not clear enough. Don’t people say a dragon’s eyes can make out every last detail? They should be clear. Maybe it should have been set with a sapphire instead, don’t you think?”
“You don’t know — it’s a vicious dragon. Vicious dragons have red eyes. Its desire is so great it dares to swallow even the sun.” “You’d better mind your tongue. Don’t provoke it, or it’ll swallow you into its belly too,” Akikawa Yamaguchi said, laughing. “Just as well! Like Sun Wukong inside Princess Iron Fan’s belly — I won’t come out until it begs for mercy.” Wu Aizhen spoke very softly, not even looking at him. Akikawa Yamaguchi turned his head, looked at her, bit his lip, and gave a menacing cold smile. Wu Aizhen pretended to be frightened, scurried out of the bedroom, and behind her, Akikawa Yamaguchi burst into loud laughter.
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