Reading the Sutras and Learning Medicine
After returning from Mount Putuo, everything at home settled back into its place. What I felt had grown most was a greatly expanded openness of heart, and my inner state was becoming increasingly peaceful. During this period I began reading Buddhist sutras extensively. Any Buddhist text I could buy or borrow I devoured with an insatiable hunger: the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Perfect Enlightenment Sutra, the Shurangama Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, and the Compendium of the Five Lamps; as well as the teachings of Nan Huaijin, Elder Yuanyin, and various Tibetan rinpoches; and some texts from Confucianism and Taoism as well. I couldn’t fully understand everything in these books, and I couldn’t remember them either. If someone asked me what the Shurangama Sutra said, I might very well end up describing the Lankavatara Sutra — only I myself knew what I had actually taken in. Yet while reading I was filled with a secret, bubbling joy — the kind of delight a thief might feel having stolen a priceless jewel. And in every book, whenever a single sentence aligned with my current state of mind and resolved a question in my heart, I would feel immediately as though some knot had suddenly come undone — a blossoming of insight, a sudden illumination. Like a fog lifting, like being doused with clarity from within. I was completely immersed in the ocean of Buddhist sutras, losing all sense of time.
During that same period my body was also beginning to respond. The first thing was a sustained and violent headache. When I turned my inner gaze on the energy channels in my head, they had all turned red — like steel pipes heated to glowing. The pain was like acute meningitis: even breathing deeply or turning my head slightly made me grimace in pain. I lay in bed unable to move, watching as a fleshy lotus flower opened at the crown of my head. With each petal that unfolded came a piercing stab of pain. Finally the lotus was fully open. The energy channel at the crown sank inward, forming a shape like a satellite dish.
This process lasted about half a month. Because the Master had told me the energy channels were transforming and not to be concerned about it, I felt neither surprise nor fear.
The second phenomenon was that I intermittently lost all desire to eat, subsisting only on water, occasionally fruit. Sometimes seven days, sometimes half a month. I simply followed my body’s lead — hungry, I would eat; not hungry, I wouldn’t. I didn’t pay much particular attention to these physical changes.
Around this time, friends who were Buddhist practitioners or qigong practitioners would often come to visit. Beyond receiving them warmly, I would launch into extended discourses on Buddhist theory, pressing my own not-yet-fully-integrated views upon them and vigorously urging them to take up the faith and the practice, leaving no opening for them to interject a word. Those friends who had no particular interest in Buddhism were truly practicing patient endurance — they listened with remarkable patience as my words bombarded their ears round after round. Only when it was time for lunch or very late in the evening would they politely take their leave, and I would insist on keeping them, sometimes even pressing several Buddhist texts I considered particularly valuable into their hands with instructions to read them, telling them the books were wonderful and not to lose them, and that we would discuss them together next time.
I don’t know how my friends endured my fervor during that period without cutting ties with me. The eventual outcome was that nearly all of my friends began taking an interest in Buddhism or in sitting meditation practice.
Though I followed the Master’s instructions to avoid using supranormal powers, I would occasionally employ them with close friends — checking their internal organs for problems, or looking at events from their previous lives. I remember one day an auntie came to visit and half-jokingly, half-seriously asked me to check her gynecological health. I examined her uterus and found a dark-colored growth inside. I immediately said: “You have a malignant tumor in your uterus.” The moment I said it, I regretted it — how thoughtless of me! At that point in my clinical experience, growths and cysts in the body generally appeared in two colors: dark or reddish. Dark tended toward malignancy, reddish toward benign. But with more years of medical practice since then, I have come to understand that some benign tumors, when longstanding and combined with very depleted vital energy in the patient, can temporarily radiate a dark color; after a period of medicinal treatment and restoration, the color shifts back toward red and the tumor gradually shrinks.
The auntie’s face went white the moment she heard my words and she burst into tears. I hadn’t expected her to be so fragile. I quickly tried to reassure her — that I was sometimes inaccurate, that she could go to the hospital to check, and that if it was as I described, early discovery was a good thing. She didn’t respond to my comfort, just walked away crying. I sat at home feeling dejected. I knew that when I had inadvertently detected illness in people before, the results were almost always accurate. My heart ached a little for her, and I thought I wouldn’t diagnose people anymore — what good was finding it if I had no way to treat it? It would only add to their suffering. And yet it felt as though, if a practitioner sees someone is ill and says nothing, the conscience would be troubled. I sat alone for a long while, quietly thinking: if only I were a good doctor. Like the great healers of antiquity — Li Shizhen, Hua Tuo, Bian Que — what a good thing, to heal and save people. I had no idea that this wish would be fulfilled very soon.
One evening I was in sitting meditation when the Master said he would take me to meet another Master. After walking for a while in the samadhi, he brought me before a gravestone with the inscription: “Tomb of Li Shizhen.” The Master asked me to bow before the grave. Without a second thought I bowed toward the headstone. The grave suddenly burst open and a person leapt out, seized my hand, and called out: “I’ve been waiting for you a long time! Come — I’ll take you to learn about medicinal plants.” Before I had even registered what was happening I was carried off to a hillside covered with herbs. With great excitement he went plant by plant, telling me their names. He spoke quickly, and I did my best to retain everything.
Coming out of samadhi, I recalled the experience with a mind full of questions. Had I perhaps dozed off into a dream? Had Li Shizhen still not reincarnated after nearly a thousand years? Yet my mind had clearly retained the names and appearances of several medicinal plants. I drew them simply on paper and decided to ask my brother the next day.
The next day, my brother listened to my account and looked at my drawings. “Let me check the Compendium of Materia Medica,” he said. He found the plants I had described in the book, and the illustrations beside the entries were almost identical to my drawings. He said these particular herbs were not commonly used and weren’t names he was familiar with. In samadhi the Master then said to me: “You may take Li Shizhen as your Master and have him transmit traditional Chinese medical knowledge to you.” From then on Li Shizhen became my second Master. Later a Master by the surname Huang arrived as well, teaching only acupuncture and moxibustion. As I had once done with the first Master, I entered samadhi each day to attend Li Shizhen’s lectures on Chinese medical theory and Master Huang’s teachings on acupuncture. They taught quickly, with imagery vivid and alive. When Li Shizhen described a medicinal plant, that very plant would appear living before me. If I couldn’t see it clearly, it could instantly be magnified thousands of times. When he explained that a herb had a cold nature and sour flavor, a sensation of coldness and sourness would arise simultaneously in my own stomach. When he described which meridians a substance traveled, a living transparent human body would appear before me — through it I could clearly observe how different combinations and dosages moved through the energy channels.
When Master Huang taught acupuncture, a transparent human body similarly appeared. Blood and vital energy circulated through it; the meridian pathways were outlined in dim light; and at the acupoint locations the light was especially bright, forming points that pulsed and flickered. My communication with Li Shizhen and Master Huang was not as effortless as with the original Master — we often struggled to understand each other. During the lectures my mind was a complete blank, and coming out of samadhi I retained only some of the methods and images they had presented, very little of the actual content. I expressed some worry to the Master: learning medicine this way, how will I be able to use it after I come out of samadhi? The Master replied: “Don’t worry. What they teach has already been programmed into your brain. When you need it, it will naturally flow out.” I stopped worrying and simply attended the lectures in samadhi each day.