Pilgrimage to Mount Wutai — Emei — Jiuhua (2of2) — The Lion King and the First Prescription
I must mention my dharma protector — the Lion King. I was very fond of him. The Master had brought him to me, and he stayed by my side inseparably for more than three years. At night while I slept he would lie quietly beside my bed, his whole body covered in white fur, each hair stiff as a steel needle, his body more than two meters long. While I sat in meditation he would patrol back and forth nearby. Once in samadhi a nimble, fast-moving spirit suddenly snatched the prayer beads from before my seat. Before I had even reacted, the Lion King had caught up and bit it cleanly in two. I stared open-mouthed, inwardly scolding the Lion King for showing not a shred of compassion — it was only a string of prayer beads, was there any need to kill so savagely? But the Lion King operated entirely by his own code, paying no attention to any of my commentary. Once in a dream the Lion King suddenly pressed his enormous head against my face, his eyes — wide as bronze bells — staring straight at me. That face was, by any measure, the most terrifying face in the world. I was so frightened I could barely breathe, and yet he was unwilling to move his head away. Though I knew inwardly he meant no harm, the fear was overwhelming, and I called silently to the Master for help. From then on the Lion King never did this again, and became very gentle. Sometimes I would stroke his back with my hand; at night I would lie in bed with my hand resting on him, since though he lay at my bedside his back still rose above the height of the mattress. With the small animals who came to find me he was quite friendly — whenever I was occupied, he would arrange them to wait quietly to one side. Three years later my dharma protector changed to Weituo Bodhisattva, and the Lion King departed. Weituo’s guardianship was different — I could not always see him. Only in samadhi, or at moments when sudden fear arose in daily life, would he appear before me, and instantly whatever had frightened me was gone. Once in samadhi I consumed a sacred pill offered by a great immortal and my whole body radiated light. Weituo suddenly appeared beside me, looked at me carefully and asked: “Why is there blue light radiating from your head?” I smiled and explained it was from the pill. Weituo said earnestly: “In the future, when you’re about to take a pill, give me some notice — I thought something had happened.”
The Master had more than eighty disciples who regularly accompanied him. The young monk who had first brought me to meet the Master was the eldest dharma-brother. He and the second dharma-brother often came to see me, appearing in the form of ordinary monastics, calling me “little dharma-sister,” and bringing me good things to eat.
My brother’s clinic had by that point been open three or four years. But since my cultivation had begun he often accompanied me on these journeys, leaving the clinic frequently closed. He had developed a somewhat apathetic attitude toward running it. He said that since my ability to diagnose illness was so precise, no matter how hard he tried to learn from feeling the pulse he could never be as accurate — so he felt he couldn’t be a good doctor, which meant being irresponsible toward patients, and he wanted to give up medicine altogether. But his manner was good, his fees were low, and the patients who came mostly had ordinary ailments like colds and fevers that cleared up with a few treatments, so more and more patients kept coming. The neighbors nearby liked to gather in his clinic to chat and play chess. And so the clinic quietly continued.
Once my mother fell severely ill, bedridden for a week with no improvement despite a week of IV drips. My mother, for as long as I could remember, had been burdened with illness: diabetes, congenital heart disease, severe neurasthenia, intestinal adhesions, gastroptosis, and kidney infections — not a single day without pain. My brother was at a loss; I was very anxious. I prayed quietly before the Buddha on her behalf. Perhaps it was the urgency of wanting to save my mother — that night I woke suddenly past midnight, not at all sleepy, and sat up to meditate. In my mind there suddenly appeared a screen filled with white light, on which a clear prescription was displayed. I quickly copied it down. My intuition told me it could treat my mother’s illness. The next day I excitedly showed it to my brother — this was the first prescription I had ever written. He looked it over and said: “Some of these dosages far exceed normal usage, and the amount of arsenic is too large.” Should we give it to mother or not? We looked at each other, unable to decide. At that moment our mother overheard us from the next room and called out: “Don’t be afraid — just get the medicine. I’ve been taking medicine almost my whole life and this illness still won’t heal. Let’s try your prescription.” My brother suddenly decided and went to fill it. Before long the decoction was ready. We watched in anxious silence as she drank it and lay back down. Soon she was asleep — and appeared to be fine. She slept so deeply that when she woke it was already noon. Her spirits were greatly improved. She got up and moved about. Three doses later she was back to her usual self. And so my mother was the first person to take my medicine.
My mother had temporarily recovered, and I was happy. Yet even then I hadn’t connected myself with the identity of a doctor — what I learned in samadhi and what I did after coming out felt like two separate things. During this period I also often communicated with Li Shizhen and Master Huang. Since they existed in an intermediate state between lives, I set up spirit tablets for them at home. I often saw them in samadhi practicing meditation in that state — Li Shizhen always placed a circle of candles around his cushion before sitting, with a yellow bowl edged in gold set before him. Once while he had stepped away briefly I crept over and sat in his place, curious to know what it felt like.
The moment I closed my eyes I heard my own heartbeat so loud it was overwhelming, the sound of blood flowing like a stream, and the sound of the Earth’s rotation. Though I sometimes heard these in my own samadhi, they had never been this strong. I felt bombarded by noise and couldn’t be still for a moment. The bowl in front of me cracked in countless places, and the candles flickered as though blown by wind, several going out. I scrambled off that cushion in alarm.
Li Shizhen never mentioned the incident afterward. When he sat, I would peek at the bowl — completely intact, uncracked. I asked the Master, who said: if I could achieve the suspension of breath and stillness of the energy channels while seated, such a thing would not happen. Li Shizhen also practiced swordsmanship — in samadhi I often saw him wielding a sword, and practicing calligraphy. One day Li Shizhen appeared completely transformed: wearing monastic robes, his head shaved, with ordination scars on his crown. Li Shizhen had become a monk? He usually appeared in the dress of an imperial court physician. Master Huang said: “Master Li has attained realization.” I happily bought fruit, lit incense, and made an offering of wine — both Master Huang and Master Li were known to enjoy wine. After that day, Li Shizhen returned to looking like a physician again, but his way of speaking had become more serene and expansive, his appearance increasingly dignified, with a reddish light often emanating from between his brows.
Later a few more Masters came — all ancient physicians of renown, including a Tibetan medicine king and a Japanese physician I wasn’t familiar with. Each time a new one arrived I would set up a spirit tablet for them. In samadhi I often saw them gathered to discuss a prescription or talk about practice, and they would go into the mountains to gather herbs. But I couldn’t always fully understand their exchanges. After the episode with my mother, I began to have a reputation within the family. Whoever fell ill stopped going to my brother and came to me instead.
At first, after diagnosing someone during the day, I would have to wait until midnight for the prescription to appear in my mind as it had that first time. Over time, as soon as the diagnosis was complete, the corresponding formula would flow automatically from my pen. When I first started writing I would sometimes write a herb’s name with the wrong character. As word spread further and further, I found myself imperceptibly surrounded by patients, and so began my life of treating and healing people.
When Master Li Shizhen was teaching me about combining medicines, he said: in ancient times natural wild herbs were plentiful; today nearly all Chinese medicinal herbs are cultivated, of diminished quality, and harvesting and processing standards are poorly observed. Meanwhile modern people’s illnesses are increasingly complex. So he asked me to use dosages far exceeding what the Compendium of Materia Medica recorded as standard, and to frequently use rare medicines. He explained: in antiquity, transportation was difficult and precious medicines were confined to the imperial court. The folk physicians of those times recorded formulas using inexpensive, commonly available herbs. But today Chinese medicine is comprehensive — whatever a prescription calls for, patients can generally find. My prescribing follows no fixed standard formulas, and I frequently use toxic substances. This created practical difficulties: patients taking my prescriptions to hospitals or pharmacies often couldn’t fill them completely, and the toxic substances required documentation from a licensed practitioner, making the whole process very inconvenient. On top of that, some irresponsible pharmacies sold poor-quality herbs or substituted counterfeits for expensive materials, which worried me greatly.
Under these circumstances my brother invested in purchasing nearly a thousand medicinal herbs I regularly used for his clinic’s stock, traveling to suppliers in other provinces to inspect and verify quality — a genuinely exhausting undertaking.
This made filling prescriptions much easier for patients and gave me peace of mind. There was also the matter of my lacking a medical license — I could not practice in any registered clinic. I could only see patients at home, charging nothing at all. Those who came from afar would eat and stay with us. My time for daily sitting grew shorter and shorter.
I enrolled in an adult self-study examination program in traditional Chinese medicine and duly obtained my physician’s certification. Before receiving that certification I had already seen several thousand patients on a voluntary basis, with case files filling several large boxes. During my practice I once asked Li Shizhen: should I go and study at a Chinese medical college for a few years? He said: “Absolutely not — do not allow those rigid, formulaic ways of thinking to be embedded in your brain. Right now you are like a blank page — what we teach, you absorb without pushing back with your own views, which makes teaching you far easier.” With that I put aside any thought of formal Chinese medical study — and at the same time felt a deep sadness for the declining state of traditional Chinese medicine in this country.